Lumen Summer 2014 - Flipbook - Page 25
story by I a n W illia m s
For thousands of years, the Chinese have been using
an extraordinary range of traditional medicines to
treat everything from backache to cancer.
N
umerous clinical studies in China
indicate that these various
herbal remedies work. But until
now, no-one has gone to the trouble of
ûnding out how.
That groundbreaking task has fallen to
Professor David Adelson and his team
at the University of Adelaide in a unique
partnership with the Shanxi College of
Traditional Chinese Medicine and the
Zhendong Pharmaceutical Company.
For the ûrst time Chinese and western
scientists are combining their different
areas of expertise to study how individual
herbal compounds might be affecting the
body at the molecular level and if there is
any placebo effect.
The ultimate aim is a merging of
western and traditional Chinese medicine
(TCM) and new ways of ûghting disease.
Professor Adelson is Director of the
Zhendong Australia – China Centre for
Molecular Traditional Chinese Medicine
which has received millions of dollars
in funding to pursue different lines
of research.
