This article originally appeared on Undark.
Liz PY Chee clearly remembers her first visit to the bear farm. It was 2009, and Chee, who worked for an animal welfare organization in Singapore, flew to Laos to visit a Chinese-funded institution. The animals Chee saw "hardly recognized bears," she later wrote, "because most of their fur was wiped off the cage fence, and because of the discarded feet, they grew long toenails. ."
Like countless other bear farms in China and Southeast Asia, the bears there are locked up for courage. Bear bile-either "milking" through a catheter permanently inserted into the animal's gallbladder or extracted by piercing a large needle into the animal's abdomen-is widely used in the region to treat many diseases, including, more recently, the 2019 coronavirus disease. It is also sold as a full range of health supplements. Although China's animal welfare and anti-bear breeding movement are growing, the industry is still strong.
Seeing the suffering bear, Chee wanted to know the cultural and historical power that brought the animals there-a question that prompted her to conduct detailed research on Chinese veterinary medicine. In "Mao Zedong's Fable: Medicinal Animals and Modern China", she detailed her findings, many of which were extracted from sources that had never been published in English before. Chee is now a researcher and lecturer at the National University of Singapore. He also found that despite the controversy related to this topic today, even Chinese scholars rarely pay attention to the history of animal medicine.
Chee wrote: “If TCM still has its Achilles’ heel in this century, it is generally believed that it is leading to the massacre of wild animals and supports the global criminal activities of poaching and trafficking in animals.” In addition, she added, Even some Chinese doctors often condemn such drugs as "both ineffective and unethical." Chee writes that many of these products are medically useless at best, and in some cases are actually harmful.
Defenders of animal-based Chinese medicine often refer to this practice for more than 2,000 years. However, in "Mao Zedong's Fable", Chee shows that the roots of using most animals as pharmaceutical ingredients are not as deeply rooted in Chinese culture as many people believe. On the contrary, the industries that exist today have been purposefully developed, expanded, and promoted in the last century. Today, it is more closely related to politics and profit than to ancient cultures and traditions. Chee believes that this revelation has important implications for species protection and public health, because it leaves room for "the possibility of choice and change."
Chee focuses on the evolution of animal-based medicine from the turbulent period formed in modern China from the 1950s to the 1980s. These decades include the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and finally Deng Xiaoping’s reforms.
Although animal-derived drugs have a long history in China, Chee has found that their use in the past is far less than today's "astounding abundance" level. For example, about 400 species of animals were cited in the Compendium of Materia Medica in the 16th century, and more than 2,300 are listed in the Pharmacopoeia today.
Many new medicalized species only exist on distant continents, such as the jaguar in South and Central America. Chee discovered that China's use of animals in traditional medicine is not only based on China's innovation; ideas, methods and technologies from the Soviet Union, North Korea, Japan, and the Western world have all had a significant impact on the development of the industry. Therefore, while animal-based products may still “maintain the traditional aura,” Chee writes, in fact, most of them are profit-oriented expansion products.
Efforts to abolish traditional medicine and replace it with science-based methods were inspired mainly by Japan. It began in the 1920s and lasted until the early days of the communist government, which was racing to build an industrialized economy. Chee writes that although researchers admit that some particularly effective Chinese herbal medicines are worth studying to find their active ingredients, the new regime "initially underestimated and underdeveloped" animal-based medicines in its efforts to establish its pharmaceutical industry.
However, traditional doctors are opposed to attempts to phase out their industry and believe that the synergistic effects of plant, animal, and mineral ingredients in their practice are too complicated to be determined in the laboratory. In order to appease these two groups, the state-owned pharmaceutical department decided that doctors trained in Chinese and Western medicine should learn from each other, "scientize" Chinese medicine, and seek new innovations from tradition.
"Learning from the Soviet Union" was also a buzzword in China at that time. Following the example of the Soviet Union, China is particularly interested in using local raw materials to make its own medicines in order to achieve self-sufficiency. Chee wrote that the Soviet Union’s interest in animal-based folk medicine and the Soviet Union’s own practice of using deer as medicinal materials soon "provided modern and scientific support for the Chinese fascination with animal medicine."
