UN's
profound concern about our global village
At the time when people were about to step into the second millennium,
two great men of our time – Kofi Annan, The Secretary General of
UN, and Sri Lama Gangchen Tulku Pinpochen, Chairman of UN World Peace
Foundation, launched a sincere appeal to us, addressing to people
attending the unveiling ceremony of placing the bronze elephant presented
to UN by Governments of Kenya, Namibia and Nepal, initiated by UN
World Peace Foundation on November 18, 1998:“…it teaches us that
if our global village is to be truly desirable place for all of us
on this planet, it must be guided by a wish to nurture and preserve
and not to threaten or destroy, the variety of life that give it value…”
This good act and maxim, which will be gone down in history, is expressing
their deep love for the lives in the global village and their high
expectations for human protection for our global village and showing
their concern over and anxiety about “What will the new century bring
to our global village?”
We are facing the significant discoveries in life sciences, therefore,
the question is: can we wisely and humanely make full use of our new
knowledge to bring benefit to future generations, to our living beings
- companions in our global village and to the planet, in which we
share together.
In the past century, mankind opened Pandora's Box over and over and
discovered ozone layer cavity, warming up of the climate of the earth,
expansion of desert, extinction of species and the threat of nuclear
weapons, etc. And after the sheep clone appeared, people worry about
if once the “Pandora box of human clone”opened, who knows what kinds
of demons would appear…? More and more people realized that with
the increased impact produced by science and modern technology on
all fields of the society, the significant problem for people who
entered the new millennium is: How to promote the human civilization
with science and technology as the core? How to control the process
of human civilization?
Mr. K. Annan's maxim has put a solemn subject of study before us:
How should all mankind strive unanimously to guarantee the healthy
development of science to make more and more benefit to society? How
to establish a standard of scientific ethics to protect against abuse
of science resulted in negative effect? How to defend and develop
our global village with achievements of science?
Mr. Annan's maxim and Sri Lama Gangchen 's good act made a solemn
appeal to us: the development of science in the new century should
be full of humanity and more responsibility. Science has become the
main means to fill in the gaps in the world’s economic society, and
therefore science should serve the people more consciously for their
interests, to meet their needs in development of themselves, and to
struggle against diseases and natural calamity. That's the purpose
of “humanity” in science.
Millennium:
Man’s Bright future and anxiety
The world has seen the second millennium. When the previous millennium
came, mankind stepped from the ages of barbarism and savage into
the age of civilization. During the millennium, science and democracy
promoted the course of history, mankind created an unprecedented
brilliance. Being at the beginning of the new millennium and looking
back on the history of human society, we feel the shaking power
of science, respect and admire the great scientists. Their achievements
have made us realize that it was through the indomitable seeking
by innumerable physicists and chemists for the essence of Nature
that the secrets of “dead”matter in this world have been proven
before people enter the third millennium, and it was through the
assiduous exploration by countless life scientists that in 20th
century bi – spiral structure of DNA was decoded, molecular biotechnology
was founded and an illustrated catalogue of human gene was drawn,
thus a new era of a comprehensive and profound “living”matter
opened up.
The 20th century - the century of physics-chemistry. In this century
great and plentiful achievements were created and it has made the
people enter the civilized society which they take as an honor and
in which they freely enjoy the bounty of Nature.
The 21st century - the century of life sciences. It will create
a completely new era in which people will live a happy and peaceful
life and in their full span. It will be a century of biotechnology,
which will create a new world the mankinds have never seen – a
new world entirely different from the past and the present. In the
coming dozens of years the ways of human life will be changed more
essentially than the changes during past 1000 years, i.e. farmers
and land won't be needed in history for the first time; foods and
clothing will be got from indoor huge bacterium culture trough;
reproduction will be more and more replaced by duplication, animal
clone will be got accustomed to people; million people will have
an illustrated catalogue of human gene of their own in details,
by which they will be able to survey from distance the future of
the lives of themselves; a couple will be able to bear children
by choosing an artificial womb; and the human embryo gene modification
will not only redress the human genetic diseases, but also improve
their hereditary innate quality of their character, behavior, intelligence
and physical stature. The world of life sciences will realize man's
dream: providing the world plentiful vegetable and animal foods
produced by genetic engineering, lifting mankind out of starvation
for ever: the energy resources and fiber produced by means guided
by genetics will promote trade and set up a “regenerative”society;
The wonderful genetic therapy will liberate human beings from suffering
from illness and help transformation of themselves as much as they
like.
