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Session 2: Clinical studies and clinical application of traditional & indigenous medicine
KEYNOTE LECTURE

Ethical Considerations in Conducting Human Research in Indi-

genous and Traditional Medicine

Vichai Chokevivat
Chairman, EC of Traditional and Alternative Medicine Department for the Development of Thai
Traditional & Alternation Medicine, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand

Introduction
The World Health Assembly issued the Resolution regarding the goal to achieve çHealth for All by the year 2000é in
1977. Later on, meetings were therefore held to consider strategies to achieve that goal. It was concluded that in addition
to modern medicine, it was necessary to rely on traditional medicine of each country to reach this challenging and
magnificent goal.
Traditional medicines of each country and each community are mostly overlooked and neglected for a long period of
time because of prior misbelief that traditional medicine is obsolete, non-scientific, useless, and dangerous, while modern
medicine is the answers to all health problems.
Since the time when scientists discovered the çmagic bulleté called çantibioticsé which have later been widely and
successfully used in medical care to help doctors overcome infectious diseases, the previous main killers of millions of
people. In addition, vaccines were also invented to prevent against various infections leading to a complete eradication of
smallpox from the face of the earth. In addition, scientists have also been able to develop efficient process of food
production by Green Revolution which can drastically reduce the problem of malnutrition. This, together with the improve-
ment of sanitation system, led to the myth that modern medicine alone will overcome serious diseases and successfully
solve major worldûs health problems. As a result, traditional medicines of each country and each community are therefore
neglected and have not been developed or made good use of.
Later on, it was found that modern medicine has faced several limitations, namely:
- The cost of medical care and medicines are more and more costly making modern medicine health care
unaffordable and inaccessible for many people.
- The distribution of medical service and healthcare personnel has much limitation.
- The results of the treatments are still not satisfactory, especially for chronic diseases and diseases related to
social pathology.
- Many modern medicine therapies often cause some serious side effects and adverse events.
Therefore, when we will make use of traditional medicine, it is very necessary to revive and develop the traditional
knowledge in order to prove or confirm two major points, namely Safety and Efficacy.

Myths about Traditional Medicine
There are myths among both general public and traditional medicine practi-tioners that traditional medicine, par-
ticularly commonly used medicines derived from herbs and medicinal plants are safe because they come from nature and
have long history of use. Such believes are widely accepted, especially when there are a lot of çnewsé or çdataé on toxicities
and serious adverse drug reactions caused by medicines and therapeutic methods used in modern medicine.