Hello everyone! Welcome to my clinic, Earth & Other Drugs. Here, I will operate on topics surrounding the pharmaceutical industry, other medical traditions and practices, and most important of all, how these are affecting our patient, Earth’s, health. Hopefully, we will be able to diagnose and prescribe some remedies for Earth.
Alright, enough with the puns, a little more about myself. My name is Yin Chuan and I am studying the Bachelor of Environmental Studies at the National University of Singapore. I enjoy trekking, film photography, and very recently, learning more about intersectionality and marine biology!
Now, why this topic?
Growing up, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was an integral part of my life; medicine to me were herbal tonics and cordyceps. My mother, who works in the industry, used to teach me how to identify and prepare medicinal herbs to treat certain common ailments. Each time, she would remind me to recall the concept of balance in TCM – to readjust the yin and yang in our bodies, and make sure that we do not disturb the Earth’s as well.
Take only what you can return.
Coincidentally, we recently touched on this idea surrounding sustainability in my ENV1101 “Environmental Studies: An Interdisciplinary Overview” tutorial as well.
While TCM is ethically controversial, I’ve always wondered how much better western medicine is? Sure, the use of animal parts in TCM has threatened wildlife conservation, but isn’t the manufacturing process of synthetic drugs worse? Not only does it pollute our air, but it also destroys the land that it surrounds. We’ve heard about antibiotic resistance in bacteria and how that affects our public health, but what about its ramifications on the ecosystem? Why isn’t there more light shed on this dark side of medicine?
I chose this topic not just because TCM is something dear to me, but also, I believe that it is time we explored more about how many lives (both human and non-human) the common Panadol has impacted before it relieves our pain. How do we find a way to fix this imbalance between our health and Earth’s health? That’s what I am interested to find out.
Anyway, I hope that you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into my life and I am excited for you to roll your eyes at the puns in my upcoming posts! So wash your hands and grab your scalpel as we dissect the intricacies of Earth’s struggle with medicine.
See you next week!
6 Comments
Leave a Reply
Jian Xi
September 6, 2020 — 5:14 pm
Hi Yin Chuan, really love your blog’s theme about the impact of the pharmaceutical industries on the environment. Since medicine is such an important aspect of our lives, I wonder if can we really do without it just to conserve the environment. By the way, puntestic blog post!
yinchuan
September 10, 2020 — 3:50 pm
Hey Jian Xi! Apologies for the late reply, the notification went into my spam folder 🙁
Thank you for taking interest in my blog! I was wondering if we could switch into herbal medications over pharmaceuticals and whether that would be more sustainable. I’ll be touching on this in my upcoming posts so do check it out!
sherrymerlot
September 6, 2020 — 8:35 pm
Hi Chuan! I’m really glad that you chose a topic that is very dear to your heart <3
I was just wondering about the nuances and complexities of this issue and I want to ask you how effective are some medicine going to be if they are formulated and manufactured in a more sustainable manner? Do you think that we always need to choose between either our health or earth's health and not both?
yinchuan
September 10, 2020 — 3:59 pm
Hey Sherry! Apologies for the late reply, the notifications went into my spam folder.
I was wondering how much the effectiveness of our common medications are just affected by the Placebo effect and whether sustainable production might affect this as well. I’ll touch more upon this in my upcoming posts!
With respect to your second question, I think a balance has to be drawn and while it is difficult to quantify it, I believe that more discussion should be surfaced about it.
Li Zhe
September 9, 2020 — 5:09 pm
Hey Yin Chuan, this is such an interesting topic. I’ve heard of the impacts of the overuse of antibiotics in farming, but never did I think of the impact the manufacture of synthetic drugs could have.
I also think it is interesting to note that some our synthetic drugs today were used in its natural form in the past, like aspirin. I personally love the taste of TCM just putting it out there.
yinchuan
September 15, 2020 — 2:22 pm
Hey Li Zhe, thank you for taking interest in my topic. It came as a surprise to me as well and I hope we can all learn a bit more about this mysterious sector.
As someone who has suffered from TCM for his whole life, I recommend you to try ingesting a few leafs of the Green Chiretta and tell me if you still like the taste of TCM. Good luck and do so only if you have no allergies haha.