When my husband had Bells Palsy his neurologist recommended acupuncture which worked. When he told the acupuncturist that his wife had cancer she gave him a large bag of green tea that I was supposed to drink every day all day. I don’t know if it worked. I also had chemo. I’m cancer free.
25
Unbelievable that a Yale professor actually said that a traditional approach works. Anecdotal evidence like centuries of Chinese traditional medicine can weigh very heavily in people’s minds but still be utterly useles.
Ask Steve Job’s family how well his pursuit of an alternative treatment for pancreatic cancer turned out.
57
My son had a Chinese friend, here in the US, who once showed my son a gallon jug his family kept on the floor of a dark closet. It contained a cloudy liquid with a dead seahorse floating in it, among other unidentifiable things. The boy explained that they drank from it when sick. Does this sound like a good idea to anybody?
45
Traditional Chinese medicine sounds about as well validated as the ancient theory of the four humors. Any effectiveness at all is probably due to the placebo effect. That is one of most powerful cures in medicine. Favored by witch doctors everywhere. And an essential component of a good bedside manner.
39
Depressing thought that a country that can build a hospital in ten days then uses it to dispense buffalo horn to the ill. Nationalism is historically a greater scourge than any virus.
74
TCM = Tiger Crushing Medicine. Thank you, dear supreme leader, for promoting the extinction of entire species in neighboring countries and globally, just for the sake of your precious ancient culture.
70
Some people prefer magic and superstition. I prefer evidence. Let's not get confused about what is what. It is clear that people are buying these TCM remedies out of fear and ignorance. The central government pushing Chinese medicine is clearly politically motivated and not evidence based. The government promotes the idea that the idea that there are two equally valid systems of medicine: "Chinese Medicine" and "Western Medicine". This is absurd and there is no reason the Times should adopt this frame unquestioningly. The two types of medicine are scientific medicine and non-scientific medicine.
46
My last visit to a renown TCM "doctor" in Beijing resulted in a diagnosis of a "hot" liver. I was prescribed rhino horn (800 rmb/gooey pill), Saiga antelope horn (another gooey pill), and some bear bile concoction. I looked at the gold foil wrapped pills, promptly freaked out, and opted for "gold" needle acupuncture. I've had acupuncture all my life and the doctor warned the gold needles hurt. More mumbo jumbo I thought, but he was right. Those gold needles felt like hot wires to the center of my soul. I'm pretty sure he did that on purpose since it was obvious my rejection of wild animal fragments was an indictment of his entire life of study. It doesn't seem like the future of endangered TCM animals is a pretty one.
21
There was some research out of China testing various drugs and plant extracts on cell cultures with SARS. Licorice extract showed some efficacy, but humans are not petri dishes so it remains to be seen if any herbal treatments are helpful. Please keep in mind the research on placebos. They work, and if there is a cultural belief, they work better. TCM to treat Wet, Hot, Poisonous and Stasis might help. Antivirals, monoclonal antibodies, interferon and a number of other drugs are being investigated, sadly no shortage of patients. I'm grateful the Chinese are doing these studies, maybe something will work that will save our health system from crashing. Trump isn't going to help us.
12
Traditional Chinese medicine is extremely unhealthy if you are an exotic or endangered animal.
The Chinese government knows it can’t make or afford the anti-HIV drugs being used to treat the corona virus in everyone who gets it. They need to reserve the drugs for the seriously ill. Only 2% of the people who get the corona virus will die from it.children get such a mild case they are asymptomatic. The people who are dying are the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. So they are telling their people to use ineffective placebos.
33
Wow. Who exactly has said the
disease should be treated with traditional traditional Chinese medicine? This story is empty of substance. And to contrast the opinion of mainland Chinese doctors with those of their Hong Kong counterparts is utter nonsense. As a regular visitor to mainland China and somebody who lives in Hong Kong it appears that in fact traditional Chinese medicine is more popular in Hong Kong that it is in mainland. I'm afraid that this article does nothing but pander to Western and Hong Kong stereotypes of what people in mainland China are like.
