Recent Chinese Research

The Journal of Chinese Medicine, which is published by Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, prints abstracts from the English language Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine (JTCM), published in Beijing. Titles of all abstracts reprinted in the last 12 years are available at the JCM website. In the February 2004 issue of the Journal of Chinese Medicine (JCM), I noticed that most of the research summarized appeared to be quite high quality on paper. Studies typically included matched and randomized control groups, lab tests were often performed and in many cases, patients were subcategorized according to both Chinese (TCM) and western medical diagnoses (so, for example, one might see a diagnosis of Parkinson's due to Liver and Kidney Yin Vacuity).

Despite this effort to recognize TCM pattern differentiation in selecting the treatment, results were not typically reported according to these subgroups. So the report would tell us that X % of patients got well, but not whether treatment is more effective for those hypothetical Parkinson's patients diagnosed as Kidney Yin Vacuity versus those diagnosed as Phlegm-Wind. Consider a scenario where all the Kidney patients do well, but only a few of the Phlegm patients do. Yet the success rates are reported for the entire group. This obscures certain conclusions that might be made. While it would be anathema in TCM to do the following, western medical research, with its disease orientation, would be inclined to see how the Phlegm patients respond to the Kidney formula. That would seem perfectly logical to a westerner , but unethical to a TCM herbalist who would claim that the Kidney tonics would worsen the Phlegm and thus the Parkinson's.

So there are still gaps that must be bridged, but at least Chinese researchers are meeting their western counterparts halfway by applying the gold standards of modern research in recent studies. This is how paradigms shift. So-called "normal science" is confronted with evidence that does not quite fit, in this case the fuzzy logic of TCM diagnosis. By engaging modern science on its own terrain, TCM researchers can open a dialog that is sure to be fruitful for the further development of both science and medicine. The concept of fuzzy logic has not yet gained currency in medical applications, though it has already proven useful in a variety of other technological and analytical applications.

Basically, fuzzy logic is the term used to describe systems that are not defined by absolute parameters. Western medicine has opted for precision as it has evolved and largely dispensed with all that was fuzzy (EKGs and lab tests replace stethoscopes and observation as the final arbiters of illness). Yet in the race towards precision, we have overlooked the potential value of fuzziness that had developed in the medical systems of the ancient world for millennia. A holistic worldview must embrace both the fuzzy and the crisp or it is not whole. The adaptive solutions of the human mind are myriad and it would be hasty to ignore those adaptations that predate modernity by thousands of years. But to be clear, the gift of the ancients is not only their techniques, but also their ideas, fuzzy as they may be.