Chinese and western medicine

Chinese and western medicine focus on different aspects of health: "``People are different in their physical nature, and even if they suffer from the same disease, the medication prescribed for each person could be different,'' Tong said. ``This is the basis of Chinese medicine.'' Unlike Western medicine that targets pathogen, Chinese medicine focuses on balancing positive and negative forces within an individual, allowing the patient's own immune system to keep the body healthy. ``With negotiation and cooperation between practitioners of both medicines, we may find more suitable treatments for each patient. ``We need to do more to make individual diagnosis scientific, while practitioners of Western medicine must accept that different patients may need different treatments even though they are suffering from the same disease,'' Tong said."