25
Good grief! The slaughter or consumption of wild animal parts is likely what caused the problem in the first place!!!
70
Bat viruses like Ebola and MERs inhibit type I interferons. This likely evolved because bats have large amounts of IFN but they also suppress their immune responses.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5604070/
Interferon treatment administered early in the infection combined with the anti-inflammatory cyclosporine should be tested to see if it is effective at stopping an early infection from turning into pneumonia.
Combining the interferon alpha with an anti-inflammatory is likely effective at clearing the virus. Especially if given early or to those who may have been exposed but asymptomatic.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354218300949
The first US patient diagnosed with the cornnavirus in Washington was put on oxygen but was taken off and is rapidly recovering. This happened after being given the ebola drug, remdesivir. He was removed from oxygen the next day after receiving the drug.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
A combination of type I interferons and anti-inflammatories to those exposed and remdesivir for those showing symptoms may significantly lower the lethality of this virus, MERs, SARs, and Ebola.
19
The author mistakenly lists jasmine as an ingredient in the Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill. Jasmine is part of the Oleaceae family while Gardeniae Fructus, which is actually in the formulation, is botanically known as Gardenia jasminoides but is from the Rubiaceae family. Interestingly, a study regarding the anti-influenza properties of this correct ingredient was also recently published in "the prestigious journal Nature:"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58443-3
The current crop of antivirals are essentially worthless.
The Cochrane group comprehensive meta-analysis on neuraminidase inhibitors has convinced me of that. In regards to baloxavir marboxil, good luck trying to find a study by someone that is not on the Roche payroll. Conversely, non-GMP Chinese "patent" medicines are of unreliable quality, sub-optimal formulation and too low of a dose -- think Dollar Store quality. High-end, GMP-certified and professionally dispensed Chinese Herbal Medicine may not be the best hope - it is currently the only hope, as it has been for millennia.
28
Yes to this! As a practitioner of TCM in the US, some of these other comments see disturbingly barrow visioned. Yes, there are many animal-based formulas in the material medica, but I (and most other practitioners) would likely look at florals and other heat clearing herbs to treat this type of pathogen. It’s clear that western medicine isn’t providing an effective solution for prevention or relief, and it’s everyone’s right to seek out these things from trained and knowledgeable herbalists. While I certainly wouldn’t want these folks to be “guinea pigs,” or would be wonderful if research dollars were funneled into traditional medicinals and their efficacy as a result of this outbreak.
28
Ok, the remedy for these devastating epidemics China inflicts on the world every few years is obvious. They need to become vegetarians. Look at the photos of the Wuhan market: a nightmare of animals treated with extreme cruelty including dead dogs and cats.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/31/800975655/why-theyre-called-wet-markets-and-what-health-risks-they-might-pose?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20200202&utm_term=4376817&utm_campaign=best-of-npr&utm_id=1164427&orgid=349
PETA, start your China crusade. Plant-based diets are healthier, and people don't need to eat bat head soup, civet cats, household pets, and all sorts of exotic animals because of mythology about their magical properties. Those irrational beliefs have also led to the killing of many endangered species whose body parts are assumed to improve male virility. Sorry, but sometimes traditional customs should give way to science and ethics. Preservation of weird eating habits is no excuse for what China is doing to humans and animals.
53
“I think it is the correct approach,” said Cheng Yung-chi, a professor of pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. “The evidence is going to come and we have to give it the benefit of the doubt.”
Yale U. School of Medicine? Are they serious!?
I am shocked and appalled.
35
Ah, but Yale has also gotten rid of its magnificent Western art survey course, once taught by scholar Vincent Scully.
9
That’s nice. In the meantime have they tried using different doses of interferron. This is a bat virus that evolved in an immune system with higher levels of interferon.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160222155631.htm
A combination of steroids to reduce inflammation and interferon would be more like its host’s environment.
If there are immune people producing antibodies for this virus then maybe it is time for an unorthodox approach. A Russian doctor contracted diseases from a patient but cured that patient of malaria and tuberculosis. In this odd case of doctor suicide he died and cured his patient.
