The World Health Science Organization: East and West Medicine Integration

Create a powerhouse establishment to integrate East and West medicine under a single roof to address the global health crisis. That is the dream of Mr. Zonghhua Ci, a Hong Kong citizen, who purchased the Lansdowne Resort & Spa located not too far from Dulles International Airport for $133 million for one purpose—to fuse Eastern and Western Medicine.¹

Health is not as good as it should be—neither on an individual basis nor on a societal basis. In the face of this suboptimal health, the cost of health care is increasing substantially in a manner that cannot be sustained. Mr. Ci believes that a substantial part of the problem is that Western Medicine is focused on the manifestations of illness rather than the root causes of illness. In particular, Western Medicine does not account for the energetic basis of wellness and disease that has been recognized and incorporated successfully into the Eastern lifestyle and practice of medicine for thousands of years.

The World Health Science Organization (WHSO) proposes to address the global health crisis in the following ways:

• Understanding that there is an important component to health that is energetic

• Recognizing that health status might progress in three phases from perfectly healthy, to early asymptomatic disease, and later to actual illness that is individual

• Knowing that health is measurable and intervenable to be addressed at any of these three phases with specific interventions

• Harnessing the power of technology to manage health-status data, to identify health status of individuals, and to recommend interventions

• Working to dispel disease by combining the best of Eastern Medicine to find root causes and Western Medicine to achieve early identification and management

• Accomplishing this combination in a manner to decrease the cost of health care dramatically with benefits to individuals and society.

Success will depend on:

• Identifying and harnessing the best of Eastern and Western Medicine

• Application of science to ensure that everything proposed is evidence-based

• Utilizing the very latest computer technology, artificial intelligence, and wearables

• Helping people understand that their health is individual.

The WHSO reached out this past February to organize an almost-impromptu conference by inviting impressive academic and advisory experts from the World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Societies, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Science, Institute of Materia Medica–Fudan University, Institute for Functional Medicine, Duquesne University, Samueli Foundation, Harvard University Integrative Medicine, American Traditional Chinese Medicine Society, and other organizations.

About the Whso

The World Health Science Organization is organized as a nonprofit corporation in the United States with three primary purposes:

• (1)Scientific research to demonstrate the value of fusing key philosophies of various international health and medicine disciplines for dispelling the root causes of diseases
• (2)Education and advocacy to promote recognition of demonstrated value of these approaches throughout the world
• (3)Developing recognized standards—that can be applied internationally in support of this international health fusion—comprising specifications; test methods; and supportive reference materials for verifying the authenticity of ingredients for foods, dietary supplements, and other approaches.

Conference Overview

The purpose of the 2019 Conference of the Academic and Advisory Committee was to develop organizational goals for the coming year in the areas of:

• Defining the optimal mechanisms for interaction between international traditional Medicine disciplines and Western Medicine approaches for addressing the root causes of disease

• Collaborating on approaches to effective engagement of stakeholders (providers, consumers, payors, etc.) for developing greater acceptance of integrated Eastern and Western approaches to dispelling the root causes of disease

• Selecting research foci, including goals for English-language articles, for addressing interaction of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine approaches to delineate the root causes of disease

• Establishing requirements for a research infrastructure for achieving the outlined research goals.

• Developing the WHSO “Harmony Town” campus to include facilities and a “Compendium Medica Herbal Reference Garden”

• Identifying additional resources to facilitate the mission of the WHSO for 2019.

For this conference, the WHSO brought together an international panel of leaders in academia, government, and industry, as noted above, for science-driven discussions that explored the opportunities and challenges while recognizing the value of centuries-old traditional medicine disciplines. An underlying theme was how to maximize the benefit of these approaches and tools to expand social benefits through improved global health.

Your Editor-in-Chief attended the conference and shared/observed the excitement of the WHSO. Bottom line: I met with WHSO experts William Lane, MD, Chief Executive Officer, and Lewis A. Hofmann, MD., Co-Chair of the Academic and Advisory Committee. These 2 people along with Mr. Ci are building a world map with routes that, over time, might fuse our knowledge of Eastern and Western Medicines into one Medicine to have a lasting global impact. These are formidable challenges—not for the lighthearted.