Merge Western Science and Traditional Eastern Medicine to Enhance Cancer Treatment

Merged Western Science and Traditional Eastern Medicine Could Enhance Cancer
Treatment
Monday, April 22, 2007 0025 PDT


SINGAPORE -- Western science and traditional Eastern medicine could be
combined to enhance treatment of cancer and other diseases, an oncology
professor told a medical forum Sunday.

But comprehensive clinical studies must be carried out and patients must be
educated to accept the combination of methods, Tony Mok Shu Kam, a professor
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told participants at a two-day
medical forum in Singapore sponsored by the Lancet medical journal.

"Traditional medicine was previously the standard medicine, and a large
portion of cancer patients still use it," Mok said referring to China. "We
cannot discredit traditional medicines, because they are so old and they are
still here, so there must be some virtue. But we must do something in a
scientific fashion to prove it better."

While a number of Chinese studies have been published on the efficacy of
some common herbal medicines, Mok said their trials were too small or the
methods too inconsistent to be approved in the West.

"We have to move forward and invest in high-quality studies," Mok said.

Some traditional Eastern medicines have been proven effective through
research and clinical trials. For example, Artemisin, used for more than
2,000 years in Chinese herbal medicine, is emerging as a drug of choice for
treating drug-resistant malaria, an advance supported by the World Health
Organization.

Mok referred to ongoing studies in the United States and Russia that are
examining the use of kanglaite, commonly used as a supplement in Chinese
diets and one of the top-selling anti-cancer traditional herbs. Another
Western-led study is looking at the herb astragalus, used in China to boost
the immune system during chemotherapy.

Another researcher worried that too many people in developing countries are
being taken advantage of by untrained traditional healers.

"There are many people who are not trained. These people are out to make
money," Monika Bardhan of Malaysia's NCI Cancer Hospital told The Associated
Press.

She said too many people first go to traditional healers and pay exorbitant
prices for concoctions with unproven ingredients. By the time they come to
the hospital, it is often too late to treat them.

Bardhan said she is not against traditional medicine as long as patients are
educated about what they are receiving and the doctors or healers are
legitimate.

Mok said some hospitals in China were using both traditional and Western
medicines _ herbs and chemotherapy, or acupuncture and modern diagnostic
imaging, for example _ but more needed to be done to integrate the methods.

A key factor in the integration would be convincing users of traditional
medicine that modern science is as good as or better than their
centuries-old methods.

A 2004 study in China showed that 49 percent of women who were being treated
for breast cancer with traditional Chinese medicine believed it to be an
effective treatment for their disease.

Mok also referred to a Chinese trial he was involved in this year in which
some prospective patients declined to be part of a placebo control study to
test the effectiveness of a traditional medicine when they learned their
chances of getting the medicine were only 50-50. They preferred to go to a
traditional doctor who would definitely prescribe the treatment they sought.