People who have the disease and beat are producing the exact antibodies needed. A transfusion can lower the viral load in someone else if it contains antibodies from an immune donor. Reducing the viral load buys patients more time for their own immune system to develop their own antibodies.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160222155631.htm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bogdanov#Later_years_and_death
I want to know the efficacy of interferon alpha. 24,000 infected is a huge sample size and this group will absolutely be referenced for future and possibly more lethal pandemics. Ideally clinical trials should not be polluted with unknown substances of differing amounts and quality. I would like to see how they compare against interferon alpha and antivirals.
2
Buffalo horn! Shades of Lu Xun. Is he not Communists government approved reading, still?
5
Killing animals for placebos.🤦🏻♀️
31
Although it is illegal in China to use ingredients from endangered species such as shaved rhino horn and dried tiger penis in traditional Chinese medicine, the demand continues and fuels the poaching in Africa and elsewhere. The ingredients in the “Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill” may not be from endangered species, but for Chinese government officials to recommend them during the coronavirus epidemic to reinforce “national identity” is cynical beyond belief. I wonder how many of the pampered upper echelon members of the government elite will be relying on traditional Chinese medicines if they have symptoms. My guess is not many, and that goes for Professor Cheng Yung-chi at Yale as well.
33
A lot of western medicine are made from herbs and animals products.
And pharmaceutical companies are actually digging though old medicine books from various culture to find cure for their future products.
A Chinese doctor read a 1600 years old medicine text book to find way to extract medicine from plant to treat malaria and saved millions of lives. She won an nobel prize for this work back in 2015.
39
And the Romans invented a sort of aspirin.
Granted.
But let's distinguish what's really medicinal and what's poppycock.
22
Thank you. As a student of TCM herbology, I have the old textbook you mentioned. If used properly, it works great. My husband got the flu, I made him herb decoctions, by the end of the day he was better, and recovering for a few days. My TCM MD professor, advocates for integrative Medicine. The herbs lessen the severity and duration of the disease. High doses of Steroids damage the lungs. This virus is a pattern of Wind-damp-cold turning to fire.
Water buffalo horn is often used as a replacement for rhino horn. The buffalo do not die from having their horns removed. They sell water buffalo horn at the pet store! Honeysuckle works well, but can be hard to find as it’s difficult to harvest.
Isn’t trial and error a form of scientific research? Cultures have been ‘researching’ herbs for centuries, some formulas still used today, date back to 220 B.C.! It’s can’t hurt to try...
22
“The evidence is going to come and we have to give it the benefit of the doubt.”
I don't think the evidence will actually come, nor do I understand why we have to give traditional medicine the benefit of the doubt. We don't give pharmaceuticals the benefit of the doubt.
33
Reading the accounts leaking through the censorship in China it is obvious that the epidemic there is still expanding and is not under control. The confirmed case count is a small fraction of cases since most people with the disease are not tested for the simple reason that the test requires scarce tools and total testing capacity is a small fraction of the true case count. The repeated estimates of the fatality rate are currently incorrect. That number is based on confirmed cases and confirmed deaths, confirmed by the reverse transcriptase RT-PCR test. However that must be an under-estimate since it is calculated as current count of fatalities divided by current cases. That calculation is wrong when the number of cases is rapidly increasing and there is a multi-day lag time between case confirmation and death. If the average lag time is 10 days, the estimate for the fatality rate among hospitalized patients should be calculated as: current fatality count divided by the case count 10 days prior - a much greater fatality rate for serious cases, more like 30% not 3%.
10
@Federalist
The one number that we can be sure of is the number of deaths. Two percent is the reported mortality rate. If the Chinese are under reporting the number of people who contract the disease, then the reported mortality rate is too high and should be lowered.
2
Buffalo horn. Really.
I'm ready to say that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy, but many Chinese medical concoctions (not to mention at least some eating habits) have little validity in a civilized world.
33
@B. Let's hope they don't come for the remaining rhinos when buffalo proves to be a chimera.
15
On a more pressing note I think that your president has no place in the civilized world.