They century of life sciences will soon create such reality: the
process of evolution completed for several hundred thousands years
on normal condition can be accomplished over a night; machinery
of life heredity and life development is being controlled, people
are producing new living beings whose basic characters have been
changed. However, while we are nearing the “unprecedented new century”
step by step, we are surrounded by a worrying question: “At what
costs have humanity to pay for all this?”
Misgivings caused by new genetic sciences have surpassed all puzzlements
caused by any other technological revolutions in human history.
When we redrew an illustrated catalogue of human genes for life,
have we broken the process of evolution lasted hundreds of millions
of years and caused consequences beyond any help? Would the “pioneering
work” of artificial life making lead to destruction of natural
world? If the world is full of living things produced by cloning,
chiming and gene – transforming, will human beings themselves become
extraterrestrial – like monsters? What will it mean, if all babies
are designed genetically and being made to adults’ order and produced
according to their wishes, while adults are categorized and identified
as of noble and low classes? Haven't we realized the risk from attempt
to design “superman”? If countless living things produced by genetic
engineering have been released and distributed into the environment,
would it cause an irreversible damage to the biosphere on the earth
and form genetic pollution, which will bring about a threat more
grave than nuclear and petrochemical pollution? If the gene pool
in the globe village is reduced and transformed as patent intellectual
property rights on genes controlled by few life scientific corporations
in a monopoly way, what serious consequences will it bring about
to the world economy and whole human society? If life is to become
a creature under patent rights, what impact will be made on our
ultimate belief that life is sacred and it has inner value? If all
kinds of forms of living things are taken as an “invention” and
“commercial property”, what impact would it make on the growth
of the younger generations? Annoying questions such as these have
been placed in front of humanity who has stepped onto the never
– return journey of the “unprecedented new world”in the new millennium.
“The century of life sciences” is much like the agreement between
Faust and the Devil. It reveals a bright and hopeful future to be
changing with each passing day, while putting a harsh, unavoidable
and difficult problem full of challenges to mankind. The attempt
of the “century of life sciences” is just like a double – edged
sword: it helps bumper harvest for the people and does serious harm
as well. Now the most serious problem confronting us is: How to
concentrate on deriving benefits and avoid losses in using the biotechnology?
As the head of the global village, how should mankind treat all
villagers there? How to deal with them selves and what to do with
our homeland - global village?
Mankind's
reexamining sciences: discovery of natural medicine
In January, 1988, the declaration of Paris Meeting of World's Nobel
prize laureates pointed out : “ If mankind wishes to continue to
live in 21st century, they should look back through the past 2500
years ago to absorb the wisdom of Confucius”. On December 7, 1999,
Mr. Jeremy Rifkin, president of US Economic Trend Fund, wrote in
Washington D. C.: “Maybe also the century of biotechnology will
become the century of the Chinese”. Formulators of policy, leaders
of business circles, scholars and non-governmental organizations
from all parts of the world are more and more placing their hopes
on China and looking forward to full play of China's leadership
in the new era in world history. I hope that the Chinese people
will play an important role in global discussion on rational use
of gene - technology.
American scholar Mr. Philip Hench, the 1950 Nobel Prize laureate
in medicine for the discovery of adrenal cortex hormone, said: “There
are special mysteries in ancient Chinese medical classics. Many
medicines from them give very advanced clinical effects that can
be served as basis of model medicine. If not, why are they so efficacious?
Anyway, modern medical scientists haven't known the essence of their
profundity and subtlety.”
So, these most true sayings have expressed the farsighted view and
superior insight of these industrious sage masters: Chinese culture
and natural medicine have given inspiration to us that mankind should
reexamine sciences, thus establishing a new century of combination
of modern life sciences and traditional natural medicine.
The discovery of primitive bone needles of “Upper Cave Man” has
verified that the Chinese natural medicine originated in the late
period of the Old Stone Age that was 40 thousand years ago. With
their exceptional wisdom, Chinese sages discovered the main and
collateral channels inside human body 2500 years ago at least, thus
creating the unrivalled theory of acupuncture and moxibustion for
the channels. Chinese medicine is the most valuable scientific wealth
produced by the Chinese nation, and the contribution to mankind.
It should be the first and the most important invention among the
four great ancient inventions by the Chinese - paper making, gunpowder,
compass and printing.
