Recently, a video titled "A woman who drank Chinese medicine for a week found that the ingredient was cockroaches" appeared on the hot search.
According to the video number @Bailu Video, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Sichuan prescribed a pair of traditional Chinese medicine to Ms. Zhao, who suffered from severe stomach problems, and Ms. Zhao found that the only ingredient of the medicine was cockroaches after taking the medicine for a week. Ms. Zhao said that although she felt that the diaphragm should be responsible, she would continue to drink medicine.
I thought that the incident would make people who suffer from food safety problems feel uncomfortable and even panic, but surprisingly, the mainstream view in the comment area is:
Isn't it cockroaches? Why fuss?
Some bloggers even believe that publishing such content is that the media has no culture, black Chinese medicine, and rhythm.
All of the above makes me feel great sadness as a popular science blogger - today, in the 21st century, a full hundred years after the New Culture Movement, the mainstream trend of thought of the mainland people is still driven by ancient feelings.
The same cockroaches, if they are found in ordinary food, not only the merchants will be punished, but the people will also scoff at them.
However, as long as there is the blessing of the aura of the ancients, not only cockroaches, but even scorpions, centipedes, leeches, etc., will instantly turn into cultural treasures.
In the classics of traditional Chinese medicine, cockroaches are indeed a medicinal herb, according to the "Worm Department" of the "Compendium of Materia Medica", it is recorded that cockroaches (that is, cockroaches) are salty, cold, and poisonous, and can mainly treat blood stasis, strong symptoms, cold and heat, lower qi, and blood veins.
In addition, there are also records of cockroaches in the "Shennong Materia Medica": lian, salty. The main treatment is blood stasis is cold and hot, broken accumulation, closed throat, internal cold and childless.
In today's view, the so-called "medicinal effect" of the above-mentioned cockroaches actually has no scientific basis, but in the view of the ancients who advocate "complementing the shape with shape", the tenacious cockroach can not only be used in medicine, but even has a nourishing effect.
For the harm of cockroaches, the ancients who lacked modern biological knowledge also did not know enough, and only recorded "toxic" in the "Compendium of Materia Medica".
Today, we can learn through a little query on the Internet that cockroaches are a true "pathogen transmission machine":
"Cockroaches not only carry bacteria that can cause human infections such as cholera, pneumonia, diphtheria, meliosis, anthrax and tuberculosis, but also carry roundworms, duodenal hook nematodes, beef tapeworms, worms, whipworms and other worm eggs, in addition to a variety of protozoa, four of which are pathogenic to humans or animals, such as dysentery amima, intestinal giardia and so on. Experimental studies have confirmed that cockroaches can carry, maintain and excrete viruses, including coxsackievirus, poliovirus and so on. ”
Of course, we should not blame the ancients, after all, the development of science did not happen overnight, but as today's people, we should not accept ancient texts and cultures without thinking.
We know that there are both good and bad in the texts and cultures that have been handed down from ancient times to the present.
For the essence, we must strive to carry forward and pass it on. For example, poetry, calligraphy, Chinese painting.
We should drape the dregs and leave them in historical museums. For example, the three principles and five constants, feng shui, and foot binding.
It is relatively easy to accept these long-recognized cultural wastes, but it is much harder to get some to admit that the ingrained traditions are.
Take the Compendium of Materia Medica, for example, although there are many obvious wastes, it is still considered by many to be a traditional treasure.
For example, pig poop is used to treat gynecological diseases: "Women's blood collapse." The old sow shit burns ashes, and the wine serves three dollars. ”
The same treatment of children's night cry with pig feces: "Children's night cry." Pig poop burns ashes, baths in juice, and serves a little. ”
Use spring rain to treat male and female infertility: "Spring rain, husband and wife each drink a cup, return the house, when they have a son, the divine effect." ”
Use human feces, that is, the famous "human yellow" to treat vomiting blood and sputum: "vomiting blood and spitting, upset bone steaming." Yellow is the last in employment. For every three dollars, add the root juice, bamboo drain, ginger juice and serve. ”
In addition, the filthy substances included in the Compendium of Materia Medica, which are used for medicinal purposes, include:
Water in cow's hooves, water from the three houses of dishwashing, sharpening water, water from the pig trough, drowning water, soil under the soles of shoes, soil under the foot of the bed, soil on the burning ground, soil on the grave, earthworm mud, dog urine mud, mud on the bottom of the dung pit, mud under the eaves, dust on the beam, dust on the door mortar, dust on the widow's bed, and so on.
In contrast, using cockroaches into medicine can only be said to be a small witch.
Some people say that although there is waste in Chinese medicine texts, shouldn't it be more of the essence?
