Medicine looks back to its roots

By Andrew Jack
Published: May 7 2008 18:33 | Last updated: May 7 2008 18:33

In a laboratory near Shanghai’s futuristic magnetic levitation train track, dozens of scientists are studying how to convert medicines described in Chinese texts written 2,000 years ago into modern western treatments.
The Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (Simm), founded in the 1930s and reinforced through co-operation with international pharmaceutical companies over the past decade, is one of many organisations that hope for fresh medical breakthroughs inspired by ancient lore.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6a5d14ee-1...077b07658.html

paula

dear Paula,

to bigpharma catching on is another way for them to be richer...
so it would be a win win -

i was waiting for someone to say that...lol . Even tho it's not funny.[it might take longer if the patents start flying]

paula

Well, I find this pretty interesting, and thanks, Paula. What I find most remarkable is there seems to be complete lack of recognition among the 'Western' or modern 'scientists,' that these ancient systems of knowledge existed or exist within a network of information and wisdom about the relationship of everything to each other. Of course there was much subtlety in the ancient compounds because then there was still a connection to the lifeblood of the earth itself. And people didn't get the cancers they get now because they weren't battling the accumulation of pesticides, the disruption of the food chain by agribiz and were still eating things like real cows that ate grass with bugs that all played a place in building our tissues, our immune systems, instead of soy by-products stripped of all vitality, and antibiotics that then accumulate in our tissues in weird ways....We're the ones that know hardly anything, and we think we can go in there and selectively weed out certain items that 'work' without even having the glimmer of a recogition of the complex balance with nature that many of these systems were masters of.

Now we sit in our isolated shrines of supposedly inert plastics, with our shiny, throwaway stuff, with no close relationships to animals, to the incredible growing things around us, the water and soil.....The hubris of these scientists to me is beyond belief, and this is not even addressing the greed component.

In my recent reading about mucuna, one of the things that delighted me the most, besides discovering that is not so toxic and possibly makes your brain a little better rather than guaranteed degeneration, was the fact that in Central America mucuna is used as a 'fertilizer' crop. They say it gives the land courage. After planting maize for a couple of seasons in a field, instead of then letting it lie fallow for five years, they plant mucuna for two, and somehow it revitalizes the earth so that they can plant maize again. I thought how wonderful that this plant does the same thing in our bodies somehow, gives us courage. And meanwhile our guys are scrambling to find out the special thing that makes mucuna work - gee, it's not really dopamine or serotonin or this or that, but something in there is acting in some unusual way....

Reminds me of a friend of mine who was a doctor and nutritionist in the Peace Corps in the late 70's. He was sent on a mission to Central America to teach the people from a certain area how to have better nutrition. Upon arrival he found that they had an amazing and brilliant way of farming and combining proteins through the crops they grew. The result of his mission was that he studied their ways and brought them back to the US. These people needed nothing that he was to give them.

The old Chinese Qi Gong masters often lived into their 100's. I know of an indigenous people in South America among whom I have friends, who have no contact with technological society. They are brilliant scientists, philosophers, and thinkers, with no written language, and no history of warriors or weapons. They know all about us and choose not to be a part of our world at all. Despite having none of our modern accoutrements, they routinely live into their 100's, and are still climbing around their beautiful mountains at that age. Their philosophy is that the purpose of human life is to protect all other life on this planet. What divinity.

So much for our notion that life among the savages was routinely nasty, brutish, and short. I think we have a lot to reconsider.

That was a very spiritual post Fiona, i could easily go there mentally. But do we believe or even want to go there in our lifetimes? If not, what do we want to actually see happen? The differences in how we think are probably brain hemispheres - well ok albeit they are pint sized at this point - apart, but that doesn't mean they can't reach the same conclusion or goal.

