Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015;10(1-2):273-315.
doi: 10.1163/15734218-12341360.

Contested Issues of Efficacy and Safety between Transnational Formulation Regimes of Tibetan Medicines in China and Europe

Mona Schrempf  1
Affiliations

Contested Issues of Efficacy and Safety between Transnational Formulation Regimes of Tibetan Medicines in China and Europe

Mona Schrempf. Asian Med (Leiden). 2015.

Abstract

Tibetan medicines are key material objects for medical treatment and have become part of a global trend of 'pharmaceuticalisation', playing increasingly important political and socio-economic roles in an 'alternative modernity'. As I argue in this paper, they also have become key 'sites of contestation' between different epistemic values and styles of practice related to efficacy and safety that are reproduced in and through specific formulation regimes. Based on my multisited ethnography of production, prescription, and use practices of Tibetan medicines in China and Europe, this paper conceptualises three distinct formulation regimes, offering a heuristic model for transnational comparison-a classical, an industrialised or reformulated, and a polyherbal regime. The first two are the major orientations while the polyherbal is a conjoint hybrid with either the classical or the industrialised formulation regime. Globalised national drug safety regulations legalise and confer legitimacy to industrialised Tibetan formulas that follow biomedically defined efficacy, safety, and disease categories, while classical formulas produced by private physicians or small-scale cottage pharmacies are increasingly marginalised as producing 'unsafe' and at times illegal medicines, and need to find new ways for adapting and circulating their formulas.

Keywords: China; Europe; Tibetan medicines; efficacy; legality; safety; transnational formulation regimes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Diagram of Transnational Formulation Regimes of Tibetan Medicines.
drawn by mona schrempf, 2015.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The compounded mixture of the common Tibetan formula Sendu Drangné (Se ’bru dvangs gnas) being blessed in the altar room of a small monastic clinic in Amdo.
photo by mona schrempf, 2013.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Deer skin leather bags of a nomadic physician of Tibetan medicine from Amdo used for storing his handcrafted medicinal powders.
photo by mona schrempf, 2013.
Figure 4
Figure 4. The Tibetan reformulated formula Agar 35 produced by the Arura alias Jinhe Pharmaceutical Company.
photo by mona schrempf, 2014.
Figure 5
Figure 5. The Tibetan reformulated formula Sogdzin 10 produced by Padma AG.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Adams V. The Sacred in the Scientific: Ambiguous Practices of Science in Tibetan Medicine. Cultural Anthropology. 2002a;16(4):542–75. - PubMed
    1. Adams V. Establishing Proof: Translating “Science” and the State in Tibetan Medicine. In: Lock M, Nichter M, editors. New Horizons in Medical Anthropology: Essays in Honour of Charles Leslie. London: Bergin and Garvey; 2002b. pp. 200–20.
    1. Adams V, Miller S, Craig S, Samen A, Nyima, Sonam, Droyoung, Lhakpen, Varner M. The Challenge of Cross-Cultural Clinical Trials Research: Case Report from the Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 2005;19(3):267–89. - PubMed
    1. Adams V, Le P, Dhondup R. Translating Science: The Arura Medical Group at the Frontiers of Medical Research. In: Craig S, Cuomu M, Garrett F, Schrempf M, editors. Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society. Andiast: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH; 2010. pp. 111–36. Proceedings of the 11th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Bonn 2006.
    1. Adams V, Le P, Dhondup R. A Tibetan Way of Science: Revisioning Biomedicine as Tibetan Practice. In: Adams V, Schrempf M, Craig S, editors. Medicine between Science and Religion. 2011. pp. 107–26.

LinkOut - more resources