In December 2007, full-page reports appeared over three days in Hong
Kong's Chinese-language Wen Wei Po newspaper, the mouthpiece of the
Chinese Government in Hong Kong. The reporter undertook a four-month
undercover investigation of bear farming, with the help of Animals Asia. Although these articles exposed the horrors of bear farming, I felt they did not adequately explain the pharmacology of bear bile and why its use is no longer necessary. This explanation is a critical piece of this puzzle. The resulting letter was translated into Chinese and submitted, with the help of Animals Asia Foundation, to the president of Wen Wei Po.
Mr Zhang Guo Liang President Wen Wei Po
Dear Mr. Zhang,
I
represent a group of concerned doctors here in the United States. We
have read your recent articles on the bear bile industry. We have been
aware of bear farming for many years and are, like many individuals,
distressed by the suffering of these animals. As interested physicians,
we would like to express our viewpoint on several issues. Perhaps this
will be helpful to those who find the relationship of bear bile to
pharmaceuticals confusing.
By way of background, bile is a
liquid produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. This
mixture of acids, cholesterol, water, and electrolytes aids in the
digestion of food. The bile of all mammals contains a chemical called
ursodeoxycholic acid or UDCA. UDCA is chemically very different from
the other bile acids, which may account for its healing properties, and
it has been recognized for at least forty years to be the therapeutic
element of bear bile. For reasons we don’t fully understand, bears have
more UDCA in their bile than other animals, which may explain the
historical basis for bear bile use in traditional Chinese medicine. We
have never seen any evidence that there are any other therapeutic
constituents of bear bile. This may be due to the corrosive nature of
bile, which destroys most other substances including proteins and amino
acids.
The effects of pharmaceutical UDCA on human systems have
been studied extensively, resulting in the use of this drug worldwide
for a number of specific diseases. These include primary biliary
cirrhosis, sclerosing cholangitis, and gallstone disease. The potential
application of UDCA in humans does not end there. Active research in
the treatment of neurological disease, eye disease, and heart attack is
promising.
This UDCA, a medication taken by millions of
patients, is not taken from bears. It is produced by pharmaceutical
companies from bile collected in slaughterhouses. The end result is a
pharmaceutical product which is of known potency and purity, widely
available under various trade names. It is our view that this
medication has made the use of bear bile unnecessary. That being said,
we suppose that if individuals wish to consume bile for indications
that do not require the therapeutic properties of UDCA, bile of many
types is readily available.
We find a number of flaws with bear
farm products when they are considered as medicines. Farmed bears have
a high rate of liver cancers, which are probably the result of chronic
infection and inflammation of the gall bladder and liver. This, coupled
with the collection techniques, results in bile that contains pus
(white blood cells), debris, skin cells, and other impurities. We
wonder if some of these elements are present in the compounds ingested
by patients. In addition, it is difficult to know how much active drug
is present in each sample. After all, each bear produces different
amounts of UDCA at different times.
We want to stress that we do
not intend to criticize traditional Chinese medicine for its use of
bear bile. Bear bile was once a necessary part of their methods and we,
along with millions of patients worldwide, are grateful for the
discovery of UDCA by traditional Chinese medicine. That being said,
change and evolution are a part of all progress, and while Western
medicine has learned and benefited from traditional medicine,
traditional medicine can do the same by making bear bile a part of its
past.
Knowledge is power. UDCA is an important pharmaceutical
which has the potential to improve human health. We hope that the
governments of China and other Asian countries that now sanction bear
farming will recognize this logic and act in the best interest of
patients requiring UDCA and the bears that are part of this industry.
By eliminating bear bile and publicly supporting the use of these
widely available, clinically proven pharmaceuticals, these countries
can actually enhance the health of those who need the benefits of UDCA
while putting an end to bear farming.
Finally, there will be
those who will dispute what we have said. They will refer to special
elements of bile that cannot be reproduced in any pharmaceutical. With
that in mind, we wonder how the confinement, pain, debilitation, and
untimely death of the farm bear affect the healing properties that are
attributed to its bile. The chi in a bear subjected to these conditions
must be weak indeed.
The best health care involves the mixture
of compassion, knowledge, skill, and those intangible elements that
cannot be explained. We respectfully suggest that the use of bear bile
is not only unnecessary, but also inconsistent with these ideals. We
are hopeful that those who are receptive to change will find the facts
and ideas presented herein helpful, and that our thoughts can spark a
new debate on these important issues.
Respectfully,
Eric H. Busch M.D. New Orleans, Louisiana January 23, 2008
