HKU Bulletin June 2013 (Vol. 14 No. 3)

Both Ends towards the Middle HKU researchers are uniquely positioned to find the middle ground between the ancient, holistic approach of Chinese medicine and the modern, reductionist one of Western medicine. Cover Story The best way to understand how traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and modern Western-style medicine differ is to start with the patient experience. If a young woman and an elderly man living in separate parts of the world visit Western-trained doctors complaining of a cough, they will be offered the same, standardised treatment based on the nature of their cough. But if they visit TCM practitioners, their treatment will be tailored not only to their cough, but their gender and age, climate, time of year, geographic location and other individualised factors. Moreover, the medicine prescribed by the modern doctors will have undergone rigorous testing in laboratories and clinics to prove that it works, while the Chinese medicine will have been formulated from texts and teachings that, although used for more than 2,000 years, have not been so thoroughly analysed. Building a bridge between these two poles is one of the great challenges of 21 st century medicine, as HKU’s Dean of Medicine, Professor Lee Sum-ping, Dexter HC Man Family Professor in Medical Science, related. “To completely merge and rationalise these two schools of thought is like blending two religions and saying this god is a god and that god is a god and they are both the same god. That is a very difficult thing to do and the road is paved with a great number of barriers and difficulties. But it is something that has to be done,” he said. And HKU is perhaps the best place for doing it. HKU’s researchers are steeped in Western scientific know-how and familiar with the cultures and traditions associated with Chinese medicine. They have strong English-language skills, which are important for international collaboration. The highly-regarded Faculty of Medicine offers both Western and Chinese medicine as independent yet complementary disciplines. And they are working in a city that recognises and regulates both forms of practice. “Nowhere else has the ability to bring the two together like we do. Not Taiwan, not Korea, not Japan, not even Mainland China because there the two streams are mixed. Only in Hong Kong do you have Western medicine and Chinese medicine regulated separately, independently and yet simultaneously,” Professor Lee said. In order for a merging to happen, there has to be a sympathetic environment and also an appreciation that each approach is more than the sum of its parts, representing not only a unique style of medical care but also a philosophical outlook. Putting TCM to the test The sympathetic environment has been an easy thing to provide at HKU. Scholars in several fields are ardently pursuing TCM research because they believe in TCM’s merits, as well as its scientific possibilities. Professor Che Chi-ming, who is Hui Wai Haan Chair of Chemistry and one of the top researchers in his field globally, is one such scholar. “Doing TCM research is my interest, I won’t say it’s just my responsibility. I personally believe in TCM and I want to make some contributions. I’m very optimistic that it has a future,” he said. The Department of Chemistry is one of several units in the University doing TCM research. The School of Biological Sciences, School of Chinese Medicine and several departments within the Faculty of Medicine are also applying advanced technologies and methods to study TCM treatments from bench to bedside and back again so as to understand how they work, improve quality and derive new drugs. Some examples of their outcomes include isolating a compound that has anti-cancer properties, showing how a herbal medicine can improve blood-flow to the brain in post- stroke patients, testing TCM drugs that manage symptoms of menopause and applying acupuncture to alleviate depression and insomnia. HKU also advances TCM research on the international stage as Founder and Secretariat of the Consortium for Globalization of Chinese Medicine, which promotes international research and collaboration and has more than 120 institutional members from around the world. But putting TCM under the microscope is not the same as understanding it. TCM is as much a philosophy and cultural phenomenon as it is a collection of medical components. Uncovering the wisdom behind the philosophy “To test a compound is an easy thing,” Professor Lee said. “Within one or two decades a number of medicinal preparations will have marched through the multi-step sequential process of extraction, of purification, of structural identification, of looking at the safety, the potential therapeutic effect and the evidence that it works in humans.” Traditional Chinese medicine has its own glossary of terms, its own theoretical basis for deduction of diagnosis, and it arrives at different rationales on how to prescribe and take care of patients. To blend this with modern anatomy, biology and all we’ve discovered in the last few decades – that is not easy. A B C D E F F C B G E E H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U U R Q V W T V W X Y Z X [ \ 07 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin June 2013 ] ^ _ ` a b