But the problem is that cockroaches are still taken for granted by many people, and for these people, can they really tell what is the essence and what is the waste?
Some people will ask, then you talk about it, how should you distinguish between the waste and the essence in the Chinese medicine classics?
In fact, many people of insight in the scientific community have long reached a consensus on this issue:
For the prescriptions recorded in the Chinese herbal medicine books, we should use modern scientific means to analyze and test the effectiveness and toxic side effects of the prescriptions.
Some people say that the drug mentioned in the video that uses cockroaches as raw materials is called a new recovery liquid, isn't it the same as the artemisinin found by Tu Youyou, a drug developed after modern scientific testing?
This statement is only known about one, not the other.
Although the artemisinin discovered by Tu Youyou comes from ancient texts, whether it is the chemical structure of the drug or the pharmacological action, it is an out-and-out modern chemical drug——
First, artemisinin is a single-molecule organic compound with the formula C15H22O5.
Secondly, the pharmacological action is divided into two steps: the first step is activation, artemisinin is catalyzed by iron in the body of the malaria parasite, and the peroxy bridge in its structure is cleaved, producing free radicals; The second step is alkylation, and the free radicals produced in the first step complexe with the malaria parasite protein to form covalent bonds, so that the malaria parasite protein loses function and dies.
From these two points alone, we can see the depth of Tu Youyou's team's research on artemisinin, rather than simply taking it.
And the rehabilitation new liquid, judging from the drug insert, is completely incomparable with artemisinin.
Its pharmaceutical composition is described as "cockroach extract" and does not have the well-defined molecular formula of artemisinin.
Its pharmacological effect is "tongli the bloodline, nourish the yin and muscle", which is still directly taken from the description of Chinese herbal classics, rather than through thorough scientific research like artemisinin.
Since there is a lack of scientific and systematic research, rehabilitation can naturally not provide the same clear content as modern medical drugs in terms of "adverse reactions" and "contraindications", and can only be "not yet clear".
Such a drug is obviously not what I call "a drug developed after modern scientific testing".
Many people do not know that the rehabilitation new liquid was successfully developed in the 80s of last century, due to historical reasons, before 2015, the domestic drug administration for drug supervision is not so strict, because not required all drug clinical data to undergo clinical verification, resulting in many pharmaceutical companies clinical data are fraudulent, these problems, until 2015 has improved.
"On the evening of November 11, 2015, the CFDA finally made a killer move, exposing for the first time the list of eight companies suspected of falsifying clinical trial data, and said that it would not approve the 11 drug registration applications involved." (Economic Information Daily: CFDA: Eight pharmaceutical companies' clinical trial data suspected of fraud)
In fact, the problem at that time was not only drug data fraud, but before 2015, the FDA's approval and supervision of proprietary Chinese medicines was very relaxed, so that many so-called proprietary Chinese medicines could be approved for marketing without modern scientific testing.
The composition of the drug is not clear, it doesn't matter.
The mechanism of the drug is not clear, and that's okay.
I don't know the adverse reactions, or it doesn't matter.
Those recipes recorded in traditional texts such as "Compendium of Materia Medica", "Typhoid Miscellaneous Diseases", "Shennong Materia Medica" and so on, only need to be briefly concocted to have a chance to be approved for marketing (such as the famous Lianhua Qingwen, which completed the research and development work in only 15 days).
In contrast, a modern medical drug has to go through more than a dozen steps of research and approval processes such as animal experiments, pharmacological studies and toxicological studies, and phase I to IV clinical trials.
The whole process usually costs more than 1 billion US dollars and more than ten years to complete.
You know, without these complicated pathological and toxicological studies, if hundreds of experimental subjects are not recruited for repeated experiments, if you do not rely on long-term observation and data analysis over the years, the efficacy of drugs is difficult to be guaranteed, and the long-term side effects of drugs are difficult to be thoroughly understood.
As a drug used to treat diseases and save people, if it is not subject to scientific research and rigorous review, but is only approved for marketing based on blind obedience to traditional culture, it is tantamount to seeking wealth and killing people.
For individuals, we may not be able to change such a social situation, but if we can question the content of those traditional texts more and follow less blindly in the spirit of scientific questioning, at least it is a responsibility to ourselves and our families.
postscript
I know that after this article is issued, some people will insult me out of simple national feelings, and some people will threaten me because of interests, and I don't care.
I only hope that before this article disappears, I will be very pleased to provide even a little help to those who respect logic and are willing to accept facts.
To borrow a quote written by former Peking University president Fu Sinian in 1934:
"This is a problem that should be solved between Tongzhi and Guangxu, and it is still a problem, Chinese it is too ungrown!"
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