Chinese Medical Ethics in Some Diseases

Characteristics of Traditional Chinese Medicine

The Theory: The 2,000 year-old traditional Chinese medicine formulates itself upon the Yin-Yang theory, and that of Wu Xing (Five Evolutive Phases). Through the integration of traditional medicine with modern medicine, or "the combination of high tech with low tech", people will, just like the over 1.2 billion Chinese, benefit from the following major features of TCM:

· TCM treats the human body as an organic whole, taking simultaneous care of "biao", the symptoms, and "ben", the etiologic and pathogenic factors

· TCM often produces satisfactory results even with diseases for which modern medicine has not found the answers (e.g. asthma, anemia, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, hepatitis, hemophilia, thrombocytopenia, hemiplegia, lupus erythematosus, paraplegia, rheumatoid arthritis, pediatric dementia, mental retardation, brain palsy, etc.)

· Strengths - Medicinal herbs, apart from such features as bi-directional regulating functions, causes few, or even no side effects due to their natural sources. Herbal medicine reduces the side effects of, and reinforces, the effectiveness of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy

· Various means (massage, acupressure, exercises, medicated diet, etc.) have evolved from TCM to preserve health effectively