Dr Dolittle goes Chinese

Traditional Chinese Medicine at least. Saw an interesting feature on the news yesterday - vets at the Singapore zoo have been using TCM to treat some of the animals, including Boling (for a pic of him, see blog post "Daniel's 4th birthday - part/y 2", May12'07) for guttural lumps.

Other TCM treated animals include :
- giraffe for a chest infection
- komodo dragon for a neurological disorder
- elephant for foreleg injuries
- orang utan (Ah Meng) for constipation
- python for swollen lips
and about 50 other animal species.

According to the vet, Dr Oh SH, he said "The secret to TCM's success lies in its more holistic process. While Western medicine largely addresses the symptoms, TCM goes to the source of the problem". However, Western medicine will remain the first line of treatment for the animals for now. (ST, May18'07) Hey, if it's so great - why not make TCM the first line of treatment?

Then we'd have to go into the Western vs TCM arguments on humans too ....