TCM treatment of AIDS in China (review)
The treatment of AIDS
is still a huge international challenge to medical society. It
is still a big risk to the modern life up to year 2009.
The most popular way
for the treatment of AIDS with western medicine is so called
HAART therapy. It is a combination use of several anti-AIDS
drugs. It is well known that the goodness of the HARRT therapy
is to reduce the number of virus in blood. However, the strong
weakness of it is
(1), very high costs
(as most of western medicine – results of business needs); no
matter for the time being to control the clinic condition or for
life long intake for prevention (it is no cured with the HAART
therapy);
(2), very high drug
resistant rate after three to five years’ drug intake; Once it
happens, treatment program needs to be changed with much
difficult.
(3), very poor
improvement of overall clinic symptoms, though the virus number
is low in blood;
(4), high infection
rate. The infection occurs here and there, again and again.
Doctors are forced to treat various infection problems. The
total death rate does not reduce with the use of the HAART
therapy at all, since the reduction of virus number in blood
does not mean that the patient immune system has been well
restored.
(5), very high side
effects with the use of the western medicine drugs, which makes
patient resisting to continue it;
(6), some patients are
not suitable to take the western medicine treatment (black zone
of patients), such as patients with deficiency in liver and
kidney, or patients with allergic reaction to the drugs. For
those of patients, they seem to have to wait to die!
Pretty soon, the voice
to ask the Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctors to come
into the treatment becomes higher and higher. After year 2003,
TCM comes into its trying program. So far, with the experience
in more than 5000 patients, it is summarized that TCM is very
effective in the treatment of AISD.
(1). It is very
effective to control clinic symptoms, the pain, the ulcer, the
infection, and the weakness (fatigue). The clinic effective rate
can be up to 90%. After treatment for several months, majority
of patients can return to normal life and even start to usual
work. The total death rate has been much reduced with TCM
therapies.
(2). It is with much
less rebound rate. No as with western medicine treatment, the
treatment with TCM, once comes into clinic cure stage, hardly
return back to previous serious condition again.
(3). Any patient can
be treated with the TCM therapies, no matter if the patients
with liver deficiency, kidney deficiency. There are hardly to
find patients who are allergic to herbal therapy. So, there is
no “black zone” for patients to take the TCM therapy.
(4). It is very cheap.
The cost with the TCM therapy is much less than with western
medicine.
The weakness with TCM
treatment is the fact that it does not reduce the number of
virus in blood as effective as the western medical ways. It
seems work to prevent the further increase of the number of
virus in blood, to increase the CD4 cells so improve the immune
system, though the clinic picture turns very effective. It
should be point out that it is hard to tell from the number of
virus in blood whether the virus is completely “disappeared”
from the body, since many times there is virus that hidden and
remained in some body tissue, such as lymph node, to escape the
killing by anti-AISD drugs. This is why the western medicine can
hardly declare that the disease is cured based on the reduced
number of virus in blood. This is also why the
rebound rate with the treatment with western medicine is
very high.
Such clinic situation
is very similar to the treatment of cancer: the
five-year-survival rate is much high and the symptoms is much
improved with the TCM therapies though the size of the cancer is
reduced slower with the TCM therapy, compared with the western
medicine. In this case, it supports the comment that the western
medicine is good to treat “disease”, whereas the TCM is good to
treat “human being”.
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