Facing the universe, boundless and indistinct, the Chinese fixes
their attention on the time flying and continuing, taking the Nature
as the process of unceasing evolution of life. The Chinese base
themselves on entirety, which is the basic character of life. The
main existing from of the entirety and life is time, and the time,
as a dimension of entirety, is inseparable, therefore, the entirety
ideology of the Chinese is deepened by attention fixed on life and
time. The supreme ethic outlook of Chinese on life is that human
beings and all living things are in the same time boat, coexisting
and co – prospering. Outlook on entirety and outlook on life in
its broad sense impels the Chinese to emphasize everything's functions
and relations. Shape is governed by functions, which is the basic
essence of life. Without the functions, there is no life at all,
and the shape would break up immediately after this, and therefore
functions are of more vital importance than shape. So the striking
feature of the Chinese traditional medicine is that all objects
being researched by it are living human beings, who think and feel.
The Chinese traditional medicine overemphasizes the special significance
and the key function of spirit for life, and therefore, spirit is
the supreme function of human body. It is not the organs of living
beings that the spirit controls, but the functional structural relations
of human body as a living entirety. To the essence of the matter,
the Chinese traditional medicine serves to help disease – resistant,
i.e. to help people to recover and raise their born possessed capability
of immunity from diseases and regulation and to arouse the latent
energy of human body, thus achieving the goal to exorcise illness
and improve health. This just embodies the theory that man is integral
part of nature and that the subject and object are in perfect harmony
in therapeutics.
The western culture and the Chinese culture have just formed exactly
a beautiful pattern of symmetry. Westerners think more greatly of
space than of time and take the world as the world of physics. In
view of this fact, westerners like analysis, laying special emphasis
on researches of tangible substances and the structure of them.
They stress the independent value of individuals in community and
the fundamental action of the parts as a whole on entirety, and
therefore, research in an isolate and experimental way is at the
focus of attention. These characteristics have decided that the
basis of the western medicine must have been based on anatomy and
physiology. They put the stress on research of human body's tissue
organs and its chemical structure, but they lack the investigation
into human beings as a whole. In pathogens and therapeutics they
have concentrated their effort on discovery of tangible pathogenic
factors and the accurate location of injury, so that they can directly
remove the cause of disease and repair the injured parts of the
body, using chemical medicines and other therapies.
Surveying comprehensively the mode of thinking, we can find that
the Chinese culture is the culture of time, and the western culture
is the culture of space. It is just both the two cultures, respectively
having the tendencies of Yin and Yang, that have created the two
different ideological systems, establishing the modern medical system
represented by western medicine and the system of natural medicine
represented by the Chinese medicine.
The natural medicine, especially the Chinese medicine, is of ancient
origin and long development. It has concepts and categories that
are very deep and extensive. With its depth and breadth of its content
and the high standard of scientific thinking displayed in it, the
Chinese medicine can well stand side by side with the western modern
medicine. Along with the development of the human society, the two
main medical systems – the natural medicine and the modern medicine
finally met in the 19th century and joined hands in the 20th century.
Since mankind stepped into the 20th century, the modern life sciences
– molecular biology, biochemistry, biophysics and physiology have
developed vigorously and “collided” with the traditional theories
of natural medicine – the theory of channels and collaterals, the
theory of holographic embryo and the theory of Yin and Yang, thus
ushering a new era to decipher the secrets in the theory of natural
medicine with the help of the modern life sciences, that will make
the 21st century a new century, in which the modern life sciences
are combined with the traditional natural medicine.
Mankind's
self – reexamining: founding the world's completely new medicine
of the 21st century
Since mankind entered the 20 century, along with the appearance
of the increasingly serious social, environmental and ecological
problems, and the transformation of medical patterns and the changes
in oncology, the medical system characterized by the theory of antagonisms
of heaven / Nature and man and the antagonizable treatment have
been pounded in its vigorous development, while the natural medicine,
characterized by the theory of combination of life action in human
body with the changes in Nature, has attracted worldwide attention
and set off upsurge waves in international medical circles.
The main body pattern of the western modern medicine is: the human
body is regarded as the isolated closed system and contends with
the pathogenic factors in its living environment. Outside the body,
the chemical sterilization and the bacteriostat are applied, inside
the body; scalpels are used to get rid of the focus of diseases.
That's being called “antagonistic medicine” for short. This kind
of medical pattern opened up a brilliant chapter to mankind to make
many pestilences / epidemics, endangered human life, become almost
extinct and to help man’s average life span being much increased.
