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Maybe you are claiming that there is an inevitable wisdom and promise
of steady progress in medicine.  Anyway, there are the accepted views
of Thomas Kuhn on scientific revolutions spurred by anomalous
situations arising where the facts are failing to fit the theory..

The public and many doctors seem to believe in medical knowledge as
being something like filling the details of a map as more and more
territory was discovered and very little having to be scrapped to make
a fresh start.

A fundamental anomaly in asthma theory would seem to be pointed out by
Andrew Binks et al.:

"Tightness" sensation of asthma does not arise from the work of
breathing.
Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2002 Jan 1;165(1):78-82.

Some peopled may be impressed by the enormous output of studies on
asthma and asthma drugs and think of homing in on a known target in
small steps.

This is typically suggested by Bob's reference by Mark T. O'Hollaren,
MD

"We know that asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways,
and exposure to allergens, irritants, infections, and stress can
induce this inflammation. There is a known association between stress
and asthma; in fact, asthma used to be known as "asthma nervosa
(sic)."

See also  the pious outpourings in "The perilous path of biotech
drugs" also posted here.  We are getting nowhere so fast.  Think of
the gullible America stuff a century ago used by Adams to get public
opinion in favor of an FDA.

However if nobody in western medicine can explain what SOB as the key
and differential symptom in asthma is and how it can be measured with
an instrument, then the treatment is bad science and a good doc should
admit this, while still recommending a patient not to be wildly
adventurous.

If SOB (being short of breath, the chief concern of a patient) cannot
be measured and just left as a subjective factor, then it would seem
obvious to take a look at Indian and Chinese/Japanese breath therapy
as a more honest approach which  is based on subjective feelings such
as prana and chi (ki) and try to make sense of the seemingly weird
ravings of  their advocates.  See, typically a statement in one book
"The tanden is the shrine of the godhead", the tanden being a mystical
point a little below the navel to which the diaphragm is felt to
descend on an inhale.  So breathing is resolved as a sort of
self-stimulation and sort of like a teenage growing up.  Initially
strange feelings in the body have to be approached sensitively and
integrated in the process of  personal development and not suppressed.
Prudishness would be quite wrong. So, theoretically least, a patient
should examine the strange feeling of SOB and try to find a routine
like diaphragmatic breathing which can be slowly learned and gradually
(my experience) makes taking a deep breath more and more vitalizing.
You feel you have had an operation to implant some magical oxygen pump
into your abdomen.  Then a powerful breath makes sense, especially
during effort, like visualizing a sailor pulling on a rope and saying
"heave ho".  Each "heave" (inhaling) stimulates the diaphragm in a
slightly unchaste way. You sort of inject "prana" (oxygen for
westerners) into your body each time.

Since asthma is supposed by western medicine to be incurable, how
about trying out bhastrika (a sort of fire breathing) recommended by
yogis as a method for asthma or learning diaphragmatic breathing from
a competent martial arts instructor?  The possibility of these methods
causing hyperventilation should be borne in mind but it is easy to
avoid.  Respectfully, Richard Friedel