Those Who Claim TCM Can Cure Everything Are Either Ignorant or Unscrupulous

As a practitioner of TCM, I know its therapeutic effects very deeply.

TCM can treat many diseases, including terminal illnesses like cancer, where it has some effect. But to boast of TCM's efficacy as omnipotent is either ignorance or lack of conscience.

People often tell me that if a TCM physician says he cannot treat a certain disease, it is only because he has not mastered the art; once you have truly mastered TCM, there is no disease it cannot cure.

This line is pure nonsense, yet it manages to bewitch many patients and their families. Because in desperation they grasp at any straw, many patients and families have lost their reason; they lack judgment.

Zhang Zhongjing, honored in TCM as the Medical Sage, wrote in the preface to his great work Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) that of his more than two hundred clansmen, two-thirds had died of cold-damage type diseases in less than ten years.

Was the Medical Sage Zhang Zhongjing not a master of TCM? Why could he not save so many of his own clansmen?

From Zhang Zhongjing's Shanghan Lun and Jingui Yaolue (Essential Prescriptions from the Golden Cabinet), we can see that when he visited patients at home, some feigned illness to test his skill.

This shows indirectly that in Zhang's lifetime many people still did not trust his medicine—and precisely because he did not have a hundred-percent cure rate.

And Sun Simiao, honored by the people as the Medicine King and enshrined in temples, wrote in his Qianjin Fang (Thousand-Golden Formulae) that seven or eight out of ten patients died under his care, while he could save only two or three in ten.

Responsible clinicians of every dynasty wrote their medical works honestly, frankly admitting that against major diseases their chances were not high.

For example, Chen Shigong, founder of the orthodox school of TCM external medicine, stated clearly in his Waike Zhengzong (Orthodox External Medicine) that diseases such as "rock breast" (i.e., today's breast cancer) could not be cured by him; he could only help some patients prolong life while bearing the disease.

Again, the Qing physician Xu Lingtai said of diseases like "dysphagia-throat blockade" (i.e., today's gastric, cardiac and esophageal cancer) that "of a hundred who get it, a hundred die," frankly admitting he could do nothing.

Shi Jinmo, one of the four great physicians of modern Beijing, was a rare TCM genius. He told his students: "People call me a famous doctor, but in fact, throughout my life, the diseases I have not seen are many, and the diseases I cannot cure are many."

In his later years Shi Jinmo developed bladder cancer; he could not diagnose it himself nor treat it, and his family hid the condition from him. He suffered terribly, and before dying asked to donate his body for medical research.

Countless similar passages can be found in the medical works of famous physicians through the ages. Yet of all those I have seen who boast that TCM is omnipotent, not one has ever wielded influence in TCM circles comparable to these masters.

Those who boast TCM is omnipotent fall into no more than three categories: the ignorant, the unscrupulous, and those who hate Western medicine after it failed themselves or their relatives. This third group is utterly unreasonable; if TCM fails them, they will hate TCM too.

The ignorant are truly pitiable. I am inside the TCM profession and know much about its ways.

Quite a number of TCM learners have very narrow knowledge and horizons: low education, little reading, shallow experience, yet they constantly and arrogantly assume that others have dull comprehension while they themselves are brilliant.

Frankly, TCM has not recruited many outstanding talents. Very few top-scoring students study TCM; this is one of the great regrets in TCM's development. To cultivate truly top-tier TCM talent, one must recruit a cohort of top students.

But at present TCM is not attractive enough to top students, so TCM colleges cannot enroll quality pupils. Among the apprentices taken on by old TCM masters in the mentorship model, there are also few outstanding talents. This broad trend means the number of excellent successors in TCM is limited.

TCM learners should have a thorough understanding of modern medicine, and even a fairly deep foundation in modern medicine within their own specialty. Rejecting and reviling modern medicine is irresponsible toward patients' lives. For many diseases TCM simply has no advantage. When TCM practitioners boast that TCM is omnipotent and bewitch patients into abandoning modern medicine, it is no different from murdering them.

There is also a class of unscrupulous frauds who cheat people under the banner of TCM; they are the rats spoiling the broth of TCM. Aiming at profit, they desperately boast TCM's omnipotence to advertise themselves.

For example, the all-too-common pseudo-TCM popular-science articles claim that cancer patients must not undergo surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Some patients and families, after reading such articles, are deeply influenced and dare not touch modern medicine. The result is that many early-stage cancer patients miss the best surgical opportunity and throw their lives away.

This is not to say TCM cannot treat cancer. It is to say that in the early and middle stages—especially the early stage—of cancer, surgical resection has a very high cure rate, far beyond what TCM can achieve. When such patients come, out of responsibility to the patient, one should tell them to have surgery promptly and not miss the chance.

Singapore allows TCM practice, but in a place like Singapore, if a TCM physician brainwashes a patient into missing the best surgical window, that physician will be sentenced.

From ancient times to today, responsible surgeons, when a tumor patient has an operative opportunity, operated as early as possible. TCM surgery did exist; TCM external medicine called surgery "the art of the knife and guī."

Many of our great TCM external-medicine works record operations. For example, the Mishuan Yankeo Longmu Lun records cataract surgery; Waike Zhengzong records tracheotomy, nasal polyp removal, esophageal suturing and amputation. But traditional surgery, compared with modern aseptic surgery, was not safe, and the suffering patients endured was too great, so it was gradually phased out.

Some ignorant or ill-intentioned TCM fans, or swindlers operating under the TCM banner, simply do not know that these things existed in the history of TCM external surgery; they deceive patients and oppose surgery outright.

Over the years I have seen many patients who, deceived or brainwashed, missed surgical opportunities and ultimately died. It is truly lamentable.

I often tell my patients not to trust articles written by such people, not to be brainwashed by pseudo-popular science, and to watch fewer health-preservation programs and articles lest they harm themselves. But still countless patients must bump into the southern wall before they wake up.

Now many anti-TCM people were once precisely veteran TCM fans. Why did they turn against TCM? It is because they have been sorely harmed by the foul elements within TCM. People always wake up one day; when they realize they have been misled, they come to hate the whole TCM community.

That charlatans are especially numerous in TCM is an undeniable fact. For TCM to survive and develop healthily, the TCM world must purify itself.

Whatever the branch of medicine, it must have the spirit of self-negation and self-renewal, and a spirit of seeking truth from facts. Exaggerated propaganda only harms oneself.

Many cancer patients I treat do excellently, yet I never claim to have cured cancer, nor do I admit that my TCM success rate against cancer is high. I do not take on patients who hold unrealistic fantasies about TCM efficacy and reject modern medicine. Because their excessively high expectations reveal precisely their own unreasonableness.