 What's up you guys? Dr. Alex Hine, Doctor of Chinese Medicine here. I thought it'd be really fun to do one of these impromptu kind of screen capture videos reading funny news about Chinese medicine. It often gets such a bad rap and it's very deliberately mis-portrayed in the news. So let's jump in here and I thought I would share a couple things that have just I randomly googled articles at news about Chinese medicine. So let's see what came up and I want to start with one recent positive piece of press first. So let's jump in over here. I found this great article from one of my mentors, Chinese medicine in the covid words and it's really one of the rare pieces of favorable and even a little bit more objective review of Chinese medicine. One of the things that jumps out to me was this. In 2015 this researcher, she actually had figured out to extract this compound used for malaria from a famous physician's text going back I think 1600 years. Now what's funny is this did nothing for Chinese medicine, right? It didn't do a single thing. It was just viewed as kind of like oh she found this in an old herbalist book and the rest is superstitious bull. But this is often how it's presented Chinese medicine and it's tricky because some of what we're doing is a combination of folk medicine and now evidence based medicine meaning there's a lot of research on it. And it's of course going to be tricky when you mix a historical traditional medicine with something that has stood the test of time and something that has a lot of research on it now for many of the formulas that are the most famous in Chinese medicine. There is clinical research even clinical research comparing it to modern state of the art drugs like for anxiety or for fevers. So for example, there was this one author recently who wrote a book called something on poisons treating with poisons or something. And whenever someone writes something about Chinese medicine, that's not a practitioner when they are not a practitioner, but they are a researcher, especially at a traditional Ivy League institution. There is when there's this kind of anthropological angle, it's frowned upon to really be a practitioner, right? So I mean it's called going native when an anthropologist basically joins the native tribe and then doesn't come back and is not studying them objectively as the scientists away from the community. So for example, he was talking about one of the herbal texts that's one of the most famous in our field, because 2000 years later, the formulas all still work clinically. And this physician, Zhang Zhongjing talks about in the Shanghan Lun, he lost two thirds of his family to an epidemic that afflicted China in the Han dynasty while it was collapsing. And he said he focuses efforts on combating what's called cold damage. Now this author didn't translate that just literally translated it, which gave it a very superstitious kind of title cold damage, don't put your feet in cold water. But really it refers to febrile diseases. And this author thankfully wrote primarily caused by viruses. A lot of these infections were influenza like or were pandemics at that time. It's difficult to translate a Chinese medicine concept that when you know it is very clinical and is not so hippie dippy, and not so woo woo. Let's take a look at another article here. All right. Let's take a look. The wet market sources of COVID-19 bats and penguins have an alibi. So one of the initial theories about COVID-19, I don't know, maybe that still is the dominant theory is that it came from a wet market in Wuhan. There's a quote here we've been gathering data collected from across Wuhan's wet markets, which put our team in the right place at the right time to document the wild animals sold in these markets in the lead up to the pandemic. This is kind of like an age old alibi, especially for anyone who's trying to poo poo Chinese medicine and make it seem like a bunch of superstitious garbage. You know, Chinese medicine practitioners are stealing all the tiger balls and tiger genitalia for fertility tonics and the bird's nest soup and shark fin soup, just cutting off the fins and throwing the sharks back in the ocean. And the age old alibi, if you want to really, really throw Chinese medicine under the rug, you know, throw it under the bus, I mean, is the wet market. All these indigenous wet markets, that's where Ebola comes from, that's where Chinese, where all these viral infections and weird disease SARS, MRSA, where all these come from. So there's a quote here. Thankfully, this is somewhat objective. The finger of blame has been pointed at wildlife trade in the wet markets of Wuhan, Hubei, China, where this outbreak seems have originated. Candidate species include bats, which are definite hosts bring coronaviruses and pangolins. Although the most recent genetic data suggests that the