Angry in the Great White North

What is the Ontario government planning to do, exactly?

The report contains 10 recommendations, including setting up a regulatory college to oversee traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, as well as limiting those who can perform acupuncture to qualified, regulated practitioners.

The other recommendations include:

• Establish different classes of practitioners, based on level of education, competency and experience.


• Designate practitioners who use Chinese herbal medicines as herbalists.


• Regulated health professional who use acupuncture in their practice should only be authorized to perform it if they meet educational and competency requirements set out by their college or board.

The province's 3,500 acupuncturists and Chinese medical practitioners currently have no set rules or standards to guide them.

There is broad support from the TCM community itself, apparently:

"Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture have been practised for countless years and benefited many, and people want to make sure there is a high level of competence guaranteed in the practitioner they are seeing," [Tony] Wong said in a statement.

The first step to competence is mastery of the field of knowledge, next comes practical skill. And this is where I have a big problem. What field of knowledge? TCM is a mish-mash of mostly untestable assertions. The problems with the few testable ones (for instance, "meridians" clearly do not correspond to any organic structure in the human body) are simply ignored -- TCM seems to be above the basic requirements of traditional real medicine, or TRM. In TRM, you need to prove what you say, or at least provide supporting evidence pending further investigation.

You can't just make stuff up. Not in TRM, that is.

Here is some of the theory behind TCM:

One could say that Chinese medicine was born out of the theory of Yin and Yang. As well as describing that which exists in nature, Yin and Yang perfectly describes all the parts and functions of the body.

All parts and functions? Perfectly? Gray's anatomy is in its 39th edition, runs over 1600 pages, and weighs 10 pounds. And that's just anatonmy! But Chinese medicine replaces it with two words, "yin" and "yang":

Yin and Yang are in a constant state of dynamic balance, when this balance is threatened disease is possible. An example in nature of this dynamic balance is the rhythm of the sun (Yang) and moon (Yin). In a 24-hour period each is unique, change over to the other and require each other for overall balance (from the perspective of earth that is). Yin and Yang each have an individual expression in the body and yet requires the other to exist, for example Yin represents stillness, form and blood whereas, Yang represents activity, function and Qi (chee).

Sun? Moon? Qi? What is Qi, exactly?

Qi needs blood to nourish it and blood needs Qi to move it.

Blood moves because of the action of the heart, contractions and expansions of the muscled chambers generating pressure to push blood through the system. Since the heart close to the head, arterial blood moving upwards doesn't have to go far, and the pressure generating by the heart is sufficient to overcome gravity. Arterial blood going down to any point below the heart is helped by gravity. Veinous blood returning to the heart from the head is helped by gravity. On the other hand, veinous blood returning from the feet would not normally be able to flow efficiently against gravity if it depended only on blood pressure. Between beats, veinous blood would flow back to the feet. So veins, unlike arteries, have valves that close against back flow. So the vein is actually a sequence of chambers, like canal locks, allowing blood to move in only one direction. Arteries are just simple tubes. When a vein is damaged and the valve in that area is not working properly, some pooling occurs. Near the skin, that pooling of de-oxygenated blood looks like spidery blue lines. That is the source of varicose veins.

No yin. No yang. No qi.

Qi can be described as energy, material force, electromagnetic current, matter, ether, vital force, or life force.

That's nonsense. How can the Ontario government regulate an industry that is incapable of defining what it is?

Qi travels throughout our entire body in channels or meridians reaching every aspect of our body. These channels are understood to be separate from the pathways of the nervous, vascular, and lymph systems in Western medicine.

Of course they are separate. Western science has determined what those channels are for, and they aren't for Qi. So conveniently TCM comes up with another channel, one that can't be seen or that corresponds to any organic structure. This invisible and yet real channel is capable of directing the flow of ether, or vital force, or EM energy, or material force (?), or matter, or whatever that particular practitioner of TCM thinks Qi is.

You re-balance you Qi by fiddling with the flows:

There are a variety of points on the human body that are traditionally stimulated in acupuncture, and practitioners believe that these points are generally indicative of the underlying flow of Chi [Qi] throughout the body. The exact number of points is controversial and varies from school to school and historical period to historical period, but most practitioners today probably employ more than 600, spaced relatively evenly over the surface of the human body. Stimulation of these points can be accomplished through various means. The three most common of these are manipulation of the points by hand (called either "massotherapy" or "acupressure"), stimulation by insertion of needles into the points themselves (acupuncture), and stimulation by heat (referred to as "moxibustion" after the herb moxus, which is normally burned to provide the heat).

Again, no agreement, just conflicting traditions with no hope of experimental evidence eliminating the confusion.

Qi flows through everything, like "the Force" from Star Wars:

Actually this life force, Chi, is believed to flaw through everything that exists in varying amounts, not just living matter. The study of how Chi flows through landscaping and living environs and how it can he manipulated to benefit humanity is known as "feng shui," or Chinese geomancy. Feng shuj is still taken quite seriously by many people throughout China.

I guess that means a Qi practitioner can double as a doctor and an interior decorator.

I could go on, but it doesn't get any clearer.

Look, I'm glad that a body will attempt to regulate and set competency standards for Qi healers, but how do you show that a certain practitioner is effective when the effectiveness of Qi-based healing is based on anecdotal evidence and on theories that are contradictory? Will the government select a particular definition of Qi and on a particular set of Qi points? Or will the practitioner who prefers to interrupt electromagentic Qi at the wrist to treat a headache be considered as effective as the practitioner who manipulates life force Qi flows at the hip for the same condition? Neither of them can justify their technique in a manner that makes any sense -- it boils down to whatever they feel like doing.

What about the Qi practitioner who decides the real solution is to go to Leon's Furniture Warehouse and pick up a new ottoman? Is he just as effective? Is he just as deserving of the sanction of the regulating body?

If he doesn't earn that sanction, will he take the regulating body and the government to court? By TCM standards, such as they are, I can't really say he's any worse than the other TCM practitioners.

Why do people go to TCM?

Today, many people, often with good reason, are apprehensive about modern scientific medicine. Although it is undoubtedly one of the most effective forms of health care ever seen on earth, there is little doubt that modern science has produced a system of care that can be frighteningly impersonal. Too often the patient is reduced almost to the level of a defective machine while being cared for by an overworked staff of specialists with little chance to provide the patient with personal attention or emotional support. Treatments tend to be invasive, frighteningly complex in theory and practice, and seem to function without any input from the patient. The sterile hospital walls, mysterious shots and capsules, and complex machinery seem far removed from how nature intended us to live. Occasionally we read of treatments that cause serious harm, and of cases where impersonal healthcare results in accidental, or sometimes even intentional, tragedies.

Like Afrocentrism, there is a desperate desire by many to be seen as encompassing all values and all cultures and all knowledge systems as equally valid. These are the same people who see the actions of an American soldier attacking a terrorist camp Afghanistan to be morally equivalent to the actions of a terrorist detonating a bomb in a subway car filled with men, women, and children. The more accepting you are, the better person you are.

And now the government has caught developed this same condition. Well, if it is considered a sickness, maybe we can rub the feet of MPPs or rearrange the furniture at Queen's Park to cure it.

If the government proceeds with this, and Qi practitioners start getting certificates of regulatory compliance, people in Ontario will see this as official government sanction of TCM as a means of treating illness on par with TRM. This might not be the intention, but it might very well be the result. Has anyone in the government thought about this? Is the government willing to accept this as a consequence?

But my real question is this: why am I asking these questions? The CBC carried the report, the CBC should be providing this information. Sometimes it seems like all the CBC does is re-package government press releases and call it journalism.