Yet, that really isn\’t the point. Something bother you about my contention that various experiential phenomena have an impact, both for better and worse, on \”physical\” health?

There is no such thing as 'western science.' Science is science, period. What you're doing is magical nonsense.

"Such remedies can’t cure disease; they can only manage and control it."

Funny, it seems to have cured smallpox quite well. And it can cure all manner of diseases, in specific people.

The \”embodied spirit\” is my translation of a classical Chinese medicine idea (精 神, jingshen), which has been largely eliminated from modern CM doctrine. I use it to make the point that individuals are more than complex biochemical machines. They have individual volition, which may be either consciously expressed or seen in somatized stress, which has certainly been shown to contribute to many diseases.

Well, we agree on one thing. Pharmaceutical companies are trying to maximize their profit. As such, they have a vested interest in maintaining the current consumption model of temporary control of \”abnormal\” physiological metrics. They constantly look for new substances, including many used by various herbal traditions, and they make their money by having many diseased individuals having continue their therapies indefinitely. Even when they were not originally designed for such long term application, such as many psychiatric medicines, that has become their most common application because curative therapies are too labor-intensive and expensive.

I understand that the FDA is charged with approving therapies based on their proven safety and effectiveness; I\’m asking: What does it mean for a therapy to be \”proven effective?\” How do we measure effectiveness? Might we be missing something, such as restoring the physiological function that led to an individual\’s disease in the first place, rather than simply providing a temporary patch?

The reason you don't see many researchers looking for something that will "work with the individual blocks of the embodied spirit" is because this "embodied spirit" hasn't been shown to exist. If you can provide a working definition, and provide a measurable interaction, we can determine if this spirit actually exists. If it does, medicines that work with it will be explored; if it doesn't, then we'll carry on with our current model.

Think of it this way: pharmaceutical companies are large, greedy corporations that want as much money as possible. Don't you really think that they'd research this "embodied spirit" if it meant that they could sell cures designed to work with it?

And finally, I leave with this: The Federal Food, Drug, & Cosmetic act, with the Durham-Humphrey Amendment, requires all medications and all treatments to be both safe and effective. If it's discovered that a drug that was rushed through the process is not safe, not effective, or both, it will be pulled from the market. It's to make sure that patients are not damaged by the treatments we give them.

Take care.

I think science is a systematic investigation of nature, and how to interact with it to pursue some goal. What many of us know as \”science\” is just the FORM of science based on the \”modern western\” worldview. Both our language and \’common logic\’ conceptualize our world consisting of objects with fixed measurable qualities. So, the science we know is the science of that world. But, it that the only coherent way of seeing the world?

My approach to CM sees the world (and each individual) as dynamic and responsive. This world consists of directional movements, rather than \”objects with fixed measurable qualities.\” The main focus of this worldview is to identify and differentiate stagnating influences (邪 – xie), rather than classifying the manifestation of distress expressed in various symptoms and signs.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.