variant found in these latter species isn't quite similar enough to the human variant to be a totally convincing source. That was one interestingly enough. Let's go to the next article. This one in the Guardian, dozens killed by incorrectly placed acupuncture needles. Oh my God, 60 people killed by Chinese medicine over 45 years. What a number. When itogenesis as in modern medicine related deaths is now the third leading cause of death. It was like 250,000 deaths when that became a big news story in the British medical journal. Oh my God, 60 people in 45 years, just over one person per year. Wow, murderers, stupid acupuncturists. These are assassins, not healers. This one says 86 people have been accidentally killed by badly trained acupuncturists over the past 45 years. According to Britain's lead expert on alternative medicine, you know it's funny after this title, this introduction, accidentally killed by badly trained acupuncturists. Well, like 150,000 or 250,000, including hospital acquired infections, are accidentally killed too by highly trained physicians and pharmacists. Just saying. Let's go to Forbes. WHO endorses traditional Chinese medicine. Expect deaths to rise. What a dramatic piece. A few days ago, a news story in the journal Nature reported that the WHO, which is supposed to be devoted to improving the health and the medical care for people around the globe, will endorse traditional Chinese medicine. Critics view TCM's practices as unscientific, unsupported by clinical trials, and sometimes dangerous. China's drug regulator gets more than 230,000 reports of adverse events in TCM each year. But it's actually worse. Here's what TCM really looks like. The horrific slaughter of the last remaining rhinoceroses in Africa in order to hack off their horns, which are sold to become part of elixirs. But some people mistakenly think confer strength, virility or other health benefits. I beg to differ, sir. That's why my patients get rid of their Viagra subscriptions. Actually, not really. I don't use rhino horns or tiger penises or anything like that as much as I'd like to. Last year, Nat Geo ran a heart wrenching photo essay showing some of the awful results of rhino poaching in Africa. Well, guess what? Rhino poaching is, I don't think, primarily driven by TCM. I'm pretty sure it's driven by poor people who are paid by richer poachers to then go get those rhinos and those animal parts because they fetch a hefty price. I don't know everything about the market, the intricacies. But when I went to India, I'm a wildlife biology and environmental science major, I went to India to study some of the last remaining wild tigers in the world. And one of the main reasons that it keeps going is because the people who are doing it are not the people who are behind it. It is often poorer people who are paid to go do these dangerous, you know, harvesting, killing tigers, rhino horns, etc. I don't know the whole thing behind the tiger and rhino trade, the endangered species trade. Blaming on TCM is pretty cute. Interesting, COVID-19 deaths plummet with Chinese herbal medicine. Let's leave that out of here. Positive news is so boring, so passe. Chinese actress death sparks cancer treatment debate. Let me guess, she didn't do conventional care and she chose not to undergo chemotherapy saying she had seen friends suffer from the procedure and was concerned about the cost. Look at this. Instead, Ms. Xu opted for traditional Chinese medicine methods and they choose the most laughable, least credible sounding treatments, such as cupping, acupuncture, back stretching, and a method called guasha in which the skin is scraped to produce light bruising. You couldn't have chosen a little more credible sounding terms, you know, and then she died. Let's do another one. CNN Health. Woman dies after drinking poisonous herbal tea. Juicy. You guys know like this is around 100,000 calls to poison control centers for aspirin or Tylenol, excuse me, and one of the, what is it, like three to five hundred deaths a year from OTC Tylenol? So we should have these articles, 500 humans die, 300 children die after consuming poisonous over-the-counter drugs they bought with their friends because they had a headache and Walgreens. But this woman died after drinking poisonous herbal tea. She bought it in the SF Chinatown and she experienced weakness and life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms. This was probably Akinite, Fuzi. Oh yeah, a lab test found Akinite, of course. It's funny because, you know, I use a lot of Akinite and it has to be processed properly. It's obviously Wolf-Spain is one of the most poisonous plants in the world, has very potent alkaloids useful medically, but you have to prepare it. And it's obviously one of the more toxic substances we use. Properly prepared, it's safe, totally safe. Tea-stained authorities are