Traditional Health Systems and the Ethos of Science

This paper addresses the challenge posed to traditional Chinese medicine by the ethos of science & explores three related assumptions. First, the ethos of traditional Chinese medicine is incompatible with the ethos of science. Second, the challenge of science to traditional Chinese medicine is represented by the requirement to comply with internationally recognized standards of medical research & practice applied to biomedicine, adopted & implemented by the State. The State requires that the safety & effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine procedures & medications be ascertained following the methodology chartered by the ethos of science. Third, traditional Chinese medicine practitioners present a third ethos, the "ethos of pragmatic healing" based on the pragmatic acculturation of clinical practice, as an alternative to the ethos of science. This third ethos is an inadequate response to the challenge because it increases the divergence between health care policy requirements of scientific scrutiny & the fostering of traditional Chinese medicine as an icon of Chinese culture. The study is based on data from personal interviews with representative samples of three ethnic populations in Singapore; secondary data from other studies; relevant official data; & documents from biomedical & traditional Chinese medicine organizations. The methods include inductive analysis, multiple correlation & regression, & factor analysis among others. The analysis indicates that the pressure to comply with official health regulations & the inability to succeed under the ethos of science lead traditional Chinese medicine practitioners to respond with an ethos of pragmatic healing that eschews conceptual analysis, ignores the paradigmatic divide with biomedicine, & focuses on "using what works." This third ethos can only be a temporary response to the pressure to upgrade the practice of traditional Chinese medicine & it does not correspond to pragmatic acculturation commonly found in the population. The ethos of pragmatic healing leaves the challenge of science unresolved & it is likely to increase the level of conflict between the realm of biomedicine (including health care policy requirements of scientific scrutiny) & the ethos of traditional Chinese medicine. 112 References. Adapted from the source document.