email: rebeccaxie@actcm.edu
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Cao Dan's Profile
As a child growing up in China, Cao Dan’s mother and grandmother used traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, to treat her illnesses: cucumber slices on her sore throat, tiger balm for headaches, herbal tea for upset stomachs.
But she was unaware of how some traditional medicines were driving certain species to the brink of extinction, like tigers, whose bones are thought to soothe arthritis pain, or wild-growing ginseng, which is used to treat low energy levels.
“I never heard of endangered species used in TCM,” she says. “There was no environmental education in China then.”
Cao Dan, who heads World Wildlife Fund’s traditional Chinese medicine program, is now well aware of the problem TCM poses to some species. Her job is to raise public awareness in Chinese communities both in the United States and in China about TCM’s impact on endangered species. Particularly hard hit by TCM use are tigers and rhinos, whose horns are used to treat centuries for fever, convulsions and delirium. Both species are now nearly extinct in the wild in Asia.
“Right now, tigers and rhinos remain a problem we should never stop addressing, even though they’re not the only ones,” she says, ticking off other species in danger. “Musk deer are going to be extinct soon if we don’t protect them in the wild. The demand for musk being used in TCM (to treat stupor and fainting, closed disorders, swelling and pain) is huge. Ginseng has gone extinct in China because there was no protection. Licorice root is being overharvested”.
In the U.S, TCM practices are thriving in cities with large Chinese-American communities and practitioners are treating more and more Westerners attracted to the philosophy of TCM, which evaluates the nature of the problems rather than focusing on specific symptoms. TCM treatments rely on acupuncture and natural remedies, including the use of more than 11,000 medicinal plants, 1,500 animals and 80 minerals.
“More Americans are turning to TCM as alternative way of preventing and curing disease, I feel,” says Cao Dan.
Now a resident of the Washington, D.C. area, Cao Dan herself straddles both worlds. After moving to the U.S. at 25 to attend graduate school, she began seeing Western doctors, but still turns to TCM to treat some illnesses. And her toddler, like many young Chinese-Americans, sees a pediatrician who attended an American medical school but who is also trained in TCM treatments.
As part of her work for WWF, Cao Dan visits China regularly, where she sees encouraging signs that the government and TCM community are becoming more concerned about TCM’s impact on endangered species. Cao Dan also uses her knowledge of Chinese and American cultures to forge partnerships with important groups on both sides of the Pacific. Those include the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a key TCM school in San Francisco; TCM medicine manufacturers; the government agency that oversees TCM regulations in China; and several Chinese-language newspapers in the United States.
“The main thing in China is education – people who use TCM and who have no clue how endangered species are used. We also need to work with the Chinese government to establish regulations, like the 1993 ban on using tigers and rhinos,” Cao Dan explains. “And when working with industry, our job is to evaluate the available natural resources and put those factors in front of them.”
“Protection is one of our key tasks,” Cao Dan
says, “to really wake people up, wake industry and TCM professionals up and make them understand
that there won’t be TCM if we don’t protect our mother-nature.
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