Coronavirus
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A brief article on TCM here
Chairman Mao may have promoted TCM (for others) because it was cheap but the present Chinese government promotes it because it is also a profitable export item. As an article in the September/October 2019 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer explained:
“Outside the WHO domain, the Chinese government is pursuing a similar agenda—TCM as an export product—by attempts to have an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification for, for example, TCM herbs and sterilization procedures for acupuncture needles (Dorlo and Timmerman 2009). These attempts fit the overall goal of the Chinese government to enlarge China’s herbal exports and to gain recognition for Chinese herbs, given that the Chinese herbs will never be able to receive a formal medical product registration for European or U.S. markets due to the “strict” requirements to demonstrate efficacy and safety. At this moment, ISO standards provide a false aura of reliability to thirty-three TCM products and “activities” of planting, from the sowing of ginseng seeds to an infrared moxibustion device, and another forty-three standards are in the making (International Organization for Standardization 2019). In a direct meeting between then WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and President Xi Jinping, the latter said straightforwardly that he counted on a good collaboration between China and WHO and that he expected the WHO would help with “promoting TCM and Chinese herbs to foreign countries.” The Chinese government lobbied Chan repeatedly while attempting to increase TCM’s acceptancy and suitability for export. This culminated, among other things, in the publication of purely commercial paid advertising supplements in Nature in 2011 and Science in 2014, in which the pseudoscientific articles received an approval in a preface written by then WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. (See David Gorski, “Science Sells Out: Advertising Traditional Chinese Medicine in Three Supplements,” Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 2015.) In 2017, the value of the growing Chinese export of medicinal herbs had peaked to $295 million (Cyranoski 2018).”
Chan, though not a Chinese subject, was a Chinese appointee and having someone who believed in TCM at the head of the World Health Organisation, for 10 years from 2007-2017, was like having a representative of Saudi Arabia as the head of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Another article here, Alan?
Here’s another sceptical article
“TCM – a $45 billion market in China”
Mao Tse Tung never used Traditional Chinese Medicine, but he recommended to the Chinese peasants to use the Barefoot Doctors
Picked up at the Libcom website
Some interesting observations in the comments also.
This Coronavirus looks like a biological warfare
Of course, this virus is what the over-populationists have all been waiting for. A plague to wipe out the parasitical homo sapiens from the face of the Earth, well about 60% of us, at least.
The conspiracists are at work already. Its a bio-weapon created by eugenic social engineers introducing the virus to reduce the population. It is the pharmaceutical industry seeking to make profits. Its a plot to get rid of the aged and elderly that are an increasing drain on the economy.
A global recession?
“analysts warned the outbreak could wreak economic havoc on a scale not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.”
Of course, this virus is what the over-populationists have all been waiting for. A plague to wipe out the parasitical homo sapiens from the face of the Earth, well about 60% of us, at least.
I understand the mortality rate is only about 2% though…
More peoples are dying from hunger, malnutrition, dengue, tuberculosis, and smallpox than from Coronavirus
Alan Johnson wrote A global recession?
“analysts warned the outbreak could wreak economic havoc on a scale not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.”
On the bright side shares in undertakers and coffin makers are on the up, might dust down my black suit and tie and apply for a job. With my miserable phizzog I should be a shoe in.
The deep economical crisis of capitalism was already there before the Coronavirus, whatever is taking at the point of production can not be blamed on a medical disease. Capitalists always want to blame the problem of their system in something else. This is another crisis of super-production, In the USA the housing and real estate crisis is coming back, and bankers and investors continue building houses that they can not sell, student loans are in the brinks of a bankruptcy and banks continue lending money and the USA continue providing guarantee to the banks, car loans are in crisis, sales of cars have dropped but car dealers have a big pile of cars in their lots, farmers have an excessive amount of commodities that they can not sell, and they must be thrown away, the list is very extensive
Yes I think this is spot on. The trade wars and all that stuff along with the contraction on China,were happening before the coronavirus.
This is not to minimise the seriousness of the virus, but it is not the cause of capitalism’s current ills.
Put off by the title “Covid-19. More evidence that capitalism has become a danger to humanity”, I started to read this article thinking it was going to be more ICC millenarianist nonsense about capitalism bringing about the literal “decomposition” of society, but, actually, apart from the tendentious title and a few references to “decomposition”, it’s not all that bad and makes a few good points:
https://en.internationalism.org/content/16810/more-evidence-capitalism-has-become-danger-humanity
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