What do you [ you is rhetoric] expect to see happen? If no safety or efficacy info exists to prove these medicines work and have no interactions, how do you know they do? Do you just want to remain independent and do your own thing? Who are the greedy patients going to sue if their liver explodes?
There was so much more but i timed out while typing it - devil gone for now.
respectfully,
paula

the standards are there at the FDA sometimes we think -they are being enforced yet they are only slightly -because we the people who actually have standards and to some degree of imperfection -do wish to have
a keeper / an authority tell us if these medicines are good/ or bad, thus far
the "THEY" have done a pretty bad job -in this land of opportunist - our free country in theory - for the most part, it has been an oligarchy -

so if someones heart explodes, or they kill themselves because the "safe drug"
causes them to lose hope and I know this has happened -
as example mirapex?

such a freakin horrid drug? so some female PD patient goes out and gambles all and no one knows -that the dear Lady - has no money, so she sits in her car on the railroad tracks at night, waiting for the train to to do her in -
and so it happens, the FDA knew this could happen -you can bet on it!
and the state builds the casino's w/ the bells = reward system -
pavlov's fact and she in her car in fact gets killed by the train...

who does she sue first? in fact no one - if she had family, there will not be
much to bury -and the lawyers have a system, try to get a lawyers lisence
pulled only happens when their firms do not wish to take a fall,
so we have a corrupt/ system...

the only thing we can do - and that would be like fiona said -go back
to the old healers or stay status qou -
and yet we still have a choice - as long as we in the USA do not start enforcing childhood vaccinations for parents and belief systems to be over ruled ...or draft soldiers to fight wars that are conscientious objector...

we can not be free that way... we can not submit to a corrupt system
because we are living in an Orwellian society -now and many are asleep/
lulled to sleep by being on drugs -when drugs were not needed,
- and propaganda rules the minds of the over medicated or the over zealot war patriots
- this is the New Order that the Hitlers/and Stalins and our president and his father have been pushing for... it is the Roman era again -one world government -
history repeats -doing the same thing over and over expecting a different
result -
Einstein deemed this as the definition of insanity...

I therefore do not like forced anything -

so that leaves us once again with the ultimate
and ongoing battle between -good and evil -
so we must choose who we are going to serve?
this is my best guess - hypothesis of what I have seen ...

quoting Napoleon who said, “What is history, but a fable agreed upon.”

"Chronological snobbery," [is] the uncritical accpetance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumtions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.

C. S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy

it looks like we are caught between a rock and a hard place. Do we want regulations, where do we find that balance, what of Andy Grove, what of Michael J Fox, what of the mystic surrounding the ancient chinese herbal remedies, what of China's lack of standards in their imports of last year that saw safety and health issues raised. What of china's appalling lack of standards in their house building that saw an entire cities infrastructure collapse during the brief but violent 7.3 earthquake of last week where an obcene amount of people lost there lives, including 900 kids burried under rubble that wouldn't have gotten past first base in the U.S.

With the amount of research triple doubling every day we need hard hitting decision making, businss proven, icons like Andy Grove to shake things along.
The FDA is under staffed under funded, under achieving and has unearned power beyond its capabilities.

And we need to get over this thing of curing mice. I note yet another breakthrough has developed this week regarding mice. If I had a dollar for every rat rodent that has been cured of Parkinson's since 1999 i would be able to pay cash for Microsoft, Yahoo and Google combined. Hey Tena In Search of A Cure eeerrr Champion.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vF_3VZz-6K4&feature=related

oh, my.

I had a feeling I was opening some worm cans yesterday, but I am delighted by the thoughts of each of your fasincating responses. This is a very exciting discussion to me. And I agree with each of you on many points. We're not talking easy here - these are real, complex dilemmas that we face as we as modern people try to cope with our beloved world that is careening so scarily into the red zone...not to be totally alarmist because I am basically very positive about our collective future. Anyway, all of your thoughts are very compelling, and I need a little time to digest before responding with greater appreciation.

Thanks, guys. You all are so wonderful.

Hi, ok, back with some responses. First of all, Paula, to clarify, I NEVER mean the patient when I say greedy....I mean the drug companies whose profits increased 40% even this first quarter alone, and whose obvious motives are profit above everything. The more we learn daily about how Merck suppressed ther knowledge of the Vioxx problems and enlisted top doctors to sign off on their falsified reports until 60,000 people died - and the list enlarges daily...So that's who I point the finger at. A reasonable profit is not a bad thing in most industries, as long as people aren't losing their lives, their homes, or whatever to sustain ever-mounting profits. But if you want to make a killing, go sell video games, and don't mark up hugely the cost of medicines that are vital to people to attain those riduculously escalating profits, especially in this time of economic uncertainty, shall we say...

