This website is in Chinese but presents a perfect example how in China truth and science has won little respect. There is this guy by the name Li, Yuehua, who owns a private Chinese medicine clinic in Wuhan, the city where the first Coronavirus case was reported and the place with the largest number of patients in China and world. Although he graduated from a state run, highly selective medical school, for some unknown reason he was never granted a license to practice medicine. Actually to say “for unknown reasons” is not accurate, as I have read another report saying that because he was openly critical of a corrupted superior shortly after graduation, he was deprived of the chance of getting a legal license. Like many reports from China, there are gaps of facts in the news, which is itself a sign of low or weak demand for truth and facts.
Anyway, if there were no Covid-19 pandemic crisis, Mr. Li most likely would remain unknown to the public for the rest of his life. The coronavirus offered a unique chance for him to be a celebrity, or more accurately a highly controversial public figure. Some praised his bravery and dedication to public health (Mr. Li was among the earliest medical practitioners voluntarily petitioned to go to the center of emergency treatment, yet was not accepted, apparently due to his lacking of authentic medical license). Others criticized Mr. Li as a liar or a cheater leveraging superstition or non-scientific beliefs. To put this on record, Mr. Li did pay his own pocket money to get a fake license, whose inauthentic nature has since been confirmed by the provincial healthcare agency. Critics thus obtained an easy weapon for denouncing Mr. Li.
What makes this case noticeable is this: Among the debating parties very few have demanded for giving prioritized attention to the effectiveness of Mr. Li’s regime of treatment. The Hubei province (to which the city of Wuhan belongs) governmental agency was preoccupied with condemning Mr. Li for using a fake license, but did little further to lead a much needed investigation of the patients who voluntarily chose Mr. Li for a last resort treatment, mostly through word of mouth from other patients who initially tested positive for the virus but later negative after visiting Mr. Li’s clinic (or were home visited by Mr. Li, whose clinic was closed among other businesses in the city due to the fear of pandemic).
Even more interesting is the fact that Mr. Li was exposed to the public not because his treatment per se, but because a retired government officer by the name Chen, Beiyang, formally the associated director of the judiciary department in Hubei province, went to Mr. Li for help after finding coronavirus positive on February 3rd. Feeling desperate after failure to secure himself and his family members beds in the local hospital, Mr. Chen turned to Mr. Li for saving his life, again based on word of mouth from his friends. Mr. Li paid Mr. Chen a home visit and used his invented method, which he successfully applied for a patent in China, to all three people of his family. Sure enough, all three of them were later tested negative with the virus, three days after the treatment for the retiree officer, four days for his wife and seven days for their son.
In China but hardly anywhere else in the world, government officers carry a lot of clout and they are effectively celebrities, even the retired ones. The statement from Mr. Chen the retired officer has greatly pushed the newsworthy value of Mr. Li, suddenly made him a public figure. See my other blog on how Chinese respect power and money, and this is just another story proving the case.
But this hardly makes any sense, when people’s lives are at stake, at a time when they need as many ways of treating the ills as possible, someone was blocked of the entry just because he has no formal license! Give Mr. Li a chance and let him prove himself with more patients. After all, this guy is the only medical practitioner who has tested his own method of treatment first on his own body and proven safe. He is also the only one spending extensive periods of time with virus positive patients without wearing a facial mask and still tested negative! He has shown a high confidence on his own regime. Do we really want to give him (or anyone else for that matter) a guilty verdict even when he has proven himself a value-adding guy to the crisis! Come on people! Come on Chinese government! Let us be serious about saving lives!