Pitzer President Laura Skandera Trombley went on the trip to Asia with the rest of the 5 College Presidents.
Here is what she said about Chinese traditional medicine to China Daily.com because you know, Mark Twain scholar that she is, she knows lots about it.
“We believe TCM [Traditional Chinese Medicine] has great value and lots of people are trying it back in the US. That’s why we decided to launch the TCM course in our program in China. Our students can see how it works through comparing it with Western medicine,” said Laura Skandera Trombley, president of Claremont's Pitzer College during a recent trip to Beijing.We will get to how bogus traditional Chinese medicine is in a moment, but until then let's look at Pitzer College's ties with China.
Pitzer College has been sending students to China since 2001 and has established formal ties with Peking University.
“Among the many other American institutions with China programs on our campus, Pitzer is the only one which teaches an elective course in TCM for liberal arts and pre-medicine students. This course often attracts applicants from other programs such as the Yale/PKU joint program and Stanford at PKU,” explained Lin Jianhua, vice-president of Peking University.Why does Pitzer offer traditional Chinese medicine to pre-medicine students when there isn't any scientific proof that it works? Can President Trombley point to a signal case of traditional Chinese medicine actually working?
It seems unlikely. Just check out this video from Michael Shermer, an adjunct professor of Claremont Graduate University, and a debunker of pseudoscience.
2 comments:
I find it peculiar that acupuncture is somehow the total or the litmus test of the validity of studying TCM for pre-medicine students. As intelligent people, they will be able to decide for themselves that is fact and fiction.
A true conservative is someone who reads and thinks critically, without jumping to conclusions and without sticking blindly to prejudice. The author of this article displays an anti-conservative bias. Did the author of this article actually watch the video? The conclusions are that acupuncture does work for some conditions and that there should be a union of the best parts of Eastern and Western medicine.
A cursory look at PubMed (the database that all doctors use to research publications on effective treatments) reveals studies that show both positive and negative results for acupuncture, depending on the illness.
But acupuncture isn't all there is to Chinese medicine. Here is a quote from a very intriguing study: "Moxibustion and Chinese herbs function delaying aging though decreasing mitochondrial DNA content of liver cells and serum IL-6 level and increasing serum IL-2 level."
One of the core ingredients of Chinese herbal medicine is the xianggu, or shi'itake mushroom (scientific name: Lentinula edodes). Researchers tested the antimicrobial (kills bacteria) properties of a number of mushrooms. Their conclusion: "Lentinula edodes had the highest antimicrobial activity against all the bacterial strains tested."
So for the author to ask for even one piece of evidence that TCM works, there is plenty. You just have to be willing to open your eyes and look.
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