Monday, February 05, 2007

Moving backwards

In a modern era when everybody is talking about practising evidence-based medicine, we, on the other hand seem to be taking a giant step backwards. Came across that news last week..

Ridiculous is an understatement.. not having adequate skills to evaluate these TCM practitioners from China but yet paying them such an exhorbitant amount of money to work here. And we were taught in uni that traditional and herbal medicine from China is largely unregulated and may contain large quantities of heavy metals.. How much is the starting salary of a doctor already ar? No need to study so hard to become doctor already lor like that, everybody can just go open a shop selling packs of herbal medicine.

Despite the widespread information available online in this tech-savvy era, there are many reasons why people turn to complementary meds. Bad experience at the doctor, side effects, reading some stuff on the internet, luck (ie it works due to placebo effect) or even family traditions. Not to say that I disagree that all complementary meds are useless.. But apart from acupuncture, which has proven benefits, I wonder how many more people have to suffer because of this nonsense.

Pathetic, and an insult to the medical profession.

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