2009.05.01 AM 10:13
An Open Letter to Director-General Yeh Chin-chuan
By Huang Da-fu, President

In the 21st century, where health authorities worldwide strongly advocate "evidence-based medicine," medicine is only divided into scientific and non-scientific categories, not into Chinese or Western distinctions. Research indicates that approximately one-third of U.S. healthcare expenditures are wasted on ineffective treatments. Therefore, President Obama specifically allocated $1.1 billion from the $800 billion economic stimulus budget for "Comparative Effectiveness Research" to determine which treatments are more effective. Future healthcare payments will be based on these research findings to fundamentally reduce waste. It is shocking to see Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) moving backward by spending even more money on entirely unproven and unscientific treatments.

According to a report in the New Life Daily on April 6, Shen Mao-ting, a manager at the NHI Bureau, confirmed the implementation of the "Pilot Program for Traditional Chinese Medicine Consultation in Western Medicine Hospitalization for Stroke and Cancer Patients." Last year’s budget was NT$85 million, and this year it will exceed NT$100 million. I would like to know what scientific evidence the NHI Bureau relied on to formulate this policy and what decision-making process was followed.

The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) was established in 1992 and has since spent over $1 billion researching alternative therapies widely used by the public. After 17 years of numerous clinical studies, no favorable results have been found for herbal medicine. Instead, side effects such as ginseng, garlic, and ginkgo causing bleeding during surgery have been confirmed. Chinese herbal medicines containing heavy metals can lead to kidney failure, Jin Bu Huan causes severe liver damage, and aristolochic acid can trigger kidney cancer...

Consequently, some in the U.S. medical community question whether it is worth continuing to spend money on alternative therapies when so little has been proven effective over 17 years. Should NCCAM be shut down? In September of last year, Dr. Josephine Briggs, the current director of NCCAM, told The New York Times, "There are still too many alternative therapies claiming significant efficacy that have not undergone rigorous scientific testing. Now, with more precise and sensitive measurement methods available to evaluate different treatments, the center’s existence remains valuable in the long run if it can distinguish effective from ineffective therapies."

Especially in Taiwan, where the NHI is heavily indebted and financially strained, the healthcare it provides is already struggling under cost-cutting measures. Clearly, Taiwan has even less leeway to spend money on the wrong things. Moreover, any policy implementation will have serious crowding-out effects, so NHI funds should be used even more cautiously. It is astonishing that the NHI Bureau would waste precious resources on unproven and potentially harmful alternative therapies. Combining Chinese and Western medicine for cancer treatment is inadvisable. Often, interactions between Chinese herbs and chemical drugs reduce the efficacy of the latter. The claim that Chinese medicine can mitigate the side effects of chemotherapy is dangerous precisely because it counteracts the drugs’ effectiveness. However, incomplete chemotherapy leading to cancer recurrence often occurs years later, making it difficult for patients to recognize the cause-and-effect relationship.

Wasting NHI funds is regrettable, but neglecting lives is unforgivable. I must hereby lodge a solemn protest against the NHI Bureau’s reckless decision-making process.Source: http:/ / www. kfsyscc. org/ index……menu_id=4046& article_id=4558