A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
Chinese Medicine Is Here to Stay
I predict that Chinese medicine, more appropriately called Asian or Oriental medicine, given the contributions of the Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans, etc., will become the prevailing paradigm for clinical medicine in this century. It includes and acknowledges the allopathic perspective on health and disease, but it has a broader scope and is more inclusive of the bioenergetic realities that can greatly contribute to the health of people on the planet. Moreover, its approach to understanding the raw materials of the earth, including plants and animals and its ability to assimilate these as therapeutic substances within the idiom of Chinese medical thinking, give the planet a vast and relatively inexpensive source of medicinals. It's a way of thinking whose time has come. Chinese medicine is here to stay.
Kokayi K. Chinese medicine is here to stay. Your Health Guide (www.yourhealthguide.tv), September 11, 2002.