unable to stop the booming tree in rare animal parts. Rhino populations are threatened by poaching to feed China's voracious demand for rhino I would love to see, oh here we go, this is good, this is great. The array of shapes and sizes leaves one agog. Nice SAT word, agog, I'm a fan. A bull's penis is two feet long and almost translucent. Who would've thunk? Deer penis has a meaty pink hue. This is a lot of talk about penises. Snake penis looks like a bifurcated twig. Snake penis has become more popular in China since the one child policy ended. Many people ask for it now because they want a second child. How about diet and exercise? I mean if you love translucent two-foot penis, do you? Wow. A bull's penis comes in at 30 bucks. Fur seal's penis is 400. Fur seal penis is the most expensive as it has a lot of elements good for the body, but it's also quite mild so you don't get that inner fire. Get that fire in the loins, fire in your belly. For that burn, there's only one place to look, baby. In terms of nourishing the yang, tiger penis is definitely the top. If you handle tiger penis properly and mix together with Chinese herbs, it has the best possible effect, much better than Viagra. Lots of people come here asking for tiger penis, but it's illegal, so we don't sell it. Tiger penis. Okay, lots of talk about tiger penis. Let's save this time article for later. That's kind of funny. China legalizes rhino horn tiger bone from medicinal purposes. You know, one of the main things we see here is there's such a bias against Chinese medicine and a lot of it is a typical a typical trope. You pick the scamious sounding title with the direct translation of something that should never be directly translated because the direct translation is not going to sound, it's not accurate, and then you choose one of the most obscure and clearly more folk medicine or not really standard of Chinese medical care, like no one in my school is taught to use tiger penises and fur seal penises for libido tonics. That's not a standard commonly used thing in America for me throughout my whole doctorate. Even a lot of animal parts are not super commonly used, especially this kind of stuff. This falls into like really folk medicine. And of course, there's always some overlap of folk medicine with what you as a licensed practitioner have to learn. You know, there was no talk of tiger fur seal penises on my medical board for the national board or for the California board. I had to do two different boards. And almost always, almost always a scammy title is picked. It looks like a slam piece. It's a direct literal translation that makes it sound so stupid. And it's not really looking at the aspects that are very clinically effective. And then a lot of that in Chinese medicine. So I don't know, I thought I would take some time to look at some of these funny, funny articles. It's almost never presented in a clinically straightforward way, highlighting the clinical efficacy of it. And it is there. So sometimes you see this and you read the articles of phase value, especially if it's a strong anti piece, which it usually is. And I thought it would be just be helpful to share some of these. I mean, they're usually quite funny, sometimes sad, you know, obviously, I don't want anybody to die. But some of these are quite funny. And when you juxtapose it to the deaths from conventional medical care, I mean, that itrogenesis was third leading cause of death. Let's see, let's go here. So medical error. 2016, the British Medical Journal published an article of the headline medical error, the third leading cause of death in the US as many as a quarter million deaths in the year in the US were caused by medical error. So obviously that's a big deal. And I'm not here to throw conventional medical care under the bus. But let's put these things in context. So what was that 80 deaths from acupuncture pneumothorax and a quarter million from maybe maybe actually 150,000 and the other 100 or 150,000 from hospital acquired infections. But when we put that side by side, you know, put those bar charts side by side, right, kind of says a lot there. But Chinese medicine usually not very favorably looked at in the news. And it's almost like highlighting all the worst parts of somebody that you know, and not the good parts, not the clinically effective parts. So obviously we know the negatives, you know, tiger penis, probably not a good idea. Tigers are kind of going extinct. So maybe hold off on that. But there are other really effective treatments that can work. And I thought I would take some time to chat about them. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. Stay away from tiger penis, rhino horns, fur seal penis, snake penis, rhino penis, a lot of penises, Matt. Stay away from those. Don't support that. And otherwise, I'll catch you guys in the next video.