A public letter to the editorial board of Nature

Dear Sir/Madam,

With an interest in knowing how Nature, one of top ranked journals in the world, to say on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), I read your editorial published online on 11 July, 2007. To be honest I would say I am deeply perplexed by the notion on TCM reflected from this article.

The editorial uses “it is largely just pseudoscience” and “the field is so fraught with pseudoscience” to describe TCM without any explanation. Should TCM be regarded as “pseudoscience”? Pseudoscience, as defined in Wikepedia, is “any body of knowledge, methodology, belief, or practice that claims to be scientific or is made to appear scientific, but does not adhere to the basic requirements of the scientific method”. It is well known that TCM as an integrated system was generated much earlear than the concept “Science” was forged. TCM, as an ancient knowledge and practice of human disease cure in China, has never by itself claimed “to be scientific “or made “to appear scientific”. There is an ongoing debate indeed in China as to wether TCM is “scientific” or not. If TCM does not meet the criteria of being scientific, it is not scientific. But pseudoscience still can not be an appropriate title for TCM.

The editorial also expressed its contempt to the “true potential” of TCM in medicine development. I agree that the successful modern medicine approved to be on market originated from TCM is not abundant so far. But the conclusion that “The most obvious answer” to this frustrating reality “is that it actually has little to offer” is too early to be made. As reported in another article in the same issue of Nature, scientists around the world are working hard trying to disclose the TCM secret and some experiments have shown that complex TCM xxxxula may possess some beneficial activities in animal models. Many scientists, both in China and other countries, believe that the understanding of interaction between multiple compounds existed in Chinese medicine and multiple biological targets are important for mining TCM further. These concepts are compatible with the discoveries that many diseases such cancer and hypertension are related with the abnormal behavior of multiple disease related genes and proteins rather than determined by single factors. Obviously, compared with these constructive efforts, the pessimistic comments on the potential of TCM in this editorial seem be much less helpful to promote modern medicine.

I highly appreciate the statement appeared at the end of the editorial: claims made on behalf of an uncharted body of knowledge should be treated with the customary scepticism. But unfortunately, the editorial’s attitude on TCM expressed in this editorial is not “customary scepticism”, but basically a negative judge with no supporting evidences.

A sincere reader of Nature