(AP) Western science and traditional Eastern medicine could be combined to enhance treatment of cancer and other diseases, an oncology professor told a medical forum Sunday.
But comprehensive clinical studies must be carried out and patients must be educated to accept the combination of methods, Tony Mok Shu Kam, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told participants at a two-day medical forum in Singapore sponsored by the Lancet medical journal.....
A key factor in the integration would be convincing users of traditional medicine that modern science is as good as or better than their centuries-old methods.
A 2004 study in China showed that 49 percent of women who were being treated for breast cancer with traditional Chinese medicine believed it to be an effective treatment for their disease.
Mok also referred to a Chinese trial he was involved in this year in which some prospective patients declined to be part of a placebo control study to test the effectiveness of a traditional medicine when they learned their chances of getting the medicine were only 50-50. They preferred to go to a traditional doctor who would definitely prescribe the treatment they sought.
