Prejudice Is Our Lifelong Enemy

After learning that a classmate of mine had died young, a close friend told me that her older sister was born in the same year as me and studied at Peking University Law School as an undergraduate; among her sister's cohort at Peking University Law School, four have already died young. So her sister says, just being alive is already good.

Among her sister's four deceased classmates, one died of breast cancer. This breast cancer patient was deeply passionate about traditional Chinese culture; after her bachelor's degree she pursued graduate studies under a master of national classics, and after graduating she went to teach at one of China's most famous universities of traditional Chinese medicine.

Because she was passionate about national classics and TCM, after developing breast cancer she refused Western medical treatment. Among her colleagues were many well-known TCM professors, and she had an unparalleled advantage in seeking TCM treatment for her illness. Unfortunately, this once-favored daughter of heaven—even though her breast cancer was not advanced when detected—still survived only an extremely short time; the TCM physicians she sought could not save her life.

Breast cancer is a tumor with a relatively good prognosis; as long as patients receive standard treatment, most survive five years or more. Among the breast cancer patients I have treated, even the hardest-to-treat triple-negative breast cancer has not led to death as quickly as happened to her.

I rarely let breast cancer patients receive pure TCM treatment, and I do not dare risk taking on patients who stubbornly reject Western medicine. First, because I am very familiar with TCM literature, I know that "rock breast" (i.e., breast cancer) is one of the four incurable diseases of TCM external medicine; any serious TCM work will not exaggerate TCM's efficacy against breast cancer. Second, I also understand the various modern treatment options and outcomes for breast cancer, knowing what treatment each subtype should receive and roughly what prognosis to expect.

So I often advise patients on integrated Chinese-Western medicine; basically all the breast cancer patients I have taken on survive beyond five years. Some breast cancer patients, after adopting the integrated treatment I recommended, have survived for more than ten years and remain well to this day.

I expect to encounter a great many breast-cancer survivors in my career, because with the help of both Chinese and Western medicine, breast cancer has become a controllable chronic disease, not some incurable condition. As long as patients are not too advanced, there is hope for long-term survival.

Among those coming to me for breast cancer treatment are no shortage of die-hard TCM fans, most of whom reject Western medicine. I always persuade them to accept integrated comprehensive treatment, work hard to educate them on the Chinese and Western medical knowledge of breast cancer, and help them set aside their concerns; this has saved many lives.

For example, there was a Shandong patient born in 1985 with triple-positive (PR, ER, HER-2 positive) breast cancer who had stubbornly insisted on treating her breast cancer with guasha (scraping) therapy. The person who had convinced her that guasha could cure breast cancer had almost brainwashed her. Unfortunately, after using guasha alone, her breast cancer not only did not improve in the slightest but progressed rapidly.

After she came to me, I spent a long time educating her on various Chinese and Western facts about breast cancer, telling her that the subtype she had offered many options: first surgery, followed by either chemotherapy, targeted therapy with Herceptin (trastuzumab), or endocrine therapy with tamoxifen. Almost any side effects arising during treatment, I could basically help her manage. So her disease had a good prognosis, and I hoped she would accept integrated Chinese-Western treatment.

From then on, this patient set aside her prejudice against Western medicine and accepted surgery, chemotherapy, and endocrine therapy. During the process, whenever she needed adjunctive TCM treatment, I was the one who treated her.

Three years passed, and she recovered. Now her tumor has resolved, and she can work and support herself like anyone else. She has always loved dance and still enjoys dancing. She also loves growing flowers and plants, keeping pets, and tinkering with musical instruments.

Over three years of contact, we became friends who talk about everything—she no longer calls me "Dr. Zhou" but "Brother Er Gou." From time to time she still sends me a small gift, such as a musical instrument I had long admired but could not bring myself to buy, or an article of clothing she thinks suits me; I reciprocate with some anticancer medicines of comparable value. She also often consults me about the various Western-medicine questions she encounters at her Western doctor.

