TCM is going to kill the Tiger off

[GrahamB]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 819403.ece

Wankers.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is such backward medieval bullshit sometimes.

[GrahamB]

That article also contains the line: "Only about 30 to 40 tigers survive in the wild in China. "

That's according to the goverment. The ruth is that nobody has actually seen a Tiger in the wild in China for about 40 years!

[edededed]

Lack of Chinese nature hippies + traditional Chinese animal-product medicine = lots of Chinese animal extinctions

Sometimes it is too late to save animals (like the Chinese baiji dolphin that apparently went extinct recently).

[Michael]

Traditional Chinese Medicine is such backward medieval bullshit sometimes.

You really are a dumb fuck.

[GrahamB]

Traditional Chinese Medicine is such backward medieval bullshit sometimes.

You really are a dumb fuck.

Thanks!

[RobP2]

Wow, sounds like you touched a nerve GB!

So what do ground tiger bones do for you Michael?

[Chris Fleming]

Naw Rob there's some inter-thread playfulness going on.

[Steve James]

"Humans are going to kill humans off". The tigers are just a symptom. Our only hope ...er, chance ... is that we are the only species that intelligent enough to recognize that we are killing ourselves off. On one hand, this makes us good at extermination -a unique talent in 'other' nature. OTOH, that might just be our salvation --as a species. Oh well, we'll see.

[zenshiite]

Where are those legendary Taoist hippies when you need them?

[shawnsegler]

This thread needs to simmer the fuck down.

S- just sayin.

[Michael]

So what do ground tiger bones do for you Michael?

My morning porridge, of course.

[edededed]

Huh???

[I-mon]

I think we could just say "Some people are fucking idiots", rather than blaming the actions of those idiots on an entire medical system.

It's equivalent to someone saying "science is evil" because of hiroshima.

[edededed]

Well, Graham said, "sometimes"... I agree!

There are many pearls in the vast knowledge that is TCMA, but not everything is necessarily good.

[Andy_S]

I agree with Graham. Some TCMA - acupuncutre, herbal remedies, for eg - is clearly solid: Empirical data makes this clear. Moreover, it is no threat to the environment.

Other TCMA - particularly that involved with flagging libidoes (a huge issue in East Asia), and which tends to involve odd parts of rare animals - is, indeed, medieval bollocks. (No pun intended.)

But it is not just TCMA; Chinese cuisine is another threat.

There are a lot of Chinese and the entire nation is getting richer. Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of high-end TCMA and also a lot of high-end Chinese cuisine that was once reserved for a small elite is becoming become more affordable for the average citizen. That means the potential extinction of a number of species.
Rhinos - "Rhino horn looks a bit like a cock, so it must be good for chaps with floppies." (If this is not medieval thinking, it is certainly infantile)
Tigers - "Tigers are virile, so if you grind up their bones, then..."
Shark - "Shark fins make delicious soup." (I admit it IS very tasty. But not worth wiping out the ocean's key cleansers and predators for)
I am sure this list can be added to....

I think the only real hope is for environmental awareness to rise in line with China's increasing prosperity, but I am not optimistic.

Recently, some Japanese restaurants in London decided to stop using bluefin tuna (stocks are getting low). According to the reports I read Japanese-owned restaurants were having none of it.

While it would be crass to compare all Asians to all Europeans, I think it is fair to say that there is a much greater proportion of tree-hugging do-gooders in the West than in (even the most highly developed nations) of the East.