Oriental Medicine Takes On AIDS



by Heidi Ziolkoswski



If AIDS were curable through Western medicine like syphilis is, if it were managable like diabetes, if it were a disease of those who suffer in silence and make few demands on society for research and treatment, and if it received little media coverage, alternative practitioners most likey would be assuming a far less promininent role than they are. Because Western Medicine has not "magic bullets" to fire at the AIDS virus, there is room in the arsenal for herbal rmemedies, accupuncture and medication. Because the one disease- once cure approach of coventional medicine cannot adequately accunt for a syndrome which is a constellationof many diseases and many symptoms, those who have contracted HIV have begun to seek healing elsewhere, with varying results. One system they are turning to is traditional Chinese medicine.
For AIDS, the Western and Chinese systems both have much to offer. The former has identified the causal virus and is better ad diagnosing HIV (the human immunodeficiency virus):the latter carries with it centuries of clinical experience treating symptom patterns rather than single disease. That approach is particularly well suited to AIDS, which is a complex of many diseases and many symptoms, few of which are common to all patients.
Though a dissusion of AIDS does not occur in the literature of teh traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), it corresponds to the TCM symptom patterns, or conformations, of xu lao, which in translation refers to a class of conditions characterized by fatigue, especially due to repetition or long duration of an activity. This patern is cited ina a text from the first century BCE as a deficiency of "viatl energies" and organ systems. As noted by researcher and TCM practitioner Qingcai Zhang, M.D., in AIDS and Chinese Medicine (Oriental Healing Arts Institute, 1990), from a conformational viewpoint, AIDS can be seen as a severe "deficiency" or malfunctioning of the spleen, lungs and kidneys.
Six year HIV-positive survivor Marc Bluestein is a represenative of a growing number of PWA's (persons with AIDS) whoare disillusioned with the Western approach to their healing. Even their term of choice to describe themselves--PWAs-- rather than "AIDS patients," "suffers," or "victems" is an indication of their willingness to take active roles in their health and not be cast as helpless spectators in some medical drama of drugs and physical decline.
Bluestein, who runs a Palm Springs "buyers' club" which helps PWAs acquire alternative therapies, says that he has taken a number of herbal formulas over the years. "At one time," says Bluestein, "I didn't know anything about Chinese medicine. I was exposed to only the typical Western medical model, but the conventional AIDS programs at UCLA and USC had nothing to offer me."
He is under the care of Chinese medicine practitioner Melissa Nagel of Rancho Mirage, California, who, like many of her collegues, sees AIDS as a "manageable chronic viral illness, not a fatal diseas." Nagel believes that AIDS eventually will be thought of as diabetes is now, something which, though degerative over the long term adn potenially life-threatening, is treatable and controllable.
"I don't see any reason why I won't survive this illness," Bluestin says. "To hell with statistics! With AIDS, you learn to trust yourself."
Bob Felt, publisher of Brookline, Massachusetts-based Paradigm Publications, which specializes in books on Oriental philosphy and healing practices, is less cavalier about the importance of "Statistics" and takes a more cautious approach. A longtime computer analyst and programmer, he says, "More rigor goes into the design of a commercial invoice than has gone into what some practiitioner have proposed for AIDS. The pharaceutical companies will continue to rule the wrold unelss acupuncturists and Oriantal practitioners learn to report clinicla experience properly. There are so called subjective imporvements that they have the resourses to report responsiblity. Being able to say that patients feel better, are keeping up with their lifestyles, staying out of hospitals, buying time--these are wrothwile goals. Sadly, I'm afraid they will be lost in the noise of unsupported reports and the medicine show of hasty, speculative cures."
Mark Katz, an emergency room physician and the medical advisor for the AIDS awareness and activisim organization Being Alive L.A., concurs, nothing that "Just because something is alternative does not necessarlily mean there's a good will behind it. I'm frequently asked if Western practitioners have difficulties with their patients also turning to alternative practitioners. What I say to that is, I know alternative therapists who don't want you to use conventional therapists, who insist that you come to them and no one else."...
One of the most promising treatments for HIV infection to date, however, had its orgigins in Chinese folk medicine, not in Western medical research centers. Trichosanthes kirilowii, used for over two decades in China to induce abortion, has been avalible in this country since 1987 under the name GLQ223 (compound Q) for laboratory, clinical and self administration studies. Delaney called Q "the most effective drug we've seen" at killing the HIV infected cells.
Unlike coventional AZT