What makes me most proud is not that the regimen I prescribed cured her illness, but that I changed her rigid perception of Western medicine. I often say that what gives me the biggest headache are die-hard TCM fans and die-hard Western-medicine fans, because most of the "die-hards" I have met over the years have paranoid tendencies. They are arrogant and aggressive, fond of abusing those whose views differ from theirs; because they piously believe in one thing, they reject everything else, completely blind to their own blind spots.

I am also especially wary of communicating with paranoid TCM colleagues or paranoid Western-medicine colleagues; they either despise Western medicine or despise TCM, and it is hard for them to have an objective and impartial cognitive ability. I myself never write articles that incite readers to prejudice against Western medicine, nor do I brainwash patients.

In educating my son, I also encourage him to read widely and receive a general education; the more knowledge of all kinds, ancient and modern, the better, and not to dig into a single dead end. When I lecture my students, I do not indoctrinate them with prejudice either; I encourage them, while young, to study various scientific fields broadly and not confine themselves to a narrow school or faction.

Patients prejudiced against TCM mostly do not seek me out, so I can avoid contact with them and am happy to be out of sight, out of mind. Occasionally a patient with deep prejudice against TCM comes to see me under family "coercion." A few who once furiously denied TCM have, after achieving real results, changed their views.

But I am no miracle doctor, and not every treatment works; so there are also some who, after seeing me, despise TCM even more. They will say, "Look, that fellow didn't have any effect either, right? TCM is purely the intentional or unintentional swindle Lu Xun spoke of!" When this happens, I can only honestly accept their ridicule. Who am I to blame, given my limited level and unsatisfactory medical skill? I can bet, though, that if they go to a Western doctor, no doctor dares guarantee the outcome either.

What makes me feel regretful is that some patients have no prejudice themselves, but because their Western-medicine attending physician is prejudiced against TCM, the patient ultimately dies an innocent death. This is truly heartbreaking.

I once treated a breast cancer patient with liver metastases who survived over ten years, seven or eight of those under my care. In the 14th year after diagnosis, she enrolled in a clinical trial of low-dose chemotherapy. Her attending physician would not allow her to continue TCM treatment, because that attending was full of prejudice against TCM.

As a result, after that year's low-dose chemotherapy ended, the patient's weight dropped by more than 60 jin (30 kg). When she came back to me, she was skin and bones, hovering between life and death. I could not turn the tide; I could only tell her the truth, and the patient died soon after. Had this patient continued TCM treatment, or integrated Chinese-Western treatment, it would have been impossible for her to become emaciated in such a short time and ultimately die.

Medical care is a matter of life and death; prejudice within medicine kills people. But prejudiced people do not acquire prejudice only upon entering the medical system or falling ill; most people's prejudices are long-standing, and the problem lies in basic education. I do not believe I have the ability to make prejudiced people change their paranoid views, so I retreat into my own little world, burying myself in my research rather than arguing endlessly with them.

I remember in high school, classmates often argued about whether the liberal arts or the sciences were more useful; we science students coined many slogans boasting science and engineering and attacking the liberal arts, such as "Learn math, physics, and chemistry well, and you can travel anywhere under heaven without fear" and "The liberal arts are utterly useless."

When I talked with my son's teachers, I found that the science teachers still carry this sense of superiority. In my student days, my greatest strength was not favoring either the arts or sciences; I ranked at the top of every subject, often scoring full marks in math, physics, and chemistry, and I never joined the debates over which was superior, just buried myself in reading and studying. In my humble opinion, saving the energy spent arguing lets one learn a great deal more. So although I was a science student, I now write essays that make most liberal-arts people sigh in admiration.

From my own school experience I know that paranoid people are the overwhelming majority. I do not believe my classmates changed their paranoid tendencies after graduation. Arguing endlessly with such people serves no purpose but wasting time. So in the past I chose to bury myself in my own studies, and now I still choose to bury myself in research.

It is not easy to eliminate prejudice from one's heart. Only by studying broadly, mastering as much knowledge as possible, and applying it—recognizing through practice the usefulness of this knowledge—can we avoid prejudice toward fields we do not understand. But how much effort that requires of a person! Most people are not that diligent; they would rather spend their time on entertainment than on acquiring knowledge, so in the end most become people of half-baked understanding, inevitably stepping onto the road of prejudice.