Applying Evidence-Based Medicine to Traditional Chinese Medicine: Debate and Strategy

Over the past decade biomedical health care institutions have increasingly united around evidence-based medicine (EBM) as the preferred method for determining the most efficacious way to provide health care to patients. EBM has been constructed as an empirical challenge to conventional assumptions about treatment efficacy, which have often been based more on untested theories of mechanism, the authority of mentors, or clinical experience, rather than on scientific evidence. Difficulties have been raised for biomedicine and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) alike, but more so for the latter. Some sources have argued that CAM can be “evidence based, while others have refuted this assertion. Some have contended that only certain forms of CAM have the potential to be “evidence based” or that current EBM standards are more appropriate to some forms of CAM than others.

Chinese medicine provides an important vantage point from which to explore this debate. Recent literature on Chinese medicine addresses epistemological, ontological, methodological, and strategic challenges involved in incorporating RCTs and the standards of EBM. A few authors contend that Chinese medicine should not be evaluated based on RCTs, detailing their reasons against modern Western scientific methods of determining efficacy. A far greater number of sources advocate for applying RCT and EBM standards to Chinese medicine and propose a variety of innovative strategies of mutual accommodation.

While offering compelling arguments concerning paradigm incommensurability, those opposed to using randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and evidence based medicine (EBM) criteria to evaluate Chinese medicine tend to oversimplify Chinese medicine, biomedicine, RCTs, and EBM. The detractors make overly polarized contrasts between Chinese medicine and biomedicine, and restrict their role to criticizing without offering a systematic evaluative alternative. While it is a challenging venture fraught with issues of paradigm differences and medical politics, researchers have found numerous strategies for designing EBM in ways that strive to respect the spirit of Chinese medicine, although there is much improvement yet to be made. Concerted ongoing accommodation is needed between the practice of Chinese medicine and the design of efficacy research. Through the alchemy of the interaction of the two, it is believed that both have been, and will continue to be, strengthened.

Source: THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE. Volume 12, Number 3, 2006, pp. 255–263

Moderated by Lorne Brown B.Sc.,Dr.TCM, FABORM, CHt of www.acubalance.ca

Bio:
Bio:
Daniel Weber, leading expert in integrative medicine and accomplished author and international lecturer,holds a visiting Professorship at Tianjin University (TUTCM)and the Vice-chairmanship in Oncology for the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies.

Daniel has a Master of Science degree in Chinese herbal medicine, a PhD in Traditional Chinese Medicine and a BA in Acupuncture Daniel is also a registered psychotherapist (MPACFA), and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychotherapy.

His company, Panaxea is an innovative practitioner only complementary medicine manufacturer and distributor in six countries.

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