APR-A-6
THE “PREP DAYS” PRECEDING THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE WITH THE
ADDITIONAL PARTICIPANTS AS WE COALESCE TO FORM THE PROGRAM WHICH HAS BEEN
ADVERTISED WIDELY FOR PERFORMANCE NOW IN THE FINAL ACTS OF MY STAY IN TAIWAN
April 7--8, 2004
Much of these final days before the international conference is involved in dealing with the lead up to the conference, including a “dry run” which Nimit has insisted upon as well as a written out text for the slide presentation. He is now off to Taipei to accompany the other participants in from their flights to Taiwan as I am winding down my stay, having typed up and sent out the summary of the two two-day expeditions to the areas around Central Taiwan limited by the severe rains and to the South opf Taiwan in which the weather and accommodations were wonderful in the Kenting National Park Region.
The all-day preparation of the chapters dealing with the exploration of the central and Southern Taiwan excursions took much of the first of these days as Nimit went to Taiwan with the President of Nan Hua University’s driver to pick up the other participants in the program. I was asked to “type up” my presentation besides its transfer in the Power Point program already left here, so I typed a three page outline, which is going to be for the next “book” being printed up for the further presentation out here according to the multiple appearances Nimit has already advertised that I will be performing in both Taiwan and in t Thailand. After I tried to email the messages through the rash of spam mail that has filled both of my accounts at GWUMC and GWU, I went back home. When there, I was called, since Kwon had gone out of there way to purchase a carryout supper for me to bring it over on her boyfriend’s motor scooter. I watched a bit of CNN to see that there were both Shia and Sunni full frontal attacks on the occupation coalition forces which were costly in terms of lives, inviting retaliation. I then watched between the national Geographic Channel and the Discovery Channel special programs on each of several areas where I have been—one in the peoples of a fishing group in pursuit of the “Fish of the Gods” (a golden scaled carp!) living along the rivers draining from the Himalaya, then the “Ultimate Crocodile” along the Mara River during the wildebeest migration, then the special story about the confused hunter gatherers in Kamchatka Siberia who had survived through several different Russian administrative systems from Communism to Stalin to some kind of “free market” they cannot get to—all set against the bleak Russian urban landscape of the gulag, amid the stunning natural history and spectacular natural resources of the 21 active volcanoes and spectacular wilderness without roads opf the Kamchatka with which I am familiar—both in its natural beauty and also the mind-numbing inefficient Russian official regulations as private entrepreneurs replace a controlling state giving way to capitalist graft. I liked the things I saw, and realized that I had to pack away the notion that I had TV available to me, since shortly I would have housemates, with several being in the same building, if not all on the same floor, and I would need to get some final packing up in anticipation of the rush that will occur at the conclusion of the program and my departure the early morning after it is concluded.
I also projected foreword the thought that I will be heading to Peru in a week from the same day I am now packing up here in Taiwan for a period equal to my absence in the Far East so that the one set of experiences will quickly supplant the others—unless Dr. Nimit has his way and tries to get me back here for several more visits immediately and then tires of a year long visit to help launch a program I do not understand except in that it is the “alternative” as opposed to my concept of integrative—that is, the embrace of all things 1)unproven, 2) disproven, or 3) unprovable in therapeutic practice. I made up an outline and introductory comments saying that to lay claim to being a science at all, the natural healing science had to submit to rigorous controlled clinical trials in research, and the disproven issues be as discarded as are the more mainstream treatments not fond to pass muster. I am not at all sure that some of those who are most enthusiastic about “alternatives” are not there making a lot of money out of nostrums and fancy machines that they insist on the basis of convinced testimonials are certainly therapeutic. And I need to see how enthusiastic they would be about the application of such techniques in my volunteer health care practice where the profitability is taken completely out of health care practices.
