Media

A Balance of Traditions

For many decades, modern, Western-style medicine has been the standard for healthcare around the world, offering cures and treatments based on extensive trials, and careful dissections of the causes and effects. But increasingly researchers are looking at a tradition with a very different approach. In Chinese medicine, it’s not the parts but the whole that matter, and it is not just a medicine but a culture and philosophy.

Both Ends towards the Middle

HKU researchers are uniquely positioned to find the middle ground between the ancient, holistic approach of Chinese medicine and the modern, reductionist one of Western medicine.

East-West Mixtures Improve Mental Health

Professor Zhang Zhangjin of the School of Chinese Medicine has been showing how and why acupuncture and herbal medicines help patients with mental health problems, through modern evidence-based research.

Saving the Bears in the Name of Science

Traditional Chinese medicine draws on evidence from more than 2,000 years of use, but there are cultural beliefs attached to it, too, especially about the powers of certain ingredients. Dr Feng Yibin and his colleagues have been tearing the two apart in their work on the controversial use of bear bile and the development of new drugs.

Qigong and Tai Chi Tame Chronic Illnesses

The gentle mind-body exercises of qigong and tai chi have been given a new purpose in research by the Centre on Behavioural Health. On the one hand they are being used to calm the mind, on the other to energise it, in patients with chronic fatigue and schizophrenia.

Editing Hope

Cancer Genetic Laboratory’s discovery that ribonucleic acid editing can cause liver cancer gives new hope to patients.

Puzzling over the ‘Humanitarian’

Humanitarianism has been used to describe everything from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to relief work after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to teaching English to Myanmese refugees. What, then, is ‘humanitarianism’?

Lowering the Odds on a High-Stakes Disease

The economic boom in the Asia-Pacific has given rise to another boom: that of casinos. And with it has come concern over the problem of gambling addiction, particularly among Chinese. Dr Samson Tse Shu-ki has been studying the problem.

The Dark Side of Light

Tsim Sha Tsui’s night sky is more than a thousand times brighter than a normal dark sky – making our light pollution probably the worst on the planet. Dr Jason Pun thinks it’s time Hong Kong saw the light.