Endangered species of plants and animals have nothing to fear from Chinese Traditional Medicine (TCM) practitioners.

While rare ingredients are sometimes used in medicines, TCM experts have been working hard for years to find effective alternatives.

They claim changing habitats have had a far more devastating effect on endangered species.

Today, TCM benefits more than 1 billion people worldwide.

The history of traditional Chinese medicine has always been closely related to wild fauna and flora, said Shen Zhixiang, director of the International Co-operation Bureau of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Among the almost 13,000 ingredients used in TCM, only 80 are minerals. Of the rest, 80 per cent are fauna and flora from the wild.

A total of 161 rare and endangered wild animals under State protection, have been proven useful for medicine, Shen said.

Because of this, some international environmental groups believe that TCM is directly linked to the extinction of some species.

"This is very unfair to traditional Chinese medicine," said Zhao Runhuai, director of the Information Centre at the China Medical Material Company. Zhao has been involved in a 10-year survey of TCM materials organized by the National Chinese Medicine Administration.

Zhao acknowledged that the rising market price of certain Chinese medicine ingredients had led to a rampant collection. But the main reason why these species have become endangered is the deterioration of their habitats.

"Among the 1,000 most common materials for TCM, only 10 ingredients are from endangered species," Zhao said. "We haven't discovered one species driven to extinction by the needs of TCM."

He pointed out that medical use is just one of the reasons for the killing of wild animals and collection of wild plants. Some animals, for example, are poached for their skins.

Chinese medical circles have been studying alternative materials to replace the endangered species, Shen said.

On May 29, 1993, the State Council issued a prohibition of all trade of tiger bone and rhino horn. As early as in the 1960s, Chinese medical circles had started looking for materials to replace these two. They have found new materials with the same medical effects and put them in use.

"The protection of endangered species does not conflict with TCM," said Shen. "It encourages the Chinese medical circle to look for new ways of development such as rearing rare species and adopting bio-techniques to refine medicines."

Zhao said that China has reared over 5,000 species of animals and plants for medical use. Among them, over 200 species have entered mass production and make up over half of the raw materials needed for TCM every year.

In the past 2,000 years, musk has been used in over 300 kinds of TCM. People used to poach wild musk deer to get the ingredient.

In 1958, China started to raise musk deer and over 2,000 of them are living under human care all over the country. In the next 20 years, China will be able to produce 1,000 kilograms of musk every year with these domestic deer.

Advanced bio-techniques have also improved the quality of extracting useful elements from raw materials, and processing them into medicines that can be absorbed more easily.

"The health of the human race should not be at odds with the health of the earth," Shen said. "TCM won't say 'No' to protect endangered species."

(From China Daily)