Clinical Nature

Western medicine researchers are increasingly focusing their attention on the development of drugs from traditional Chinese medicinal herbs. This is frequently achieved by identifying the active ingredients and their pharmacological actions. Yet the scientific evaluation of such herbs sometimes fails to replicate their clinical efficacy. How can this be explained and how can Chinese medicine research be improved? (more…)

Linus Carl Pauling (1901–1994) was an American chemist, peace activist, author and educator regarded as one of the most influential chemists in history. He was among the first scientists to work in the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology, and is the only individual to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes.

A paper submitted by Pauling to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and accepted for publication on June 11, 1991 was later revoked by the editor under questionable circumstances: “We are aware that this pullback was not the decision of an individual. It happened in the interest of those who are personally or economically dependent on the present dogma of human cardiovascular disease.”

(more…)

Heart disease and cardiovascular disease (CVD) are synonymously used names to describe various diseases of the heart and blood vessels. Atherosclerosis is the lesser-known name of the underlying condition and common cause of CVD that results in symptoms such as heart attack, stroke, angina and peripheral vascular disease. As a condition that hardly existed before the 20th century, complications due to atherosclerosis now account for the majority of adult illness and deaths in the industrialised world, killing more people than cancer. Due to its asymptomatic nature and frequent under-diagnosis, the first symptom of atherosclerosis can often present without warning.

(more…)

Daniel Weber (PhD MSc) is a pioneer in complementary oncology, accomplished international lecturer, author and CEO of Panaxea Medicine. Daniel holds the Vice-Chairmanship in Oncology for the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies. Daniel has a BA in Acupuncture, a post-graduate diploma both in Somatic Psychotherapy and in Adult Education, a MSc in Chinese herbal medicine, a PhD in traditional Chinese medicine, and is currently enrolled in a Doctor of Health Science at Charles Sturt University in complementary oncology. He has been in private practice in Sydney, Australia since 1977.

“Your health is determined not only by your genes, after all, but also by your environment” (Tsou, cited in Mitchell, 2009, p. 34) as the living, suffering patient resides within the context of his/her life.

The patient is not a trial or a research project but a complex of personal, social experiences that comes to the clinic with a variety of co-morbitities. Orr (2009, p. 34), in The New York Review of Books, declares that “science is the defining intellectual enterprise of our age” but the difficulty is in how science is defined. In medicine it ranges from the narrow and restrictive approach in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to the more loosely constructed empirical science of traditional medicine (TM). TM is a clinical and empirical medicine that has evolved over millennia. (more…)