27
With that, Paul, I agree.
But Mr. Trump's (and his followers') sickness does not invalidate the silliness of much Chinese medicine.
16
Rank superstition based on the elements of earth, air, fire and water rather than the elements in the periodic table. Disease identification by pulse and humors rather than microscope.
29
@Ty
Rank superstition! However the establishment needs to cater to popular beliefs, and might share those.
But are we really much more sophisticated ? Even Ivy League medical schools have "Alternative Medicine" departments.
9
@Ty And how many of our hospitals and airports have chapels and chaplains? Religious icons and prayers at 8 am over the loudspeaker system?
(This is not a complaint, BTW. Indeed, I should send a donation to Charlotte-Doughlas.)
3
Again this nonsense. As someone who surviived the AIDs epandemic in the 80's this is all too familiar. It infuriates me when I think of all the people I knew who died following that path into the wilderness. People then were desperate to find anything that worked, and we tried everything, crazy things, much of it to our detriment.
But in our time there were no answers. The difference here is that we do. Thanks to the AIDs epidemic we have vast scientific understanding of virology, immunology, and epidemiology; so much that it only took weeks instead of a decade and a half to find a reliable test and drugs capable of blocking 2019nCoV.
The mystical 'pracitioners' of traditional Chinese medicine sidestep their lack of scientific knowledge by talking about logical sounding things like immune support but none of it has factual support. Go look for yourself, you will find no proof, just stories. You're better off just taking a hot bath. Thank God they aren't grinding up something on the endangered species list this time.
77
@Erich Richter That's my opinion that this epidemic has to really burn for people in China to learn their lesson. I had to hijack your comment, well because the mods are being sensitive.
6
The good news is that by all accounts they are started to get the handle on a disease that has been more hype than horror. With more and more people being released from the hospital totally cured. They are finding more ways to fight the virus, and the mortality rate is low, and sure to go down as time goes on. Quarantine seems to be working, with less and less cases being reported. Even the first American patient has been released from the hospital. These numbers are mirrored by the stock market, as the sharps have figured out this is hardly the black swan event it was made out to be. Fear itself, is always the big thing to be avoided, and let us hope we learn from this event and make the kind of changes needed to make sure that when the "Big One" does arrive we are positioned to properly weather and survive it. But for now, after an explosion of all bad news, the news is now turning in the other direction.
3
@Lonnie Your information is straight from the Chinese government propaganda sheet. No data and untrue.
14
@Lonnie You really need to diversify your sources. We have to dance around the mods here on NYT, but you are believing a lot of nonsense coming out of China. The person in charge of releasing the daily stats from the CCP is purposely matching the daily numbers to the projections. If the graph says "499" for Wednesday, then the officially reported number comes out as "490." Yeah, try better sources: https://youtu.be/AbuqmziQ28I
11
I can't believe Mr. Jiang's claim that Chinese people have experienced more plagues than western nations Bubonic plague anyone? The influence virus of 1917?
We need more evidence. Chine has had plenty of time to do double-blind studies to measure effects. Let's not treat this as an East/West thing.
As with US healthcare, let's look at whose economic interests are at play, and who stands to benefit, or not benefit, from rigorous clinical studies.
13
@NR wrote: "We need more evidence."
Asian Flu 1957
Hong Kong Flu 1968-1969
SARS 2001-2003
H1N1 2009
And the list goes on and on and on...
9
@NorthernVirginia , I asked for more double-blind studies comparing eastern and western medicine.
You conflated my first paragraph with my second, and by the way, you're wrong as is Mr. Jiang. Here is a list of epidemics across centuries, and China does not dominate it, now or in the past!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
8
@NorthernVirginia The 2009 H1N1 virus was first recognized in Mexico, not China. You should perhaps examine why you made the assumption that it was China.
7
I'm not a doctor, but this sounds ridiculous. Certainly, some of the components of Chinese medicine might be of medical use, but without rigorous, peer-reviewed science to demonstrate which components and how much, how can it help in any way except by sheer accident?
