Your Daily Douchebaggery

Yesterday in our post-shift wrap-up (because supervisor Cormac is awesome to the 10th power) we got into a discussion over the increasing prevalence of the terms "Traditional Asian Medicine" and its acronym "TAM" being used as synonyms for Traditional Chinese Medicine" and TCM respectively, and who is doing this and why? Now, it's not that TAM is a nonsense term; it's just that since Asia≠China therefore TAM≠TCM. Sort of like Latin America≠Mexico--Mexico is part of Latin America, and has cultural, linguistic and historical roots and overlaps and commonalities with other Latin American countries, but Mexico is specific, as is Cuba or Venezuela or Peru--none of them are exactly like the others. China is also specific, as are Japan, Korea, Thailand, Laos, and India which all include themselves as part of Asia and in the descriptor "Asian"

Thus, using "Asian Medicine" as a term of general reference to encompass all the medical traditions of various Asian cultures is fine. But what we do is specifically Chinese, and has its roots squarely in Chinese language and culture and philosophy, even as those things may share commonalities or at least parallels with those of other Asian cultures. To call our medicine Asian and not Chinese obscures its origins and is sloppy and imprecise.


And why this change? The term "Traditional Oriental Medicine" is still around even though on top of having the same issues "Oriental" is an extremely loaded and imperialist term, and that its introduction with acupuncture to the United States likely came about as much because in the 1970's Chinese was tantamount to being "Oriental", or that since the Chinese were evil communists it wouldn't be politic to trumpet the medicine's Chinese origins too loudly when its proponents already faced an uphill battle to get it into the statutes here. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. It seems that with the bad press China has been getting lately there are some in our profession who are afraid that calling our medicine Chinese will go badly for us. Could I have some Freedom Fries and a side of Liberty Cabbage with that?