Full text of my letter to the Sunday Times commenting on Richard Girling's article (Horns of Plenty, Sunday Times Magazine, 29 April 2012). The original article needs a subscription to view.
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Dear Madam/Sir
I read with interest and dismay Richard Girling's article (Horns of Plenty, Sunday Times Magazine, 29 April 2012). I must commend the writer for highlighting the abhorrent illegal trade in rhino horn.
Unsurprisingly, this was the major topic of discussion at Save the Rhino International's excellent Rhino Mayday event held at UCL last Tuesday. As an attendee and speaker at this event, I learned a lot about the demand and illegal supply of rhino horn. Although Mr Girling is correct that rhino horn is listed in 5,000 year old texts of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), alongside other such medical delights as mercury, cinnabar and realgar, it should be pointed out that TCM is a living and ever-evolving form of medicine with an unbroken tradition dating back many millennia. It has been illegal to medicinally use rhino horn in China since 1993 (fortunately, mercury fell into disuse many centuries earlier).
In the UK, the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine (RCHM) strongly condemns the illegal trade in endangered species and has a strict policy prohibiting the use of any type of endangered species by any of our members. We do not consider rhino horn to be a medicinal ingredient and herbal substitutes are readily available. No animal/mineral products should be used in TCM in the UK as it is illegal to use animal/mineral products in unlicensed medicines and most herbal medicines come into this category.
It would be naive to think that none of the rhino horn illegally imported into places like China and Vietnam ends up as part of under-the-counter medicines (the per capita demand for rhino horn in Vietnam seems to be greater than any other country). However, from presentations made at Rhino Mayday, it seems the illegal trade in horn has now gone far beyond the limited medicinal market. Why would someone of a criminal persuasion grind up a valuable asset like a rhino horn when the powdered version would be indistinguishable from a cheap substitute such as horse hoof? The major problem now appears to be the use of horns as extravagant business gifts or an investment alternative to gold.
It is interesting to note that no one has ever been able to track down the source of the ridiculous myth that rhino horn can treat cancer. It certainly does not come from any ancient TCM text book. The best guess from knowledgeable people in the field is that it was an internet rumour put out by rhino horn salesmen in order to boost demand.
There are perfectly adequate laws in place to prevent the trade in rhino horn (and other endangered species) but enforcement is sporadic due to lack of will and/or lack of manpower (for example, the National Wildlife Crime Unit in the UK has only 8 full-time officers to cover everything from reptiles to bird eggs to rhino horn).
Rather than blaming Traditional Chinese Medicine for rhino poaching and museum theft, perhaps a more fruitful approach might be to encourage the Governments involved to enforce existing legislation. Britain’s imperial past as a colonial big-game hunter (hence all the Victorian-era rhinos in UK museums) means we must be at our diplomatic best when raising this subject in Asia and Africa. Current economic difficulties make the task even harder. However, doing nothing is not an acceptable option for the world’s remaining wild rhinos.
Yours
Gary Minns
President, Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine
London
Thursday 3 May 2012
Thursday 8 March 2012
The CAM and new university debate
This essay is the full text of a response made to David Colquhoun's comment on a Times Higher Education article. You should probably go and read the originals first.
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Sadly and predictably, Mr Colquhoun is quick to turn a perfectly reasonable article celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act into one of his oft-seen rants on the award of degrees in complementary medicine (aka CAM). The fact seems lost on him that the 1992 Act opened wide the door to university education for thousands of people who, previously, were effectively excluded.
As a Middlesex graduate from one of the degrees so hated by Mr Colquhoun, I feel a mixture of amusement, mild annoyance and pity at his continued intellectual snobbery. I don’t doubt Mr Colquhoun quotes accurately, albeit massively out of context, from the bullet-pointed slides he mentions. However, as he well knows from his many years of university experience, a few headlines on a slide does not make a lecture. What his persistent and irrelevant freedom of information requests fail to trawl up are the actual words spoken by lecturers in classes; the hours of interaction between enquiring student minds and experienced practitioner-lecturers; the weeks of student clinical observation/practice.
Mr Colquhoun also misrepresents Middlesex and many other CAM courses when he calls them “anti-science”. A quick search of readily available information (no need to waste other people's time and money with freedom of info requests) highlights that the current Middlesex CAM courses comprise modules that are split approximately ¼ Western medicine, ⅓ research related with the remaining 40% or so being CAM. Unscientific? Unsafe? An appropriately holistic view of the courses would suggest not.
I wonder if Mr Colquhoun’s real gripe is not so much with CAM degrees but with the belief that the 1992 Act began an evolution (or perhaps he would prefer the word “erosion”) within the British university system that saw universities become businesses and students become customers. Like it or not, in a free market, the forces of economics will prevail.
Circa 1995, some visionary and perceptive people within Middlesex saw that students/customers wanted to study CAM and so they supplied courses to meet that demand. Personally speaking, Middlesex did not make me study a CAM degree, I chose the subject and then found an institution that provided what I wanted (interestingly, doing a lot of my studying on a campus Middlesex share with Mr Colquhoun’s überscientific UCL). No doubt, if the demand ever diminishes, so will the number of CAM courses on offer (although Middlesex’s 17 straight years of offering degree level CAM courses would suggest demand remains good).
