Dr.Michael O.Smith shares his thoughts on World Health Organisation Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023
WHO document on Traditional Medicines gives a lot of encouragement to NADA. No one quotes such an WHO document here (US), but for much of the world this is a very real document. I remember a previous version from the UN---Bannerman wrote me that ‘alternate’ medicine would be necessary to help most people, if not “the west”. He was impressed by our use of acupuncture, and put me in touch with Dr. Lando , a retiring WHO senior executive from Nigeria. Lando told me that the Chinese were good at providing acupuncture treatment in Africa, but lousy at teaching the locals. Lando called and wrote me and asked me if I knew of acupuncturists who were good at communicating with ‘non-white’ people. I wrote that those were the only kind of staff I had at Lincoln . In the 80’s we were visited by a WHO staffer, Inayat Khan, who was officially observing a nearby medical school. Khan was born in Peshawar, Pakistan and had the only laboratory in WHO which determined which pharmaceuticals were addictive. He admitted that in Geneva he was surrounded by large pharmaceuticals with much more fancy labs than his. I visited him in Geneva in 1985. He informally called AIDS, the ‘american’ disease. He was enthused that we were using acupuncture for addiction and AIDS. Later on that trip in the UN city in Vienna they encouraged me to let Khan be my co-author so my article could easily be published in an UN journal which was an approved journal for bibliographies. Note that Bullock’s articles were not able to cite Lincoln as a reference.
This 2014 WHO report on Traditional & Complementary Medicine makes it clear that western medicine and so trained MDs have no superiority over T &CM, although it is polite enough to use a term like ‘western ‘ medicine. It says that acupuncture is now a global activity, no longer a Chinese specialty. No other activity is described as ‘Global’. The other health care activities are described as still developing standards and safety rules. They list 103 countries that use acupuncture, 29 that have regulations, and that have it covered by insurance. On page 39 it asks the readers to take advantage of “real world experiments” and on page 42 asks for “much less regulations on acupuncture”. Page 68 says it is a challenge for governments and professional organizations to eliminate the situations that have only doctors that can do acupuncture. The medical types of doctors in India are specifically listed in this section. Advantages T & CM listed as wider availability, cost effectiveness, and increasing mutual respect. Large integrated international associations (?like NADA) are deemed important. Note that mental health and addiction problems are never referred to.---Presumably because they are problematic and not ‘really’ medicine.
Mike
New York
 |
| Dr.Michael O.Smith |
This 2014 WHO report on Traditional & Complementary Medicine makes it clear that western medicine and so trained MDs have no superiority over T &CM, although it is polite enough to use a term like ‘western ‘ medicine. It says that acupuncture is now a global activity, no longer a Chinese specialty. No other activity is described as ‘Global’. The other health care activities are described as still developing standards and safety rules. They list 103 countries that use acupuncture, 29 that have regulations, and that have it covered by insurance. On page 39 it asks the readers to take advantage of “real world experiments” and on page 42 asks for “much less regulations on acupuncture”. Page 68 says it is a challenge for governments and professional organizations to eliminate the situations that have only doctors that can do acupuncture. The medical types of doctors in India are specifically listed in this section. Advantages T & CM listed as wider availability, cost effectiveness, and increasing mutual respect. Large integrated international associations (?like NADA) are deemed important. Note that mental health and addiction problems are never referred to.---Presumably because they are problematic and not ‘really’ medicine.
Mike
New York