Comm: "For more than 5000 years traditional Chinese medicine, commonly called TCM has been used in China. More than a billion Chinese rely on it, and increasingly people around the world are turning to this kind of alternative medicine. This man has ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gerrick's disease. After American doctors told him there was no treatment available he came to China to try the Chinese approach to illness."

Christopher Langer: "I was surprised how fast it worked. Within 2 days of starting the prescription I noticed a dramatic reduction in vesiculation and twitching and spasms that I was erm experiencing. "

Comm: "The earth is experiencing the most rapid extinction of species in history. Many graceful and unique life forms are now threatened. Conservationists are convinced that traditional medicine is at least partly responsible for their destruction. In Japan this man is offering tiger bone for sale for medicinal purposes. This illegal trade was exposed using a hidden video camera by activists working for the independent environment investigation agency, EIA."

Translator: "We only use the shinbone off the front legs for medicinal use. Not the back legs which have no power. Tigers use their front legs to catch their prey you see."

John Sellar: "Certainly you're battling against the criminal element all the time. I mean Interpol erm feels that wildlife crime is now probably the second largest criminal activity against erm in the world, buying narcotics."

Comm: "This week's Earth Report examines the link between traditional Chinese medicine and endangered species. It presents a look at both sides of the issue and shows how 2 disparate communities are trying to work together before more wild plants and animals get sick to death.

"Traditional Chinese medicine is an ancient practise moving into the modern world.

"Taught in many countries and relied on by more and more people TCM is the fastest growing traditional medicine on earth and a huge business. It's success lies in the belief that natural products are better than synthesised ones. What has worked for a billion Chinese for thousands of years can be good for everyone. The conservation movement has for several decades been attacking all those industries they see as responsible for the destruction of wildlife. The fashion industry has been heavily targeted. Advocates for wildlife protection have not limited their attacks to the fashion world. They point also to the destruction of habitat. Perhaps the single devastating reason for the endangerment of species. It is no longer enough to talk about individual species. Entire eco-systems are threatened. Every minute sees another 20 hectares of forest destroyed."

Dr. Yu Chang Qing: "Few people realise the importance of our fellow species. Mankind must co-exist with them on the earth. Otherwise human beings, like other species, will be facing extinction."

Comm: "Wildlife awareness campaigns have had some success."

John Sellar: "It became unfashionable to use tigers as spread out in your living room floor. Erm it became unfashionable with a rhino horn handle, a substitute was replaced. And I think a lot of people felt right, we've got these erm obvious problems apparently under control, the numbers should start coming back up.Then of course it then emerged that a lot of tigers were also being shipped, smuggled across to China and their parts and derivatives were being processed and turned into medicinal products."

Dr. Paul But: "Concerning endangered species the blame has always landed on Chinese medicine. Perhaps. OK, because I am a Chinese, I was brought up with Chinese medicine and I spend much of my time doing research on Chinese medicine, simply I believe Chinese medicine works."

Comm: "Defenders claim the accusation that traditional Chinese medicine endangers wildlife is unfair. They say that TCM is in harmony with nature and not opposed to it. And that strict laws regulate the use of products made from endangered wildlife."

Ren De Quan: "We think you would never certify medicine with tiger bone and rhino horns and this has a very simple reason. When we certify new medicine we are doing it for 1.2 billion people, how could we foolishly rely on one of the world's endangered wild resources as a basis for a new medicine?"

Comm: "The origins of Chinese medicine are somewhat obscure. Until recently folklore and experience have played the largest role in the development of traditional Chinese medicine and modern TCM is a continuation of thousands of years of medical practice. The mythic father of Chinese medicine, Shin Nong is credited with personally tasting and testing hundreds of different substances to determine their medical properties. Chinese medicines are derived from many natural substances. Wild plants and animals have traditionally been preferred for potency.

"Chinese medicines are compounds of a number of substances, rarely a single ingredient. The combination of different substances is believed to enhance healing qualities. Confucian philosophy prohibited surgery, the traditional procedures that evolved included acupuncture, moxibustion and massage. And though Western science has yet to analyse how acupuncture works it now widely accepted in the West."