Despite the bullying tactics of Mr Colquhoun, and others with equally sincere but misguided beliefs, it is refreshing to see universities such as Middlesex coming out so strongly and robustly in support of CAM and, in Middlesex’s case, seeming to make CAM a specialist subject area or “centre of excellence”. Long may this freedom of choice continue to be victorious over the academic censorship Mr Colquhoun seems to advocate.
VC Driscoll’s article reads rather like that of any CEO heading a company in a crowded, competitive market place during difficult economic times. His company needs to adapt, change, specialise and successfully sell its products. The difficult decisions taken by VC Driscoll and the governors will determine whether Middlesex follows in the footsteps of Kodak or Fuji; Rover or Nissan; RBS or Santander. My guess would be that CAM degrees, like all other university courses, will remain for as long as they are popular with students and, as VC Driscoll suggests, they are “thoroughly entitled”.
Before embarking on any more of his epic and infamous whinges, perhaps Mr Colquhoun would do well to step back and take time to appreciate the rapidly changing environment within which universities, both pre and post 1992, must now operate. VC Driscoll looks to be successfully cutting his cloth accordingly.
I await Mr Colquhoun's inevitable response.
Declaration of interests: the writer is an acupuncturist/herbalist in private practice and part-time supervisor/lecturer on a BSc (Hons) Acupuncture course (but not the one at Middlesex). In other words, the writer makes his living from CAM in the same way that Mr Colquhoun makes his living from “science”.
---------
Sadly and predictably, Mr Colquhoun is quick to turn a perfectly reasonable article celebrating the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act into one of his oft-seen rants on the award of degrees in complementary medicine (aka CAM). The fact seems lost on him that the 1992 Act opened wide the door to university education for thousands of people who, previously, were effectively excluded.
As a Middlesex graduate from one of the degrees so hated by Mr Colquhoun, I feel a mixture of amusement, mild annoyance and pity at his continued intellectual snobbery. I don’t doubt Mr Colquhoun quotes accurately, albeit massively out of context, from the bullet-pointed slides he mentions. However, as he well knows from his many years of university experience, a few headlines on a slide does not make a lecture. What his persistent and irrelevant freedom of information requests fail to trawl up are the actual words spoken by lecturers in classes; the hours of interaction between enquiring student minds and experienced practitioner-lecturers; the weeks of student clinical observation/practice.
Mr Colquhoun also misrepresents Middlesex and many other CAM courses when he calls them “anti-science”. A quick search of readily available information (no need to waste other people's time and money with freedom of info requests) highlights that the current Middlesex CAM courses comprise modules that are split approximately ¼ Western medicine, ⅓ research related with the remaining 40% or so being CAM. Unscientific? Unsafe? An appropriately holistic view of the courses would suggest not.
I wonder if Mr Colquhoun’s real gripe is not so much with CAM degrees but with the belief that the 1992 Act began an evolution (or perhaps he would prefer the word “erosion”) within the British university system that saw universities become businesses and students become customers. Like it or not, in a free market, the forces of economics will prevail.
Circa 1995, some visionary and perceptive people within Middlesex saw that students/customers wanted to study CAM and so they supplied courses to meet that demand. Personally speaking, Middlesex did not make me study a CAM degree, I chose the subject and then found an institution that provided what I wanted (interestingly, doing a lot of my studying on a campus Middlesex share with Mr Colquhoun’s überscientific UCL). No doubt, if the demand ever diminishes, so will the number of CAM courses on offer (although Middlesex’s 17 straight years of offering degree level CAM courses would suggest demand remains good).
Despite the bullying tactics of Mr Colquhoun, and others with equally sincere but misguided beliefs, it is refreshing to see universities such as Middlesex coming out so strongly and robustly in support of CAM and, in Middlesex’s case, seeming to make CAM a specialist subject area or “centre of excellence”. Long may this freedom of choice continue to be victorious over the academic censorship Mr Colquhoun seems to advocate.
VC Driscoll’s article reads rather like that of any CEO heading a company in a crowded, competitive market place during difficult economic times. His company needs to adapt, change, specialise and successfully sell its products. The difficult decisions taken by VC Driscoll and the governors will determine whether Middlesex follows in the footsteps of Kodak or Fuji; Rover or Nissan; RBS or Santander. My guess would be that CAM degrees, like all other university courses, will remain for as long as they are popular with students and, as VC Driscoll suggests, they are “thoroughly entitled”.
Before embarking on any more of his epic and infamous whinges, perhaps Mr Colquhoun would do well to step back and take time to appreciate the rapidly changing environment within which universities, both pre and post 1992, must now operate. VC Driscoll looks to be successfully cutting his cloth accordingly.
I await Mr Colquhoun's inevitable response.
Declaration of interests: the writer is an acupuncturist/herbalist in private practice and part-time supervisor/lecturer on a BSc (Hons) Acupuncture course (but not the one at Middlesex). In other words, the writer makes his living from CAM in the same way that Mr Colquhoun makes his living from “science”.
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