Traditional East Asian Medicines Research Network (TEAMsRN): Making Medical Humanities Relevant to the Globalisation of East Asian Medicine

In the early years of the 20th century, the traditional medical practices of China, Japan, Korea and other East Asian countries were dismissed both at home and abroad as remnants of a past age that would soon be wiped out by the unstoppable march of rationality and modernisation. A century later, the very same traditions have not only survived but are increasingly being integrated into mainstream health care systems throughout the world, while medical researchers scour its ancient practices in the hope of discovering new cures for modern ailments. The proposed Traditional East Asian Medicines Research Network (TEAMsRN) is intended to make a unique contribution to our management of the processes whereby East Asian medicines are integrated into contemporary health care.
Coming to us from different cultures/times the integration of East Asian medicines into contemporary healthcare depends on complex translations and adaptations. These translations create the fit that matches these traditions to modern health care needs and contexts of practice. However, outside of the humanities and social sciences, this process of translation is rarely acknowledged or reflected upon leading to numerous problems and contentious issues. For instance, East Asian medicine practitioners sell treatments claimed to be thousands of years old, which on closer inspection turn out to be recent translations of western medical knowledge into the East Asian medicine domain. Clinical researchers meanwhile seek to evaluate the effectiveness of specific treatments or techniques without understanding how these treatments acquired their effectiveness in traditional contexts of practice. As a result, such research does not evaluate anything beyond the researchers' imagination of what East Asian medicines are.
TEAMsRN is established with the specific objective to overcome these problems. Its uniqueness and specific contribution to the modernisation of traditional East Asian medicines derives from its purpose as a platform through which knowledge available in the humanities and social sciences is made directly relevant to clinicians, clinical researchers, political regulators and other stakeholders in the integration of East Asian medicine into modern healthcare systems. For this purpose, TEAMsRN is constituted as a forum that brings together an international group of leading researchers working in the fields of East Asian or complementary medicines from a variety of disciplines that do not generally speak to each other, such as clinicians and clinical researchers, anthropologists and medical historians, health economists and science studies experts.
In the context of this forum, participating scholars and researchers will have the opportunity for face-to-face interaction, discussion and debate. This will face clinicians, researchers and regulators with questions that do not normally surface in debates about safety, effectiveness, and the integration of different traditions in the medical domain: What are the values, goals, ethics, and models of efficacy implicit to East Asian medicines? To what extent have these changed over time, driven by what forces? What, in fact, is traditional about these medicines? What are the ideologies and politics behind the process of their integration into modern health care systems?
From the other, we also hope to raise new questions for historians and social scientists that are directly relevant to the integration of East Asian medicines into contemporary health care: What claims to effectiveness and safety are made by East Asian medicines? Who makes these claims, in what contexts, for what purposes? Are there competing claims? Where do they arise from? How is the tension between these to be resolved?
At the intersection of these questions we will generate a process of reflection, dialogue and debate through which TEAMsRN will be setting an agenda for the future development and study of East Asian medical traditions.

The main objective of establishing the proposed Traditional East Asian Medicines Research Network (TEAMsRN) is to contribute to the understanding and management of the ongoing globalisation of traditional East Asian medicines and their integration into contemporary healthcare systems in the UK and beyond. More specifically, TEAMsRN aims to make available knowledge and perspectives from the humanities and social sciences to key stakeholders and agents in the translation processes constituting this integration. This is motivated by the observation that while scholars in the humanities and social sciences possess a detailed understanding of these traditions, their contemporary transformations, and of process of intercultural translation more generally, they rarely make their voices heard outside the narrow boundaries of their own specialised academic disciplines. This contrasts with a more active engagement with biomedicine and its integration into society and culture. TEAMsRN has the capacity to create an enduring change in this attitude creating benefits that accrue across a diverse range of audiences and topics.

The reasons for the significant and potentially far reaching impact of TEAMsRN activities derive from its ability to bridge the fundamental disjunction between public and professional perceptions of East Asian medicines as stable and unchanging traditions and their actual reality as living, adaptive and plural medical systems. This disjunction creates misunderstandings with multiple problematic consequences and costs. A typical example is clinical research that seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of 'Chinese medicine for the treatment of condition x', when Chinese medicine as a stable entity does not actually exist rendering the results of any such research effectively meaningless. A more rational approach to clinical research would be to seek to engineer and evaluate treatment options from within the Chinese medical tradition that are suited to specific local populations.

By creating channels through which knowledge from the humanities and social sciences can be diffused effectively into academic, professional and public discourse and be made available to all interested audiences TEAMsRN thus has the potential to fundamentally change public understanding of and engagement with East Asian medicines in the UK and beyond. Direct beneficiaries of TEAMsRN activities in the UK and other societies faced with a significant influx of East Asian medical traditions into their health care systems therefore include at least the following:
i. Practitioners of East Asian medicines
ii. Practitioners of other medical traditions including biomedicine
iii. Users of East Asian medicines
iv. Professional bodies, institutions, politicians and other agents concerned with the regulation of East Asian medicines
v. Anyone involved in clinical research or other activities that seek to create local fits between East Asian medicines and local health care systems

TEAMsRN will realise these benefits in the short-term through the following channels:

i. Two public symposia open to all interested individuals and groups
ii. Cooperation with professional bodies
iii. Integration of clinicians and clinical researchers into the network
iv. Generation of multi-media outputs conveying network activities to a wider public and accessible via a dedicated website

Long-term benefits will accrue in the UK and beyond through the generation of a group of experts across different disciplines capable of influencing academic research and public discourse through a multi-dimensional understanding of East Asian medicines and the problems attending to their integration into specific contexts of practice.

The PI has a track record in creating the interdisciplinary connections required for establishing TEAMsRN and is uniquely placed for realising