Shanghai Hutchison Pharmaceutical Ltd. - Corporate Visit

China has two parallel, yet distinct, paths of medicine: Western medicine (hospitals, prescription drugs, over-the-counters) and traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM (combinations of herbs and minerals in a formula prescribed by a TCM doctor and concocted either by a TCM pharmacist, or by a company specializing in manufacturing TCM drugs). In contrast to our Johnson & Johnson visit yesterday, today we toured Shanghai Hutchison Pharmaceutical (SHP), a manufacturer of TCM. SHP has the proprietary rights to its own secret formulas of TCM medicines, which they manufacture into pills or liquids for sale as either OTCs or prescriptions (depending on Chinese regulation) as a ready-made alternative to the traditional concoction by a TCM pharmacist (which would then be taken home and boiled into a soup for consumption). TCM is centuries old and based on the philosophy that ill health is the result of an imbalance of the body/mind's positivity/negativity (yinyang) and/or the body's five elements (fire, wind, earth, water, and minerals/metals). The prescribed TCM medicines help to restore the body's imbalance, thus remedying the patients' ill health, or so the thinking goes. Although the Chinese populations' belief in TCM decreases with the level of education obtained, there is strong correlation between the TCM treatments and improved health, though no real scientific proof. For more information on TCM, CLICK HERE.