SARS -- the mystery disease

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Recently Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has been spreading all over the world. Public anxiety and nervousness suddenly shot sky-high. Many people were wearing masks to avoid the contagious disease. The cause of this epidemic disease is unknown according to conventional Western medicine, therefore there is no proper medical treatment for SARS.

However, there has been a name for diseases like SARS for thousands of years: it is called Wind Syndrome in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Wind Syndrome is most likely to occur in a very windy season -- spring. Wind Syndrome is very similar to 'flu syndrome' in Western medicine. It always peaks in very windy weather and spreads as quickly as the wind. The most common Wind Syndromes are measles, German measles, smallpox, influenza and other contagious viral infections.

Thanks to the medical scientists who have come up with different vaccines to treat specific viruses, many contagious infections have been contained in past decades. Unfortunately, new types of viruses like SARS are still a mystery to medical science at this time. It is very likely that in the future, the virus that causes SARS will be recognized and a specific vaccine will be developed. However, the reality is that for every vaccine that is discovered to conquer a new viral disease, there is always a new, possibly mutated strain of virus that resists the vaccine. History has shown that Western medical treatment for new virus strains is always well behind the appearance of the new disease. It is very easy to run out of weapons if a disease is treated too specifically.

All Wind Syndromes share one common weakness: they 'fear' good circulation. Wind Syndromes always like to invade people who have poor circulation. The common strategy to treat any Wind Syndrome is to treat the circulation first; when circulation has improved, the Wind Syndrome will disappear, even without direct treatment.

Medicine is a reflection of the way we deal with the universe. The way we treat disease is no different from the way we solve social and global issues: we break everything down, isolate parts, compartmentalize and address certain parts and not others. For instance, we have been facing global terrorism since September 11, 2001. We may ask ourselves, can we get rid of all terrorists if we concentrate on targeting them to the exclusion of all other considerations? Will all future terrorist attacks stop if we actually catch Bin Laden?