Give Tibetan Medicine a Chance

Speaking of the so called non-scientific, I want to address Vincanne Adam’s article on Tibetan Medicine.  Overall, I really appreciated her article and analysis, especially the discussion of epistemological challenges.  Based on the way in which the RCTs are designed, using western medical categories of disease to test medicines that are prescribed based on entirely different disease categories (in which maybe only a fraction of the cases truly overlap), it is no wonder that the results are null.  It was kind of heartbreaking to read that the medicine practitioners were taking these results into consideration with regards to legitimacy of their practice.

I have two critiques of the article:  1. I don’t think Adams fully explained why the Tibetan medicine practitioners viewed their own medicine as scientific and having an empirical basis.  2. While Adams discussed the reasons why the medicines aren’t tested accurately, she seemed to emphasize the results of no efficacy and also a belief component to people using these medicines.

Based on the way it was construed, I was left confused, as though we as readers are to see this medicine as somewhat ineffective and subject to believers, the medicine practitioners sort of naïve.  I think adding a few brief comments about the perceived empirical basis could be helpful (hopefully not hurtful).  I guess, it would be my hope that, despite the inherent sociopolitical inequalities, there might be an effort in representing the situation to equalize the medical efficacy part, not to inaccurately bolster the medicine, but to help protect it from unfair biomedical-centric criticism.

I think that if we were to discuss the possible empirical basis of the medicine, it would be helpful to discuss observed outcomes of practitioners—that they have seen a lot of people recover from their ailments based on the treatments they provide.  

Next, it would be helpful to talk about the individualization of treatments.  One feature of biomedicine research is a tendency to design a one-size-fits-all comparison, where for any given disease one treatment is tested, regardless of individual variation (a few of which they try to control for, but really inadequate, as we have read in Petryna’s article).  Tibetan medicine, as with many other medicine systems, has a much higher degree of individualization of treatment, based on numerous factors.  In a system like this, where knowledge is produced primarily on the basis of case studies, generalization of knowledge can render the efficacy rates meaningless.  

Finally, I think that the discussion of magic needs to be contextualized better.  While she does use magic to talk about elements we in the west would deem non-scientific, and she does critique the notion of non-scientific, magic is still kind of a hurtful category that takes away from the empiricism that the practitioners claim.  It construes Tibetan Medicine in a western-science framework.  In this way the analysis fails to, in my opinion, capture the fundamental viewpoints of the Tibetan medicine practitioners.

So, my view is, give Tibetan medicine a chance.  Also, to the author, who I respect a great deal, that she might help provide a more emic analysis for the readers.