Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine | Hacker News Reader

Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine

slate.com

12 pointskitcar7 comments

Meta comment: If you check out the source of the page, you can see the <h1> and <title> tag read "Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine. But He didn’t Believe in It." - that's the original title I saw / submitted the article under.

Since then the "but he didn't..." has been dropped by Slate from the article itself (I'm guessing as a result of A/B testing by CTR% or similar on Slate's side).

Would kind of suck to be the author of the article in this kind of scenario, watching the title of your article change based on the whims of the web (I guess in that sense its not really your article...)

There's a lot that doesn't make sense, but there is a lot that is useful too. I've noticed Chinese women taking ginger on their periods, for example, then looked up ginger and surprise, it actually has been scientifically proven as a nausea killer. Similarly, foot pain relievers often have camphor or menthol in them. These are both proven anesthetics.

"I'm sorry, 'herbal medicine', "Oh, herbal medicine's been around for thousands of years!" Indeed it has, and then we tested it all, and the stuff that worked became 'medicine'. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri, so knock yourselves out."

"Chinese medicine, oh, Chinese medicine! 'But there are billions of Chinese, Chinese medicine must be working.' Here's the skinny on Chinese medicine. A hundred years ago the average life expectancy in China was 30. The life expectancy in China at the moment is 73. And it's not feckin' tiger penis that turned it around for the Chinese. Didn't do much for the tiger, if you don't mind me pointing out."

― Dara Ó Briain

This is the related video: http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=23510

I don't see how that's relevant -- once something is scientifically validated, it's no longer proper medicine unless it's in a pill?

The problem is that some of the stuff works but most of it is quackery. I just had a look, and there do seem to be some placebo-controlled trials showing ginger is effective at reducing vomiting in pregnancy. For acupuncture there are studies showing it is more effective than a placebo, although it doesn't seem to matter where you put the needles...basically it looks like poking yourself with needles reduces pain, but all the so-called acupuncture points are probably just quackery.

>>> Cancer.gov, for instance, states that “the oldest medical book known, written in China 4,000 years ago, describes the use of acupuncture to treat medical problems.” In fact, the oldest excavated Chinese medical text is no more than 2,300 years old and makes no mention of acupuncture at all

Wow, that is kinda depressing.

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