During the rapid industrialization period of the Great Leap Forward, “in this national project, animals and plants were swept away,” Chee continued. China has expanded its exports of high-end medicinal materials such as antler, rhino horn and tiger bones, especially to Chinese diasporas. In order to meet strict quotas, the authorities promoted the establishment of "laboratory farms" to expand production. Entrepreneurs on these farms are also encouraged to find more uses for existing animal parts and design more uses for new parts and species.
"Once a medicinal animal has been bred, there will be pressure or motivation to justify the use of all its parts, regardless of how the previous traditions are actually very important for which parts should actually be used as medicines and for what purpose. Selective," Qi wrote. Many other species have appeared on the medical farm, including geckos, ground beetles, scorpions, snakes, and seahorses.
During the cleansing and turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, the export scale of luxury medicines such as rhino horn expanded to generate much-needed income. However, in the country, the severe shortage of medical care and supplies has inspired people to pay more attention to "miracle cures" derived from cheaper and more common animals.
Chicken blood therapy—"injecting chicken blood (from live chickens) directly into the human body"—is the representative of this time, Chee wrote. The doctor who founded the therapy claims that chicken blood therapy can cure more than 100 diseases, and it has been promoted throughout the country, becoming a "symbol of economic grassroots innovation" and a "real embodiment of "red medicine"," Chee wrote.
This practice began to be phased out in 1968, when it was reported that someone died after being injected with chicken blood. But similar treatments were quickly replaced, including treatments using goose or duck blood, lizard eggs, or toad heads. These new therapies are marketed as magical treatments for serious and other incurable diseases, including cancer—"this attribute has become the standard for many animal-based drug marketing today," Chee wrote.
After Deng came to power in 1978, wildlife breeding and animal-based medicine “become more popular as part of the official policy of the rich peasants,” Chee continued. The government-supported bear bile industry — originally inspired by North Korean facilities and continues to thrive today — is a major achievement of this period, as is the proliferation of tiger farms.
Policy changes have also had a significant impact on the regulation of Chinese medicine and its impact on consumers and the environment. The Ministry of Forestry "is given the right to make decisions on wild medicinal animals," Chee wrote, "and basically manages China's forests as mining sites." At the same time, the Ministry of Health only conducts comprehensive supervision of patented drugs and therefore sells animals. Sex drug companies can bypass health or efficacy regulations and make exaggerated and unquestioned claims about the therapeutic value of their products.
Chee writes that Chinese medicine has become globalized in the past three years, and animal products “continue to play a central role, but there are more and more problems”. The industry has been criticized by the international media for its role in promoting species reduction, and there are frequent conflicts between supporters of animal drugs in China and those who value wildlife and protection. "Many of the Chinese middle class, whether on the mainland or overseas, and in the field of Chinese medicine, are at the forefront of the struggle to protect endangered species from poaching and consumption," Chee points out.
"Mao Zedong’s Fable" was published during the Covid-19 pandemic. Chee wrote in the introduction that the possible link between the emergence of Covid-19 and wild animals is fundamental to the use of wild animals as a global public health issue. The debate changed.
However, despite the undeniable threat posed by zoonotic diseases, she went on to say that traditional animal-based medicine is still a “profitable and therefore politically influential” force in China. As evidence, the Chinese authorities not only failed to ban animal-based drugs during the pandemic, but actually promoted drugs containing bear bile to treat Covid-19.
As for shaping the future of the industry to reduce the harm to wildlife and humans, Chee does not value officials, but Chinese consumers, who can choose to boycott animal drugs. China has a large and evolving animal welfare movement, so this may not be just a pipe dream. She concluded: “Whether they will reinvent the pharmacology of Chinese medicine to reduce their dependence on endangered animals or other animals is still a crucial question.”
This article was originally published in Undark. Read the original text.
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