Camptothecin from camptotheca acuminata, precursor of topotecan and irinotecan for solid tumours.
Ephedrine from ephedra sinica -- template for modern bronchodilators and decongestants.
Many others. Omacetaxine, minnelide, and more.
Very often, the first thing a medicinal chemist seeking new drug templates does is look to herbs that are used by indigenous populations or in "traditional" medicine systems. There's an entire journal dedicated to this:
Ironically, you've picked an example (Artemisinin) which is discussed at some length in the linked article - as an example where TCM success is overstated and not backed up by real-world results!
See P5-6 in section "The implausibility problem" - which points out that in order for the treatment to be effective it had to be refined into a form that is not rapidly eliminated from the body.
It's still not a vindication of TCM specifically. All traditional medicine cultures have contributed something to modern medicine. E.g. willow bark was used to treat pain for thousands of years, which led to the discovery of aspirin. I believe even cholesterol-reducing statins come from traditional medicinal herb.
Naturopathic medicinal cultures aren't totally bullshit. They're just "unscientific" i.e. they haven't gone through the rigors of the scientific method to establish their efficacy, or often their etiologies and mechanisms of action are completely made-up.
On the other hand, this does lead to a situation where people simultaneously scoff at a school of thought while telling you that all the useful stuff from said school has already been integrated into whatever orthodoxy they represent. Must be nice to be able to claim credit for something while deriding the people who actually discovered it. Not that I'm a huge "stan" for TCM or anything. I'm very much not.
I'm not particularly bought into the traditional chinese medicine stuff but isn't the line more drawn at how "normal" medicine is about synthesizing specific doses of chemicals to give those?
Meanwhile if someone told me "yeah eating a bunch of ginger when you have a cold is good to you because ginger has a bunch of stuff that's good for your body then" I don't have a particularly hard time believing it. Sure! Why not!
The article's critique about symptom management rather than disease management is legit though. And the precision for actual research is good. But at the end of the day if my body needs some stuff for symptom management and some TCM strategy involves me giving myself like 20x the dose of it... well it's something, isn't it? Though you could argue about it "deserving" credit or not.
Nobody whines about the unscientificness of giving yourself a bunch of salt through chicken noodle soup after a hangover.
No... Normal medicine is whatever we know works. It is unfathomably hard to figure out whether something works, ergo it is very specific knowledge (specific isolated compounds in specific amounts).
> well it's something, isn't it?
It's probably not!
If you want to say such remedies produce a placebo effect and that's sufficient for such purposes, IMO that's a valid approach.
> Nobody whines about the unscientificness of giving yourself a bunch of salt through chicken noodle soup after a hangover.
Sure, but that doesn't come with an entire theory about Chi energy lines, and no one claims this is "medicine" either (other than perhaps jokingly).
That's really the key thing. If you want to get a massage, or aromatherapy, or Reiki or whatever just because you like it, then that's fine. I'm happy for you! Massages even have proven benefits. Some may have benefits that are not yet proven. If you start claiming it will cure your cancer however...
This is also why I don't buy "detox" drinks that some restaurants have, even though some of them seem quite nice. The "detox" is just bollocks. I once even saw "detox" coriander leaves in the store. I like coriander. Maybe it's even good for you (I don't know). But "detox" coriander? Just, ugh...
However, the case of meditation/mindfulness shows that it can take a very long time between a treatment being invented and it being proven to work. It was called pseudoscience until it was statistically proven to work. Unproven is not disproven.
But it takes discernment to know which unproven thing might work and won't hurt though. TCM sounds more dangerous than not because the herbs you can get will be unregulated and possibly contaminated.
Something can simultaneously be a pseudo-science and still work. Do some aspects of TCM have benefits? Sure, probably – it's a huge field. But that's more coincidental than anything else, and their mechanisms of action are unrelated to TCM's pseudo-scientific theories. If you go to a forest and start eating random stuff then some will also have some benefit.
I'm not familiar with the history of meditation or mindfulness, but I've seen people claim some pretty ridiculous things about yoga, perhaps the most ludicrous was someone claiming that some positions will prevent certain cancers due to "massaging your organs". Yoga absolutely has benefits but that's just nonsense.
A_D_E_P_T|7 months ago
Artemisinin (qinghaosu) from artemisia annua. This won the 2015 Nobel Prize, and is now the cornerstone of global malaria therapy.
Arsenic trioxide, the purified form of the TCM mineral pishuang, now a very common treatment for acute promyelocytic leukemia. Often curative in a single dose: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221304891...
Camptothecin from camptotheca acuminata, precursor of topotecan and irinotecan for solid tumours.
Ephedrine from ephedra sinica -- template for modern bronchodilators and decongestants.
Many others. Omacetaxine, minnelide, and more.
Very often, the first thing a medicinal chemist seeking new drug templates does is look to herbs that are used by indigenous populations or in "traditional" medicine systems. There's an entire journal dedicated to this:
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-ethnopharma...
spauka|7 months ago
See P5-6 in section "The implausibility problem" - which points out that in order for the treatment to be effective it had to be refined into a form that is not rapidly eliminated from the body.
roncesvalles|7 months ago
Naturopathic medicinal cultures aren't totally bullshit. They're just "unscientific" i.e. they haven't gone through the rigors of the scientific method to establish their efficacy, or often their etiologies and mechanisms of action are completely made-up.
SuperNinKenDo|7 months ago
rtpg|7 months ago
Meanwhile if someone told me "yeah eating a bunch of ginger when you have a cold is good to you because ginger has a bunch of stuff that's good for your body then" I don't have a particularly hard time believing it. Sure! Why not!
The article's critique about symptom management rather than disease management is legit though. And the precision for actual research is good. But at the end of the day if my body needs some stuff for symptom management and some TCM strategy involves me giving myself like 20x the dose of it... well it's something, isn't it? Though you could argue about it "deserving" credit or not.
Nobody whines about the unscientificness of giving yourself a bunch of salt through chicken noodle soup after a hangover.
sorcerer-mar|7 months ago
> well it's something, isn't it?
It's probably not!
If you want to say such remedies produce a placebo effect and that's sufficient for such purposes, IMO that's a valid approach.
arp242|7 months ago
Sure, but that doesn't come with an entire theory about Chi energy lines, and no one claims this is "medicine" either (other than perhaps jokingly).
That's really the key thing. If you want to get a massage, or aromatherapy, or Reiki or whatever just because you like it, then that's fine. I'm happy for you! Massages even have proven benefits. Some may have benefits that are not yet proven. If you start claiming it will cure your cancer however...
This is also why I don't buy "detox" drinks that some restaurants have, even though some of them seem quite nice. The "detox" is just bollocks. I once even saw "detox" coriander leaves in the store. I like coriander. Maybe it's even good for you (I don't know). But "detox" coriander? Just, ugh...
zaptheimpaler|7 months ago
But it takes discernment to know which unproven thing might work and won't hurt though. TCM sounds more dangerous than not because the herbs you can get will be unregulated and possibly contaminated.
arp242|7 months ago
I'm not familiar with the history of meditation or mindfulness, but I've seen people claim some pretty ridiculous things about yoga, perhaps the most ludicrous was someone claiming that some positions will prevent certain cancers due to "massaging your organs". Yoga absolutely has benefits but that's just nonsense.
jxjnskkzxxhx|7 months ago
atombender|7 months ago
[1] https://youtu.be/KtYkyB35zkk?si=QfGJepREYJIlg3hd