If you're from Taiwan, you probably have bladder cancer. Hear me out.

You may be aware that Chinese medicine uses almost every ingredient known to man. That way, they are guaranteed successful results in at least some of their treatments. The rest can just be shoved under the rug.

Well, this philosophy, that everything seems to have its place in medicine - from toad blood to donkey penis, deer penis to human penis... just read my previous posts - comes with a lot of risk factor.

For a start, when these things are arbitrarily mixed together, it becomes nigh on impossible to figure out what's actually in these things. The TCM advocates know this and take advantage by advertising a list of ingredients in a product, but actually putting totally different stuff in it.

This is generally easy to get away with since TCM doesn't go through any legitimate scientific process and peer review to begin with, and regulations are lax at best. It's almost a daily occurrance for me finding out that the meat from this or that restaurant was actually street cats, doused in gutter oil, or injected with opiates. I call it Chinese Roulette.

But in 2012, scientists managed to get a hold of then-next-generation technology for DNA sequencing that can read thousands of strands at a time.

This technology was primarily developed for determining individual microbial life in animals or oceans, but it served a good purpose here, to find out what kind of organisims were actually in your frog-skin cancer cure.

The challenge was still big, since they knew the Chinese could be putting anything in their products so they had nowhere to stand as a starting point, but they managed to sequence the content of 15 TCM products.

The products were confiscated items in Australia and in total brought about 49,000 sequences of genes. This is what they found:

Birthwort (Aristolochia)

Among 68 families of plants, one that struck me was Birthwort. This plant contains aristolochic acid which can damage kidneys and livers, as well as cause bladder cancer.

In Taiwan, Urologic cancer accounted for 10% of all cancers in 2012, and cancer in general has been the number 1 cause of death in the COUNTRY.

This surprising set of statistics has been associated with the traditional chinese medicinal use of aristolochic acid, which binds with the DNA to form aristolactam, which mutates into a specific type of tumour in the bladder.

To make that all the more worrying:

...approximately one-third of the population of Taiwan has been exposed to Chinese medicinal herbs containing, or likely to contain, AA

Given that this stuff was found arbitrarily in medicine that did not list it in the ingredients, now might be a good time to stop taking the risks, Taiwan!

Ephedra

Ephedra is a medicinal substance from the plant Ephedra sinica. It's banned in the USA by the FDA, due to some very serious side effects and related deaths.

One of the biggest sellers of this product in the USA, Metabolife, recieved 14,000 complains of horrible side effects and conveniently forgot to report it to the FDA. This led the co-founder to serve some prison time.

Side effects include heart attacks in healthy young people, insomnia, stroke, vomiting, seizures and more. Reason 2 for staying away from TCM.

Aside from all the other potentially deadly plants in the mix, such as nuts and soya which can cause deadly allergic reactions, and ginseng which is illegal to trade internationally, plenty of animals were found in there too... and not any old animals:

Endangered animals

The Saiga antelopes is a critically endangered species that frankly look hilarious. All the more of a tragedy that they are being used in cooling drinks in Singapore so it can (can't) reduce fever, and probably a cure for everything in Australia.

The horns serve a lot of miraculous effects to us, including but not limited to:

_{A sedative, a painkiller, an anticonvulsant, an antipyretic, nervous sstem inhibitor, an antihypertensive, enhances 'cardiac contrarctility', an antibacterial and an vaccine for influenza}

Well no wonder it was in the mix!

Also threatened is the Asian Black Bear, which was included in these products, labeled as 'bear bile powder'.

Buffalo, goats and cows didn't escape this blend, either.

In fact, half of the products had a whole cacophony of animals, 75% of which weren't labelled at all on the packaging.

Other investigations

So this investigation alone demonstrates that Chinese medicine, even if it was real (which it isn't), doesn't even contain the stuff it claims, making it even more useless. Not only that, but the secret stuff is both harmful and illegal in many cases.

Thankfully the investigations didn't end there in 2012; a new wave of research on the matter came in 2015 used DNA sequencing, toxicology and heavy metal detection in 26 different TCMs, purchased at random from markets... in Australia.

The results showed that 90% of these products contained undeclared substances considered contaminants or adulterants!

Animals

The most concerning find was probably DNA from the Snow Leopard, but other animals included cats, dogs, snakes, frogs and rats.

Let's just take a step back here; there are about 3,000 snow leopards that can reproduce, and under 5,000 left worldwide. And they're found to be ground into powder in random medicine in Australia. Let that sink in. Now go back to thinking about the rats.

Metals & Pharmaceuticals

Toxic metals were of course found too, including Arsenic, cadmium and lead in over half the medicines analysed. Not only this but they contained over 10x the safe limit of these metals.

Various pharmaceuticals were also found - kinda defeating the point of TCM completely - including paracetamol, antihistamins, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, steroids, decongestants, and interestingly, warfarin.

Gee, they're using so much western medicine that it seems like they're... Warfarin against their own tradition. badum tss...

You can applaud me in person someday, you're welcome.

But seriously, warfarin is a blood thihnner and if you're not careful, it can be incredibly dangerous, with risk of severe bleeding, necrosis, osteoporosis, purple toe syndrom and calcification... It's banned in Australia as a result.

Just... stop using Chinese medicine.

You'd think at this point the world would have learnt a lesson. TCM doesn't work, the products don't even contain what they say, they contain 'western' medicine because the creators clearly know their junk doesn't work, they contain all kinds of western medicine to simply create the 'cure all' desired effect, they include illegal ingredients, deadly ingredients, endangered animals and God Knows what else.

It seems the only thing these medicines are successful at improving or enhancing is people's gullibility. This is a multi-billion dollar industry... It's time to stop.

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In case you haven't had enough, another study in 2016 found rhino, tiger and snow leopard DNA, which you can read more about Here.

Thanks for reading!

Image Sources CC0 Licensed

References: _{Urologic cancer in Taiwan | Aristolochic acid-associated urothelial cancer in Taiwan
| Ephedra | Scientific American | Combined DNA, toxicological and heavy metal analyses...of traditional Chinese medicine | Renal toxic ingredients and their toxicology from traditional Chinese medicine.}