However, mankind didn't begin to recognize till the latter half
of 20 century, that they couldn't help themselves thoroughly free
from troubles from diseases only by chemical medicines and scalpels,
and neither could they greatly improve the quality of survival of
life. The reason is that human being is the complex open system,
and many diseases are originated in the human body itself, and insistence
on the antagonism in treatment means deviating from the definition
of medicine itself, and moreover, the quality of human life more
often depends on the coordination of human beings with their inner
and external circumstances, and medicine can not find any antagonist
at all there.
Along with a lot of simple pathogenetic diseases being better controlled,
other complex pathogenetic “mental and physical diseases”are challenging
to human medicine. Facing the physiological / pathological changes,
closely related with both mental and psychological factors, medicine
has lost its antagonist again, and there, the chemical weapons for
medical use seems powerless, and ,moreover, the scalpels cannot
do anything to help.
Today, when our global village, in which we rely for existence,
atmosphere, soil, grain, vegetables, meats and dairy products, even
drinking water have been polluted to varying degrees, and mankind
are facing a large number of species being close to completely being
lost, can the clinical constantly used chemical medicines and scalpels
work out a solution for any problems? At best, when canceration
appeared inside the body, medicine can early diagnose it and remove
it, however, the cancer cells, originally transformed from the healthy
cells, cannot be put an end to thoroughly by outside force in theory.
Moreover, human organism is still always suffering from diseases
caused by improper cure and a lot of effective and specific drugs
are just the pathogenic factors to human body. The abuse of antibiotic
drugs must lead to producing drug – resistant bacteriostrain, and
the abuse of chemical medicines have caused manslaughter of million
people per year and other potential dangers caused by improper treatment
have being revealing constantly.
What that more and more makes us worry about is that the blind reorganization
of genes is dimly appearing in the brilliant perspective of biotechnology.
It will bring a shadow of disasters in physiology, pathology, laws
and ethics to mankind that will bring a potential crisis to our
home – our global village, where we depend for existence.
This crisis of mankind has brought close attention of the people
of insight. But, how should mankind remove this crisis？The answer
is:
* Popularize the oriental culture represented by the culture of
the Chinese nation, integrate both oriental and western pluralistic
cultures to establish the world's new cultural system;
* Devote major efforts to developing natural medicine, set out the
21 century world's completely new medical system combined the modern
medicine and the natural medicine.
Realizing
Annan's maxim: establishing World Natural Medicine Organization
(WNMO)
With deep feeling, looking back on Mr. Annan's maxim - “Defend
our global village”, facing the challenges and crisis before people,
who stepped into the “unprecedented new world”, we are appealing
for establishment of the World Natural Medicine Organization under
the leadership of UN. The aim of WNMO is:
Do our best to decrease and avert the harm subjected by our coming
generations and the other living beings in the global village. Don't
permit cloning of anybody. Don’t permit any hereditary discrimination
to anyone. Any technology of any new genetic engineering put on
market must be examined thoroughly.
* Abide by and realize the basic codes of the 21 century sciences:
the human peace cause is the supremacy, science must serve the peace
cause completely; respect human dignity and rights; respect and
protect the other life forms / life beings and ecosystem on the
earth; scientific knowledge should be spread and shared in a fair
and reasonable way. Only by observance and recognition of these
codes, it can be certain that science can serve mankind for their
interests.
* Strive to ensure the healthy development of sciences. All scientists
should keep self control / discipline and take oath in public to
hold themselves responsible to the society.
* Have an open dialogue facing the public on advantages and disadvantages
of the new biotechnology for the realization of the sustained development
of mankind and our global village.
* Make contributions to the early realization of the aim – “Everyone
enjoys health care” raised by UN.
* Make an effort to realize the definition of health given by WHO,
that “health means not only the condition without illness, but
also the happy stare or the complete peacefulness, physically, mentally
and socially”.
* Wish that human life sciences will accomplish the great rejuvenation
– the biology based on molecular chemistry will transform into
the theory of channels and collaterals in human body based on quantum
physics.
* Wish that all people will survive man’s natural span of life
in 21 century.
The initiator: Sri Lama Gangchen Tulku Pinpochen
This declaration
initiated by Mr. Gangchen, president of UN World Peace Foundation,
is aimed for establishment of WNMO to realize above – mentioned
purposes, thus giving mankind eternal peacefulness in their hearts
and the world peace.
This declaration has been planned and initiated by Chairman Gangchen,
Chairman Wang Jiayou(China), Prof. Dr. Tom Wu(U.S.A.), Prof Dr.
Yu. Hairuo(China), Prof Dr. Sir Ravi Ponniah(U.K.), Prof. Dr. Zhang
Baocheng(China).
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