[cdf]

I am biased as an ethnic Chinese, but I feel modern medicine is afraid that it's approach, the sum of parts empiricism may be incomplete, in that we dont understand all the parts yet.

The human body is not just human DNA organs working together, but also an ecosystem with myriad bacteria, and we are still in infancy when it comes to understanding the bacteria.

TCM seeks a black box metaphorical approach, which sounds like quackery but I do think it is capable of addressing _some_ blindspots in modern medicine, eg why some medication would work on a yin body but not a yang body... the difference is in the bacterial ecosystem.

That said, I see TCM (and other traditional approaches) as a last resort when modern medicine fails, and I certainly agree the approach is incapable of resisting shamanic beliefs.

[genman]

Why not apply scientific method to Traditional Chinese Medicine and use double blinded placebo controlled trials to test its validity? In the end also modern medicine is using exactly this method and can treat substances using the black box method.

[FooBarWidget]

They are doing that — in China, in Chinese papers. Not everything has been researched yet, but there's quite a lot of active research going on.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

This is already being done and in many cases the RCTs show that the TCM treatments are effective.

[cdf]

The fundamental problem is TCM acknowledges individual differences that cannot be measured or even dont exist in the eyes of modern medicine, eg identical twins with different diets will have different responses to the same treatment, so going double blind will mean the results will be inconsistent.

[FooBarWidget]

I am also Chinese and this is exactly how I feel. The experience of going to a doctor with minor ailments, only to be sent away with the attitude of "take some paracetamol and come back when symptoms worsen" is maddening. In the mean time TCM practitioners have answers that often work for these kinds of things.

In people's zeal to point out TCM's problems (due to its pre-modern scientific roots), I feel like they're also throwing away its potential. Skepticism shouldn't be about wholesale dismissal (which is just intellectual laziness masked as rightenousness) but about improving outcomes.

[cyberax]

> In the mean time TCM practitioners have answers that often work for these kinds of things.

You can also take some homeopathic remedies and do a couple of chiropractic adjustments meanwhile. I've also heard that some Christian Science practitioners work wonders if you give them all your Earthly belongings.

The ability to say: "It's likely a viral disease. Wait and see if it worsens" - is a pretty powerful point _in_ _favor_ of modern medicine.

[dheera]

This is also how I feel as well.

There are symptoms and idiopathic conditions I've had that multiple specialists at top-tier hospitals were unable to diagnose, but mostly because they were too-narrowminded in their approach (blood tests, etc.) to see the big picture.