Traditional Medicine Won't Cure China's Ills

For decades, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (or TCM) have disputed accusations that their craft is a pseudo-science, a placebo, exploitative of endangered species, poisonous and ineffective. Now China's government is fighting on their behalf. On Christmas Day, it passed the country's first law regulating TCM, with the aim of placing it on an equal footing with science-based Western medicine.

It's an expressly political goal, designed to "give a boost to China's soft power," as one spokesperson put it. Unfortunately, it's also misguided. China's health-care system is already burdened by fraud, a shortage of doctors, counterfeit medicine and rank profiteering. Whatever the merits of TCM, raising it to the status of science-based medicine will only provide a distraction from the more urgent task of improving standard medical care.