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B. Alan Wallace, Ph. D. (Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) presented a case for the complimentarity of Tibetan medicine with Western medicine. Dr. Wallace traced the history and foundational principles of Tibetan medicine including contemplative practice, mental perception, and the balancing of the three humors (wind, bile, and phlegm which also resemble the humors in Indian Ayurvedic medicine). Leslie J. Blackhall, M.D., M.T.S. (Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Southern California) focused on a few areas (such as explaining the "Why me?" of a cancer patient) where Western medical system has great difficulty. Dr. Blackhall discussed how Tibetan medicine's desire to physically heal is to allow the person to obtain a mental state conducive to obtaining "enlightenment."
Traditional medical systems are challenging because their theories and practices strike many conventionally trained physicians and researchers as incomprehensible. Should modern medicine dismiss them as unscientific, view them as sources of alternatives hidden in a matrix of superstition, or regard them as complementary sciences of medicine? We make the latter argument using the example of Tibetan medicine. Tibetan medicine is based on analytic models and methods that are rationally defined, internally coherent, and make testable predictions, meeting current definitions of "science." A ninth century synthesis of Indian, Chinese, Himalayan, and GrecoâPersian traditions, Tibetan medicine is the most comprehensive form of Eurasian healthcare and the world's first integrative medicine. Incorporating rigorous systems of meditative selfâhealing and ascetic selfâcare from India, it includes a worldâclass paradigm of mind/body and preventive medicine. Adapting the therapeutic philosophy and contemplative science of Indian Buddhism to the quality of secular life and death, it features the world's most effective systems of positive and palliative healthcare. Based on qualitative theories and intersubjective methods, it involves predictions and therapies shown to be more accurate and effective than those of modern medicine in fields from physiology and pharmacology to neuroscience, mind/body medicine, and positive health. The possibility of complementary sciences follows from the latest view of science as a set of tools--instruments of social activity based on learned agreement in aims and methods--rather than as a monolith of absolute truth. Implications of this pluralistic outlook for medical research and practice are discussed.
Traditional medical systems are challenging because their theories and practices strike many conventionally trained physicians and researchers as incomprehensible. Should modern medicine dismiss them as unscientific, view them as sources of alternatives hidden in a matrix of superstition, or regard them as complementary sciences of medicine? We make the latter argument using the example of Tibetan medicine. Tibetan medicine is based on analytic models and methods that are rationally defined, internally coherent, and make testable predictions, meeting current definitions of "science." A ninth century synthesis of Indian, Chinese, Himalayan, and Greco-Persian traditions, Tibetan medicine is the most comprehensive form of Eurasian healthcare and the world's first integrative medicine. Incorporating rigorous systems of meditative self-healing and ascetic self-care from India, it includes a world-class paradigm of mind/body and preventive medicine. Adapting the therapeutic philosophy and contemplative science of Indian Buddhism to the quality of secular life and death, it features the world's most effective systems of positive and palliative healthcare. Based on qualitative theories and intersubjective methods, it involves predictions and therapies shown to be more accurate and effective than those of modern medicine in fields from physiology and pharmacology to neuroscience, mind/body medicine, and positive health. The possibility of complementary sciences follows from the latest view of science as a set of tools--instruments of social activity based on learned agreement in aims and methods--rather than as a monolith of absolute truth. Implications of this pluralistic outlook for medical research and practice are discussed.