The world is full of false science, and it is a process of trials and
errors, learning and discovering, that finally tells the false from
the proper.

Given the millions of kinds of treatments/medicines around the globe
since time memorial, how on earth could we tell the quacks from the
non-quacks, the true from the false?  We could form associations,
professional bodies, etc.  But in doing so we could also create
monopolies to the detriments of the patients.

Thus the only way by which we could filter out the quacks is to apply
the concept of market demand.  That is to say, if a method, or a
medicine, were in continuously high demand over time, it would show
that the consumers(patients) have found value in these treatment
methods a/o medicines.  The rest is less reliable as a yardstick to
judge.

For your information, the _mainstream_ medical practice in the most
populous country in the world China is not western, nor its
traditional medicine, but a combination of both.  That is, doctors
incorporate into the traditional discipline the available modern
methods,tools, and medicines imported from the west.

The reason why this combination has come about and been gaining
momentum is not due to the whim of the bureacracy but due to the
_market demand_ exerted by the consumers or patients.  The latter has
found, over time, the deficiency in each principle, eastern or
western, modern and ancient, conventional or alternative, and thus
been expressing itself through its 'demand' for a certain kind of
medical practice.  This certain kind is now found in the combined
disciplines.

That is the way it has been going on in China and this is the
direction it is going to take in North America, Europe, UK and around
the globe!  Years ago, when the British first came to HK, they also
looked down upon the TCM and called it by all sorts of insulting
names.  Later on, it was the educated British elite that took TCM home
back to England.

In China, any doctor or professor that does not know something in
another  'alternative' discipline is now in the minority.  Basing upon
this pattern of development, any doctor in America in the future that
is ignorant of what is happening in the alternatives will be called
'ethnic' doctor, and a professor 'ethnic' professor.

FP