• Traditional Chinese medicine origins: Mao invented it but didn’t believe in it.
    http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/10/traditional_chinese_medicine_origins_mao_invented_it_but_didn_t_believe.html?

    “Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine,” Mao told him, “I personally do not believe in it. I don’t take Chinese medicine.”

    Mao’s support of Chinese medicine was inspired by political necessity. In a 1950 speech (unwittingly echoed by the Senate’s concerns about “providing health care to underserved populations”), he said:

    Our nation’s health work teams are large. They have to concern themselves with over 500 million people [including the] young, old, and ill. … At present, doctors of Western medicine are few, and thus the broad masses of the people, and in particular the peasants, rely on Chinese medicine to treat illness. Therefore, we must strive for the complete unification of Chinese medicine.


    (...)

    Terms such as “holism” (zhengtiguan) and “preventative care” (yufangxing) were used to provide the new system with appealing foundational principles, principles that are now standard fare in arguments about the benefits of alternative medicine.

    #médecine_chinoise #médecine_alternative #propagande #histoire #chine

    • There are those who would blame Lu’s skepticism on the Western-style medical education he received in Japan. Rightfully wary of ethnocentrism, some scholars have suggested that negative judgments about Chinese medicine result from the misapplication of “Western” criticisms to “Eastern” thought. In the words of anthropologist Judith Farquhar: “The standards of argument by which we judge our own most rigorous explanations cannot be applied to Chinese medicine.”

      [...]

      None of this conclusively discredits Chinese medicine, just as L. Ron Hubbard’s previous career as a science fiction author doesn’t conclusively discredit Scientology.

      Ah, ok... ça c’est de l’argument qui tabasse ^^

      Je comprends mieux pourquoi je trouve l’article mauvais.
      Je ne suis pas spécialiste sur le domaine, juste un intérêt ancien et précautionneux. Mais pour moi l’auteur tombe complètement dans le syndrôme décrit dans la première citation.

      Par contre, tout n’est pas faux : il y a bien eu un mouvement de reconfiguration de pratiques empiriques (l’auteur de l’article ne connait pas les significations de ce mot, en fait) et anciennes en instrument de propagande (et pour mieux contrôler ce domaine s’approchant dangereusement de la religion). D’ailleurs, Les « maîtres » d’arts martiaux chinois font très attention de ne pas sortir de ce cadre informel, de peur de passer pour des superstitieux, des sectaires, des bouddhistes ou autres membres du #Falun_Gong - l’article wikipedia est pas trop mal et certains paragraphes évoquent en partie ce dont l’article bookmarqué parle : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong . (Je ne suis pas pratiquant du Falun Gong, et je trouve les suspicions de sectarisme un peu justifiées )