MAGGIE TSANG'S PhD THESIS PROPOSAL

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In 2019, a report published by World Health Organization indicated that 170 or 88% of its 194 Member States, including Canada, have recognized the use of traditional and complementary medicines. The Government of British Columbia has also recognized the use of complementary medicines, including Traditional Chinese Medicine (“TCM”), and acknowledges the potential benefits of complementary medicines, which are usually considered taking a holistic approach to treatment with possibly lower costs and less side effects. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the communities who rely on traditional and complementary medicines seems to be invisible in the official narrative. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada, practitioners of traditional and complementary medicines in B.C. were officially restricted from participating in the public health response to the disease.

Maggie’s proposed PhD research will investigate the issue of medical pluralism in Canada’s—specifically British Columbia’s—response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With Chinese medicine as an example, it will question whether the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic in B.C. has fairly represented the potential contribution of traditional and complementary medicines and the associated pluralistic healing approaches.​

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MAGGIE TSANG'S MA THESIS

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Title: “Chinese medicine as hermeneutic knowledge? On the role of classical works such as Huangdi neijing suwen in Chinese medicine” 

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LINK: https://summit.sfu.ca/item/19368 

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Description: 

The worldviews of Chinese and modern medicine are fundamentally different. Chinese medicine views the human body, not simply as a biological system, but as a holistic microcosm, whose health depends on maintaining harmonious function at the level of the internal microcosm and in relation to the wider context understood as parallel macrocosm. Without denying the success of natural science, philosophers have developed alternative epistemological conceptions that aim to better capture the nature of knowledge specifically related to human phenomena. The thesis applies the hermeneutic conception to Chinese medical knowledge with the aim to develop a promising framework for understanding the nature of Chinese medicine and explaining the role of Chinese medical classics. 

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