It also sounds like Chinese medicinal beliefs played a part in causing the outbreak in the first place due to the consumption of exotic animal meat. The Chinese government may need to take a serious look at these traditional practices and ask tough questions about their efficacy and consider what regulations could be put in place to make them more scientific and less about guesswork and unfounded beliefs. As for the exotic animal meat, that should be banned immediately before there's another outbreak. People's lives are at stake here; it's not just a matter of some harmless religious practice. China needs to decide if they want to join the 21st century or remain in the 1st century when it comes to medical practices.
96
@AmateurHistorian Hey there, it looks like you are correctly criticizing bogus beliefs that help emotions and may in fact engender /some/ small benefit. Unlike our friends across the Pacific who introduce foreign concoctions into their bodies, instead of stopping the practice of eating unrefrigerated animals with high viral loads.
6
"The evidence is going to come and we have to give it the benefit of the doubt.” Yeah, the check is in the mail. No wonder these folks have to steal technology left and right.
37
Horn material is much like hair. Chemically it is all about the same. So why don't the Chinese eat their own hair, since it essentially the same as buffalo horn? I can send them all the cat hair they could ever want.
74
Get serious, why worry about getting your rhinoceros horn when there are witch doctors and snake oil available for your imbalance of the humors. Traditional Chinese medicine is just a continuing hoax perpetrated by the few that are happy making a lot of money by taking it from the sick and uneducated. This is a phase that modern societies passed through 100 years ago.
44
This from a professor of pharmacology at Yale, “I think it {traditional medicine] is the correct approach....The evidence is going to come and we have to give it the benefit of the doubt.”! This from Yale's description of their Pharmacology Program for the BBS degree, Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences, "The program of study will emphasize an integrated view of pharmacology and disease built upon a rigorous foundation of basic sciences. Each student's curriculum will be designed according to their interests and background"; so where does this professor fit in, a stipend program sponsored by Belt and Road for pharmacists in Inner Mongolia?
There is no problem with traditional Chinese medicine or cuisine, so long as it does not denude the earth of thousands of species. Refer to the article yesterday announcing seizure of thousands of shark fins on their way from South America to China for soup. Estimate was that "millions" of sharks are killed annually for medicine and cuisine.
67
@AmateurHistorian Most of us condemn Brazilians for their actions. We decry indians being murdered in the Amazon forests and just recently, two stewards of a butterfly sanctuary in Mexico were murdered. Do you seriously think that we can't hold multiple opinions and harbor equal criticism? I can't go to Mexico and straighten out the cartels, but I can be kind to the Mexicans with whom I cross paths and who concede that there is a better way. Try telling a 70-year-old Chinese woman to turn away from TCM.
10
@AmateurHistorian , the point was animal species hunted to extinction by poaching. Ivory, shark fins. It's a good point to make, as is yours. Room for both.
5
One of the main problems with traditional Chinese medicine is that much of it relies on the slaughter and consumption of threatened wildlife species. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that consuming these animals has any medicinal value.
98
@AmateurHistorian Rhino horn, bear bile, and various tiger organs are used in traditional Chinese medicines, and poachers hunt numerous threatened species to sell to Chinese markets. Pangolins are on the verge of extinction because their scales and other body parts are used in Chinese medicine.
19
“I think it is the correct approach,” said Cheng Yung-chi, a professor of pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. “The evidence is going to come and we have to give it the benefit of the doubt.”
Yale? I hope he didn't make tenure.
What happened to the scientific method? Measurable. Repeatable. Observable.
I can see it now. What we need to combat corona virus is pangolin gall bladder mixed with Amur Leopard tongue!
115
@NorthernVirginia
Travel restrictions have not been proven effective under the scientific method either, yet here we are. The important thing is to get this virus under control as quickly as possible without violating human rights. Chinese medicine may or may not work, but at worst it’ll just be a placebo so why not try it? Maybe it will help get the virus under control and the travel restrictions lifted a little faster. We can worry about scientific rigor after we have this wave under control.
3
@NorthernVirginia
"I can see it now. What we need to combat corona virus is pangolin gall bladder mixed with Amur Leopard tongue!"
