Chapter 6. Trajectories and challenges of translating traditional Chinese medicine

Abstract The paper focuses on technoscientific translation of Chinese materia medica and acupuncture therapy, and the discursive strategies of inclusion and exclusion that charactise the related boundary-work. Examples from books by Joseph Needham, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst show that the prior attitude towards the medical mertis of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) informs decisions on ranking different types of evidence, and even where evidence is shared, they can be framed differently (emphasis framing) to support endorsement or rejection of TCM. The trajectories of some translated herbal remedies (artemisinin, changsan, mahuang) of TCM show that the uptake in institutionalized biomedicine could benefit from the medical knowledge of TCM, and that not enough trust in TCM can be epistemically detrimental or ethically objectionable. Revisiting a landmark publication linking fMRI and acupuncture-research and the ensuing retraction suggests that some of the characteristic strategies employed in boundary work around TCM can hinder the scientific understanding of TCM. The cases studied give credence to the position that TCM by now is both inside and outside science as fruitful research can provide partial maps of TCM without full translation, and that demarcating TCM by framing it as fringe science is not a reasonable option.