Quack (庸醫,江湖醫生)

Today I am going to talk about quack as one of my acquaintances encountered with this problem. He had been told by his Chinese sin-seh that vitamin C supplements shouldn’t be taken as it may cause cancer. This Chinese  sin-seh claimed to be graduated from Beijing.

Oh ya, Beijing, sound grand, right? It sounded like this quack has got the highest recognized degree as he is from Beijing, the capital of country of origin of Chinese traditional medicine. I would tell him straight at his face, go to he!!.

First of all, I would like to know which medical school in Beijing he got his degree (or only certificate/diploma?) from. There are hundreds of medical schools, colleges, universities in Beijing, so which one? Most of us tend to ‘waahh’ when we heard that our friend graduated from UK, US or Australia. But I am going to tell you this is not always the case! Unless your friend is graduated from Harvard (US) or Cambridge (UK) or Australian National University (Australia), then you have every reason to admire them. If not, you gotta check first.

Example:

I have a friend who graduated from Deakin University, Australia. Some of you who have never gone studying overseas will think that he is so great and you start to admire with your eyes wide-open. Malaysian Chinese, especially, have the false concept that studying abroad is better than studying in local universities. Let me tell you, if you do a search on THES-QS ranking, you will find out that Deakin is actually ranked 396 in 2008! Here is the complete list. For your information, our ‘l@ousy’ local U, Universiti Malaya, is ranked 230 in year 2008. Everyone knows that local U is very lau yeah, but so you can see, the friend who went to Australia to study is even more lau eah!!!!!! Even UKM (ranked 250), USM (ranked 313) or UPM (ranked 320) are better than this Australia university.  So, do you see what I am trying to say to you now? Next time when you heard someone studying abroad, you don’t need to admire unless he/she is from Harvard, Yale, Oxbridge, MIT, Imperial College of London, or other top 100 universities. 

All of us know that most top universities are situated in US and UK. But as I have mentioned above, studying in US and UK doesn’t make you more superior because he/she might have attended classes at Southern Methodist University (US) or Clark University (US). Both universities above are ranked 500 + together with the likes of University of Dhaka (Bangladesh), National Chung Hsing University (Taiwan) and Diponegoro University (Indonesia).

Sorry for the long story, now we go back to the story of the quack. After my long explanation, I believe now you understand why I need to know which university/college/medical school this bogus Chinese sin-seh had attended. This will be my preliminary  judgement of his credibility.

However, all of these are made on the assumption that this Chinese sin-seh did not fake his qualifications. Sometimes, he might not even own a degree, he was just faking it that he graduated from Beijing!

Example: Tony Pua made a very detailed investigation into the academics qualifications of KDU Management Development Centre (KMDC), which operates as a professional development centre under KDU College Sdn Bhd in Petaling Jaya. He found out that 3-4 out of KMDC's list of 7 faculty members are in possession of doctorates originating from dubious sources.

1. Dr. James Chong PhD (Ire, 2002)
"Dr. James Chong has a PhD from Irish International University, Ireland..."
2. Dr. Ragunathan PhD (2002), MBA (1999)
"Dr. Ragunathan has a PhD in Business Administration and MBA from Newport University, United States... Dr. Ragunathan lectures on Research Methodology for the MBA and MSc programs."

For Dr James Chong, the university doesn't exist in Ireland, if it even "exists" at all! So where did he attend his PhD programme, the headquarters of IIU in Pakistan? As for Newport University where Dr Ragunathan obtained his PhD and MBA, it is definitely not recognised by the Office of Degree Authorisation in Oregon, United States, which clearly lists colleges which are either unaccredited or diploma mills.

Now, KMDC certainly isn't the only college which employs such faculty members. Prominent Chinese educationist, Dr Yap Sin Tian of Southern College, also secured his PhD from Kensington University in Hawaii/California in 1990, which has since been closed by court order. He has also obtained another Doctorate in Philosophy of Education from, ah, Southern Cross University in 1999.

If you do not know who is Yap Sin Tian, then look at this news from TheStar. During New Era college convocation on 11 January 2009, a man went up to the stage as college senate chairman Dr Yap Sin Tian was giving a speech and punched him in the face in front of 500 people, including students, parents and guests. Here are some more news related to this incident. News A, news B, news C, News D.

Again, back to our story…….

Conclusion, did the Chinese sin-seh really attend a medical school in Beijing? It was in doubt. If yes, then what university? Does he read New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, British Lancet, and Annuals of Internal Medicine? The researchers who published in journals have done double-blinded placebo-controlled studies on Vitamin C. I would love to know based on what grounds he dared to comment that Vitamin C may cause cancer. Any double-blinded placebo-controlled conducted by him before? Or is there any published papers on that?

Come on lah, you Lau Sai sin-seh, please don’t make lau sai comments that misguide your patients just for the sake of selling your heavy-metal-pesticide-tainted Chinese herbs. I am not against you selling herbs to your patients but I am just against you bluffing about something you don’t know.

Disclaimer: I, the author of this posting, has no personal enmities against Chinese sin-sehs or rejection toward Chinese herbs. In fact, I love Chinese traditional medicine and I respect the profundity of ancient Chinese’s knowledge/wisdom towards diseases and herbs. Furthermore, I have spent a considerable amount of time  learning the knowledge. I just hope that the incident of one apple spoiling the whole bunch doesn’t happen.

But, sadly, we, in Malaysia, do not have strict regulations on qualifications of Chinese sin-seh. I do hope that one day Ministry of Health may come out with laws to regulate Chinese sin-sehs, making sure that there isn’t any rotten apple around to protect the good reputation of Chinese traditional medicine and to uphold the high standing!