Mix it with some shark fin soup and top it off with rhino horn powder and you have a recipe for extinction!
I agree also with your assessment of Dr. Cheng from Yale.
He has the order wrong - you gather evidence, THEN you make a cure.
After this, I'd seriously call into question anything written about medicine from Yale anymore if they hire people like this. This is modern quackery.
23
@HO
The problem with mixing placebos with effective medicine is it will present the incorrect impression that the placebo worked. A placebo won't help "get the virus under control" even if it was an effective at being a placebo. There is only one way to do that and that is to control the spread of infection. An infected person taking buffalo horns as medicine already has it and can spread the virus.
16
Stop consuming unusual and often endangered animals or your traditional medicine effort is wasted. For the sake of the rest of us.
42
@Radnyc
How 2019-nCoV got to human is still not determined. Researches are pretty sure it came from bats but what animal the bat infected before it got to human is unknown. Ebola, Marburg, SARS, MERS all came from bats but get to human differently.
7
Western medicine is reactive. Eastern is preventive. Simple.
4
@Steady Gaze
That is a meaningless statement.
Western medicine is based on cold, analytical science. Eastern medicine bears a remarkable similarity to kindergarteners on a playground pretending to be scientists.
28
@Steady Gaze You did such a great job with the preventive this time! Tell it to the dead.
11
I grew up in the States and I don’t doubt the efficacy of Western medicine, but I do have to say, sometimes Chinese traditional medicine does help alleviate some symptoms. Yes, there are those who seek out rare meats, but most of the time, CTM mixes herbs into nutritious broths (kind of like chicken noodle soup). I grew up drinking a lot of these broths when I coughed a lot—for some reason cough suppressants turned my cough into a dry one and it would linger much longer than if I hadn’t. The soups helped a lot to alleviate my cough and it would help shorten the duration and the severity quickly. There was once I didn’t drink the soups and well, I coughed for so long (~3m) I ended up with bronchitis. The other time, I was at college and my parents couldn’t deliver soup to me and I coughed for a solid month. There’s not a lot of research to back up any of the claims people make, but for centuries, people figured out certain herbs help alleviate coughs and other things. Maybe it does work in minimal amounts and it doesn’t hurt to mix it with Western medicine. 🤷🏻♀️
18
I suspect that replacing the “soup” with plenty of water does the same trick.
22
@KY
I drink Dr. Pepper when I have a cough, and I sometimes swallow prescription drugs with a slug of Dr. Pepper. But neither I nor the manufacturer delude ourselves or others into believing that the soft drink has any beneficial medicinal effect whatsoever.
15
@NorthernVirginia
Why do you think the drink is called Dr Pepper? Those old drinks were all traditional medicines originally. What do you think root beer is?
4
If coronavirus patients receiving traditional Chinese medicine and/or other treatments are compared for morbidity and mortality outcomes, the data should reveal whether any of the untested remedies work, assuming large enough numbers of patients and a well documented study.
6
@AGoldstein not necessarily. It may take very large numbers indeed. Plants (and animals) are not uniform in their make up -- this is why standardization matters so much. One might pick up two plants (or even one plant but pull two different parts of it) and have orders of magnitude different amounts of any compound of value (or conversely, compound of danger!). Dosing by plant mass can't make up for this. The noise in a study generated by this natural variation will make interpretation extremely difficult at best.
10
@KM - I don't disagree with the challenge in controlling the potency and purity of the source of plant or animal material. It is not unlike the problems with cannabis studies. Nevertheless, the data are available for analysis.
2
@ AGoldstein There is no data for traditional Chinese medicine. Magical thinking and sentiment abound here in letter writer defenders. What the Times article appears to be trying to do is support a Chinese dictator’s appeal to ignorant peasants and to continue the sentimental attachment to vastly destructive and unproven habits. Why? Perhaps because the system of fear of him is no substitute to a real structure of protected civil service, where whistleblowers can alert health authorities, who are themselves unafraid of authority, but cleave to science.
6