Gansu province's Bureau of Health recently aroused debate after it trained medical practitioners on some practices that are unique to traditional Chinese medicine. We should respect traditional medical sciences, says an article on the People's Daily.

Excerpts:

The recent controversy over Gansu province reminded me of a film, "The Gua Sha Treatment". In the film, an old man was accused of being abusive to children after he employed traditional Chinese practices to cure his grandson's disease in the US.

The two incidents reveal the same problem: the dominating Western medical science is viewed as the only correct science, while all others are considered alien and wrong.

That's unfair. Unlike Western medical science that relies on medical experiments and modern technology, traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes tradition, but that does not make it invalid. Developed in China and having supported people for thousands of years, traditional Chinese medical science has its own logic and reasons to exist.

Western medical science might have proved more popular in the world, but it also has numerous blanks. Our medical sciences are all ignorant before the vast unknown mysteries of our body.

So just like traditional Chinese medicine has always been doing, Western medical science should learn from its partners and evolve together. It should give up the old "either black or white" logic, and admit that medical sciences exist in the plural.

The World Health Organization has pointed out in a document that neither blind enthusiasm nor ignorant doubt about traditional medical sciences should be accepted. The only correct attitude should be to embrace them all, and to promote interaction, to make progresses together.