I never begrudge the patient for wanting to live and be healthy, and I am concerned about safety for them. I say this having suffered full consequences of the Mirapex compulsion mill, ruined my credit, lost close to $100,000 etc. - and remembering that my doctor before she prescribed it to me, saying "well this is going to have some psych effects..you'll be up nights cleaning closets.." yah. (and this is a big doctor, in fact Michael J. Fox's doctor). So I actually think standards should be more stringent, and have excellent and diligent followup.

I can well imagine a society that combines the best of ancient wisdom and the best thinking of new technology. It just has to be created with wisdom at its core, and respect for the incredible life that pulses so marvelously in our natural world. THere are many wonderful ways to do that, and to be modern. But I think it's clear - - and here I take responsibility as a U.S. citizen - for the fact that we in the US consume more per capita than anyone else on the planet, and I think our global survival is dependent upon a huge-scaling down of our consumption. A return to simpler values, less accumulation of stuff, a genuine connection to the beauty of our natural resources would benefit us all. Of course many things in our economy would have to radically change. But that is possible. People in England thought the world would end when they first tried to abolish the slave trade...it undoubtedly altered their economic life as they knew it, but they did adjust. And the change doesn't necessarily have to be apocalyptic - we feared Communism so much and for so long, and then the dreaded wall seemed to just crumble and melt away overnight. It was time.

Then here's my further point. It's not necessarily that I'm alll about going to the live on the mountain with my non-technological friends (altho I actually personally AM prolly about that..) But contemporary scientists don't seem to understand that the context within which these traditional ways of knowledge were developed is really important, and way different than the paradigms we operate under. For instance, Traditional Chinese Medicine is not about treating what's wrong with you, but strengthening what's right with you. (I am paraphrasing horribly and simplisticly. Sorry) They say people don't pay the doctor if they're sick, but do pay him when you're well. They see foreground and background of your health and symptoms with a whole different lens and inseparable from your environment. SO when our guys go in there and say, well acupuncture doesn't work because we tried it for Symptom X and there was no obvious relief - well, it doesn't work on that basis. It may work so that the overall health is built on, and the symptom gradually subsides, or presents less over time. It's an entirely different way of looking at the world. It's impossible to say we'll just extract the one element that really works - these systems of knowledge are all about working synergistically, and that is the crucial thing we don't get. And our separation from each other and the rest of the world is making us myopic and creating a new poverty of knowledge.

Can we, as modern people, take on those ancient wisdom systems and adapt them somewhat? I think so, but we need to do it while doing our best and utmost to understand the context that they represent. And there are very real contemporary concerns that we really must address. For instance, everything in China is now reputed to be horribly polluted, so herbs that you get from China are probably not that good for you. A major tragedy. But knowing that, is there a way we can still work with that medicine and devise other solutions? SO Howard, in essence, I can totally get behind the premise of your signature, with the emphasis on the enlightened part.

Well, I feel like I'm talking a lot and not sure that I've said very much here. It's a stab. I'll consider more later.

You are clear Finoa; i understand what you mean. Actually, I was calling the patients greedy - we are a greedy society and frivoulous lawsuits are a major part of why our medical expenses are astronomical and the regulations so numerous and rigid. I lost my first post last night, which explained my thoughts so much clearer - in the second post, I was just trying to get them all in. However, if your liver explodes, I guess you could have a case.

Unwarranted litigation is the single - as in the ONLY one - reason that i give the drug companies and doctors a little slack. FDA too but they also get slack for being understaffed and underfunded.

i don't care what goes through the pipeline - whether it be traditional or modern - i just want it to go faster, be structured more expeditiously - and that is starting to happen. There is new legislation introduced, a push to increase funding in the FDA, an initiative to retructure NIH funding, better collaboration among orgs, and many programs in place to change clinical trials.

On these goals i think we all agree. By the way, my neuro likes curcumin and thinks it has real potential.

paula