Dr. Li Jin Qiang: "Acupuncture is a precision tool of TCM. It is extraordinary. It has the ability to treat conditions considered untreatable by a Western medicine. For example facial paralysis. Other methods of treatment simply can't match acupuncture."

Comm: "Cupping draws the blood to certain areas by creating a vacuum under a heated cup. In moxibustion burning herbs are used to infuse a sensitised area with the healing properties of smouldering medicines. Massage is applied to simulate the body's Median system. For the last few decades the TCM community has been concentrating on scientific research, regulation and standardisation. In the modern world traditional Chinese medicine is going global."

Prof Long Zhi Xian: "Western medicine is seeking to understand Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine is spreading around the world. This is a trend. In the last 20 years of China's opening up with cultural, scientific and medical exchange. Chinese medicine is taken seriously and used in over a 130 countries."

Comm: "People from all over the world are beginning to value a health system that is holistic, based on natural materials and keeping the body in balance."

Dr Wang and Langer: "I saw Dr Wang in the Summer of 98 and he was a very helpful and very generous man. He evaluated my condition and provided me the medicine."

Comm: "This man is just one of millions in the West who now believe in traditional Chinese medicine. He has travelled half way around the world in search of a way to treat ALS or Lou Gerrick's disease."

Dr. Wang Yang Fu: "Western medicine cannot cure your illness. Chinese medicine sees your illness this way. Its approach to this disease is by strengthening the spleen and activating the blood flow to solidify the bones and fill them with marrow to root out the cause of disease and foster a health. This can help to enhance your immunity. By strengthening your spleen you can break through blockages in your gene law or Meridian system. By activating your blood flow you can resolve those blocking substances within you body. By driving off you internal heat you can simultaneously drive off the poisonous substances within in. Now the yang in your kidney is weak so you have to take some ginseng or tender deer horns to enhance it. The cultivated ones are effective enough. These all strengthen yang."

Christopher Langer: "After doing the prescription for 2 days I went to sleep one night and I was laying there and I was like what - what's different and then I realised I'm not twitching. And to not twitch when I go to bed is like being in complete silence. It's so deafening not to be twitching. It's just - erm depth of relief you can't imagine."

Comm: "Western science is highly sceptical of claims such as this for which they see little or no scientific proof but for the chronically ill it is often a last ray of hope. Natural characteristics are what has made TCM attractive to its supporters around the world but the growing belief in this ancient health system is causing enormous pressure on certain plant and animal species, including the rhinoceros and the tiger. They have been traditionally used in Chinese medicine and now face extinction and this is the central concern of the conservation movement. Rhino horn has been traditionally used in Chinese medicine as a fever reducing agent. In the last 30 years the black rhinoceros population has plummeted from 100,000 to little over 2½ thousand. Here in Zimbabwe fewer than 350 remain."
Moses Manwa: "I feel very sad when such things are happening erm because these animals are in great, great danger for erm becoming extinct. I foresee erm very, many similar cases of such animals. These animals are just being poached for selfish reasons. Every animal erm is entitled to live on the face of this earth and future generations they will delight in seeing live such animals."

Comm: "After 45 million years of evolution the rhino has no natural enemies. They are slow to breed and easy to kill. Now very scarce a single rhinoceros horn can be worth a great deal on the illegal market. The conservation community is literally at war to save the black rhino and armed rangers patrol to prevent poaching."

Glenn Tatham: "This one was killed with an AK47 submachine gun and it's a young - a young male, just be getting into his prime."

Comm: "All around the world it's easy to find in city back streets a flourishing trade in products used for TCM. These are tiger bones. They are believed to cure to rheumatism and arthritis. The trade in tiger parts, skin, bone and penis is a key factor in the slow destruction of the tiger population."

Peter Richardson: "Internationally trade in any tiger products is banned. There's no legal way to trade in tigers over international borders. For in America and in Japan erm and in the UK erm and China also erm the main consumer countries of tiger products erm the trade is completely illegal, yet it still goes on and it's driven by highly organised criminal gangs who erm involved in the poaching at the grass roots level to the trading at the city level."

Comm: "It's not just animals at risk. Plants form the basis of most traditional Chinese medicines and these too are threatened."