MEETING THE
OTHER PARTICIPANTS,
WITH THE USUAL
“SMALL WORLD” SURPRISES,
IN PRIOR
MEETINGS AND MUTUAL FRIENDS
April 8, 2004
I had stayed up late to meet John Daly at his arrival. He was later still, not getting in until after 1:30 AM. John Daly and I had met previously on the summit of Yutaje Tepuy, when he was collecting frogs for their spewciation and unique alkaloids that are used as a “noxious” (not “toxic”—since it serves no useful purpose to have the predatopr die, rather than to learn never to catch and try to eat a colorful prey speices!) It is also a “chicken and egg” question as to which had colme first, the colorful warning signs of red or black and yellow or the concentration of the noxious slalkooids in the mucus glands of the skins from the many small and busy ants that the frong has eaten. We could reminesce about this unique experience, as John now starts up another—his first visit to the Far East and to Taiwan. He just retired at age 72 from NIH as a chemist isolating medicinal from frog skins.
There is a family here from Bangkok Thailand with all three doctors, graduates of the military medical school there. Immediately I asked, and of course, immediately learned that Kitti—the surgery resident I had lectured and had helped at Berkshire Medical Center—was the professor and the young student whose nickname is Nulek (meaning “little mice!”) was his protégé. She took digital pictures of me with the ancient drum symbol of NanHua University and we learned a bit more on my third tour through the unique ancient musical instruments here on display. We also saw a 23 minute video of the University in Mandarin but with interesting rituals at affiliation and graduation. In the spring ceremony, the parents are to put a white silk scarf over the student, and then the professor puts on a yellow scarf as they convene to study. The white symbolizes a transition into adulthood and a transfer now to community service. The yellow is exactly like the green (for herbs) hooding ceremony of the medical school graduation that I will participate in on May 16 at GWU.
I got to learn a bit more about a few of the other participants, one of whom brought a noninvasive acoustic cardiac scan. It is like an EKG but takes a reading of the waves emanating from the heart as a mechanical pump and can predict with a much higher degree of sensitivity and specificity coronary artery disease and ischemia. John Daly age 72 had the scan and was shown to have some degree of ischemia with limited coronary artery disease. I then had the scan, perhaps the first endurance athlete to have it done, at least by these practitioners, and was found to have the highest pulse of 52 with NO coronary disease and no evidence of ischemia—which I believed was a true reading after looking up more about the machine and its history of use thus far as a cheaper less invasive method of studying the heart and its single biggest cause of morbidity and mortality—coronary atherosclerosis.
I did not have my blood scanned by Bradford’s special microscope—in which—like Uroscopy, the practitioner reads all about distant organs from an interpretation of the blood cells. He seems to find evidence of Lyme Disease, the great “Epidemic of the 21st Century” to be treated by mega-vitamins, and various high dose salts and other unusual therapies opf the alleged naturopathy type. I am somewhat suspicious of seeing a blood film, and saying—here is the thyroid area, that is the skin and lymphoid tissues, and all the rest of these are circulating plaque which must be cleared from the system, etc. I believe that this is akin to reading tea leaves, with leading questions of the susceptible –“have you ever had trouble with your back?” Food allergies are spoken of with great regularity also in the blood film reading, which is somewhat suspicious—but I have gone out of my way to keep an open mind about much of what I have seen until I am convinced otherwise as to the origin of the fancy devices in quackery. So far, one of the sincere practitioners has tried to tell me about Jouhrie, a Japanese system that started out as a religion and ten years ago became a healing system with emphasis on its natural laws: spirituality before physicality. This is from Japan, of all places, saying that there is too much materialism and consumerism and not enough love and understating with an emphasis on service to others. I will buy that—perhaps because it is not for sale and no machinery comes along with it. When he gets to the point about “channeling energy” to others, I may hop off the otherwise helpful and harmless bus ride with this system now endorsed by two million practitioners world wide.
I will learn a bit more about the good, the fringe, and the far out during our all day session tomorrow, but right now I am prepping for dinner to go out to learn a bit more about the other participants. They must view me as a visitor from a far planet as I might some of them—since how many academic surgeons from very straight line orthodox top tier American University Medical Centers are rubbing elbows with acupuncture therapists, crystal healers, aroma therapists and energy chanellers in the Far East? Don’t bother answering that rhetorical question; I still have my critical faculties intact, and I have to sift a lot of chaff out of standard medical practice as well as this “outlier” system of “natural healing science.”