In 2006 the German pharmaceutical company Merck began to collaborate with Chi-Med, a company based in Hong Kong. They agreed to work together and identify which ingredients in Chinese herbal medicine might be useful for treating cancer. They began a search through roughly 10,000 compounds, in the hope of finding useful treatments that could be pharmaceutically reproduced.
In some ways, it is a cause for celebration that traditional medicine is included in the global fight against cancer. However, many complementary therapists have decided to protest against this. Of course, they suspect the motives of the pharmaceutical companies, fearing that they will seek out valuable therapeutic herbs and patent them, causing the price to soar.
Critics have warned that the new pharmaceutical versions of traditional drugs will be labelled as pharmaceuticals, which will do nothing to raise the profile of Chinese medicine. They also believe the collaboration represents a global theft of intellectual property. Those based in the USA claim that the FDA is suppressing the use of herbal medicine, and is doing so for the sake of profit.
The collaboration between Merck and Chi-Med is just one example of a growing collaboration between Eastern and Western medicine. The potential benefits of this collaboration are huge, and could improve the wellbeing of millions. It is, however, important that we watch corporations closely as they attempt this.