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Argumentative Essay: Traditional Chinese MedicineStudent: ZHU Ninghao (Eric ZHU), SID: 53544188, Tutorial: T74In 2003, SARS was spread all over the world, resulting in a death rate of 11%. The death rate of SARS patients in Guangzhou, China, however, was only 3.6%, due to the traditional Chinese medicine therapy which was widely used to cure the patients in Guangzhou CITATION DEN043 \l 2052 (DENG, 2004). This enabled traditional Chinese medicine to stand out from the modern medicine. This case, without doubt, proved that traditional Chinese medicine has unique merits compared to modern medicine. In my opinion, traditional Chinese medicine is superior to modern medicine, because it focus on building up a strong self-immune system such that the therapy will be sustainable while modern medicine mainly emphasizes the importance of curing the diseases.Nowadays, when modern technology takes the lead in every aspect in our life, why could traditional Chinese medicine have such a kind of magic effect when curing SARS? Why the modern medicine cannot cure SARS effectively? That can be attributed to the characteristic of traditional Chinese medicine.Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes strengthening the self-immune system. In the core theory of traditional Chinese medicine, the cause of one’s sickness is that the balance of the internal body is lost. Now that the balance has been broken, there will be various kinds of symptoms. By using the herb to strike a balance, these symptoms will disappear automatically, and that is how traditional Chinese medicine can cure the diseases based on the symptoms. Therefore, what really cure the disease is one’s self-immune system which is strengthened in the process. There is a typical case. Pogostemon cablin is supposed to be a powerful herb (from traditional Chinese medicine) to cure dysentery by modern medicine CITATION Hon122 \l 2052 (University, 2012). However, when you extract its effective component, it cannot kill even a piece of bacteria in a lab tube. But it does work after you drink it. As a matter of fact, it adjusts your body and keep your body in a good condition so that you can eliminate the bacteria by yourself.Traditional Chinese medicine is more sustainable compared to modern medicine. As the aim of the traditional Chinese medicine is to strike a balance, it does not need to kill any pathogens itself but just rely on amending the self-immune system. Modern medicine, however, tries to cure the disease through killing all the bacteria, which sounds also reasonable. Nevertheless, this can only eliminate the pathogens and symptoms, which does not solve the key problem radically. When you kill the pathogens, you cannot ensure that it would not generate again, as the condition of your body might be suitable for the existence of the pathogens and be infected again. In other words, modern medicine cannot cure the disease radically. Moreover, the modern medicine has to be upgraded from time to time. When a kind of medicine has been used for a long time, the pathogens tends to generate drug resistance, which means that the effectiveness will decline. Just as the case of malaria, when generations of antibiotic lose effect because of drug resistance, the Artemisinin (Qinghaosu) which has been used from Qing dynasty could still work. And the achievement in this area was greatly recognized by WHO, and Tu Youyou was awarded Lasker Award for her contribution to the research into it CITATION LAS121 \l 2052 (LASKER FOUNDAMENTION, 2012). In summary, the core theory of traditional Chinese medicine, which is sustainable, makes it superior to modern medicine.Nevertheless, there are still a lot of arguments that are against traditional Chinese medicine. For one, traditional Chinese medicine has long been criticized due to the poisonous chemical in its components. The toxicity of heavy metal has been determined for a long time. And in many traditional Chinese medicines such as Xionghuang and Zhusha, they namely contain element arsenic and Hg, which have severe toxicity and cannot be used as medicines. However, According to Huangdi Neijing, a classical book of traditional Chinese medicine, poisonous drugs can also be used in treatment. As a matter of fact, some poisonous the medicine, which is considered not appropriate to be used as medicine in the past by modern medicine, has been proved of great effectiveness recently. For example, arsenic trioxide, a poisonous drug, has been proved to have great effectiveness when curing cancer, as it can prohibit the growth of the cancer cells CITATION Ant01 \l 2052 (Murgo, 2001). In addition, when making into available medicine, the poison of the herb is neutralized through some methodology which is supposed to be highly secret. Moreover, for those really poisonous drugs, it will never be approved to be OTC (over the counter), which will not be accessible to common patient. And writing the poisonous drugs into the prescription is under strictly supervision CITATION WJu12 \l 2052 (WANG, 2012). In this way, the harm of the poisonous drugs can be lowered to harmless, while the strict supervision ensures its security. Thus, the concern of toxicity of traditional Chinese medicine cannot be eliminated.Another counter argument about traditional Chinese medicine is that it lacks solid proof and convincing evidence. They argue that it is hard to use modern technology to illustrate the mechanism of it. Meanwhile, without systematic research of the side effect and adverse effect, it is also hard to ensure its safety. And this is one of the most important reasons why traditional Chinese medicine can hardly be accepted by the modern world. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine has been proved by thousands of years in Chinese history. And millions of cases have covered nearly all the characteristic of the prescriptive and medicines. The adverse effect of the herbs, the ways to use it and how to use it to eliminating the adverse effect have been described specifically in Compendium of Materia Medica and have been tested for thousands of times. Moreover, the cases recorded in the Medical Record by previous doctors are the solid proof of the effect of traditional Chinese medicine.In conclusion, the traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes strengthening the self-immune system and results in a sustainable therapy, which is superior to the modern medicine in terms of philosophy. To develop traditional Chinese medicine and fulfill its potential in present days, what we need to do is to sort out the prescription and the medicines through scientific method to make it recognized by the scientific circles. Meanwhile, the government should also strengthen the censoring of license for qualified doctors in case that frauds by traditional Chinese medicine would have detrimental impact on it. What’s more, the government should also raise up public campaign to make it known. The public should be aware of the advantages of traditional Chinese medicine and the correct way to use it. Only by then can we make full use of traditional Chinese medicine and bring it to the world.References BIBLIOGRAPHY \l 2052 DENG, T. (2004). Treatment of SARS: Traditional Chinese Medicine is indispensable. Science and Technology in China.LASKER FOUNDAMENTION. (2012). Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. Retrieved 11 6, 2013, from LASKER FOUNDAMENTION: , A. J. (2001, 2 21). Clinical Trials of Arsenic Trioxide in Hematologic and Solid Tumors: Overview of the National Cancer Institute Cooperative Research and Development Studies.University, H. K. (2012). Pogostemon cablin. Retrieved 11 6, 2013, from Hong Kong Baptist University: , J. (2012, 4 24). The adverse reaction of traditional Chinese medicine is much less than modern medicine. Retrieved 11 3, 2013, from PEOPLE: ................
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