How does traditional chinese medicine compare with western treatments? Fred Pearce asked the foremost historian on TCM, Cai Jing-Feng, who trained in the Western tradition.
Is traditional Chinese medicine scientific?
Western doctors have often accused TCM of being unscientific and even metaphysical. Early in the 20th century, the Chinese government tried to eliminate TCM on those grounds. But it is not unscientific. After all, a lot of practical medicine of all disciplines is empirical-it is scientifically shown to work even if the details of how it works are unclear. If TCM was unscientific in that sense, if it did nothing…