Judy Mills: "I feel that without erm very strict trade controls, better trade controls and sort of a greening of erm of the medicines a quality control that would ensure that they don't contain species that are threatened in the wild, erm that it could lead to many more plants in particular becoming endangered in the wild or certainly at least threatened in the wild."

Comm: "In an effort to prevent the trafficking of endangered plant and animal species governments came together to form CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species."

C.S. Cheung: "Actually this is a convention to regulate the trade so that we can have a sustainable use of the erm animals and plants rather than the erm the misconception of erm it's a convention for banning the trade."

Comm: "To some degree CITES has worked but not as well been hoped. The people responsible for policing it have watched much of the trade driven underground and controlled by organised crime."

Vivek Menon: "Illegal trade in wildlife and its parts and products are supposed to be worth more than 20 billion dollars annually worldwide and a third of this is supposed to be illegal. As an illegal occupation Interpol rates this as second to only narcotics, even bigger than gun running or gold and silver smuggling. So erm as erm as a systemic problem this is erm very big throughout the world, it's not unique to China erm in countries as large as China or, for that matter, India, erm having laws are just not enough. Erm it's easy to have laws but it's very difficult to enforce it."

Comm: "Here in the CITES enforcement offices in Hong Kong they display confiscated medicines that contain illegal plant and animal products."

C.S. Cheung: "They know what they are doing. They know it's a very serious offence. They know what they are doing are actually wiping out the erm wildlife or the population of the wildlife but erm before them are the huge profits so they, they just don't care about it."

Vivek Menon: "Interpol has found a special working group on wildlife crime. Erm recognising the fact that international policing is required to stop this. This is no longer just killing a few animals, going out in your leisure time and hunting animals. This is international Mafia, working at its best erm to try and gain the maximum profits."

Judy Mills: "Now is the time to talk about wildlife conservation in this context and if we don't talk about it now it could be too late for many, many medicinal species."

John Sellar: "For the practitioners and consumers erm and pharmacists in the TCM community if they don't engage in this process then their supply is simply going to run out. It's not going to be there anymore."

Comm: "Perhaps the most encouraging sign is the level of education going on inside China itself. It's alerting Chinese to the potential ecological disasters caused by TCM. Concerned individuals include scientist Dr Jane Goodall and film star Jackie Chan. They are effectively promoting increased environmental awareness among Chinese."

CAPTION: When the Buying stops the killing stops too.

CAPTION: Asian Conservation Awareness Program www.acap.co.uk www.jackiewild.com An International Multimedia Campaign.

Comm: "Sponsored by the WWF the many stakeholders in this complex issue came together to discuss health people, health planet in Beijing at the end of the 20th century. Chinese government officials openly discussed with their opposite numbers from the conservation community all aspects of the controversy in a 3-day conference."

Conference Speaker: "When we first banned all trade in tiger bone and rhino horn and their medicine."

Judy Mills: "I can't believe it. It never thought I'd live to see this day. 10 years ago I never, ever thought I would see what I had seen these last few days with the traditional medicine people and wildlife conservationist sitting calmly together, speaking with one another, talking about friendship and collaboration voluntarily erm it's a miracle, it's brilliant."

Comm: "Many of the conservationists were pleasantly surprised to discover TCM practitioners taking a long-term approach to their resources."

Translator for Wang Shi Qiong: "In the medicinal garden we have about 800 species of plants. Many of the plants are rare. Our research on how to cultivate some of the most endangered species has had some success. With rare wild plants it is best if we don't harvest them in the wild. We need to protect them but then how can we meet the market needs. To do this we use cultivation."

Comm: "The banned substances, such as rhino horn and tiger bone are being replaced by alternative substances. Water buffalo horn is now routinely recommended in prescriptions that in the past would have called for rhinoceros horn. High on the Himalayan plateau researchers have found a possible alternative to tiger bones, including the bones of the silong, a mole rat that's considered a pest by local herders. But cultivation and substitution alone will not save critically endangered wildlife.
"Conservationists have realised that if endangered species used in traditional medicines are ever going to be saved the traditional medicine communities themselves must take the lead in their protection. This is proving to be an effective strategy, forging new friendships between former adversaries and bringing new hope to the protection of some of the earth's most critically endangered wildlife."