Philosopher, biotronicist, director of the professional chamber Sanator - Union of Biotronicists of Josef Zezulka, founder and director of the
Institute for TCIM/CAM
Content of videocongress:
0:00:42 - Foreword of Tomáš Pfeiffer
0:01:45 - Ing. Miloš Růžička – Czech Republic (guest)
0:03:56 - Main contribution of Tomáš Pfeiffer
0:19:34 - Prof. Dr. Madan Thangavelu – United Kingdom
0:35:56 - Nora Laubstein – Germany
0:52:13 - Carol Ann (McCracken) Hontz, B.S., M.Ed. – USA
1:35:19 - Prof. RNDr. Anna Strunecká, DrSc. – Czech Republic
1:50:28 - Mgr. Miloslava Rutová – Czech Republic
1:57:40 - Maximilian Moser, Ph.D. – Austria
2:11:20 - Dr. Natalia Sofia Aldana-Martinez, MD, MSc – Colombiua (guest)
2:34:32 - Tomáš Pfeiffer
2:38:43 - Bhaswati Bhattacharya, MPH, MD, PhD – USA, India
3:02:31 - John Weeks – USA (guest)
3:29:52 - Conclusion of Tomáš Pfeiffer
Transcript of the Contribution:
Good afternoon, my name is Tomáš Pfeiffer and I welcome you to the heart of Europe,
Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, a very spiritual and mysterious place
with traces of Franz Kafka, Gustav Meyrink, Josef Zezulka, Albert Einstein,
Nikola Tesla and so many other great people that there is a kind of magnetic invisible force here.
I hereby declare our WORLD HEALTH CONGRESS 2020 PRAGUE open.
It is held under the auspices of the capital city of Prague.
Today, I am pleased to welcome important world personalities within TCIM
and I am personally very much looking forward to contributions to this Congress,
as I am certain they will be very interesting.
Now let me ask the representative of the City of Prague, Mr. Miloš Růžička,
the chairman of the Committee on Health Care of the City of Prague, to say a few words.
The exceptional situation we are in requires exceptional solutions,
which is why we are opening the World Health Congress 2020 Prague online today,
and the main part of the Congress will take place on 11–13 June next year, in 2021.
It will probably be the longest congress coffee break in history.
And we hope that the main part of the Congress will be successful.
On the other hand, the coronavirus has given us time to prepare the Platform 2020 Prague,
and establishing this platform, which I am about to introduce, is the main goal of this Congress.
PLATFORM 2020 PRAHA
Let me start with informing you about what this Platform is not.
It is definitely not another ‘union of unions’.
In order to further develop TCIM (Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine),
a clear need to unify the efforts to and deepen the cooperation across all disciplines is gradually appearing,
even in relation to EBM (Evidence Based Medicine), yet we are still lacking an exhaustive space for this.
This platform is a unique project worldwide.
The aim is to provide a common space for all TCIM branches that enables free and advantageous cooperation,
sharing and mutual friendly support without any censorship;
a space similar to the Wikipedia portal in a certain way.
Platform Structure
Now, let me introduce you the structure of the Platform.
Each member will receive access to their own unique section,
together with detailed instructions and technical support
so that no one else can intervene in your section.
Here you can see the HOME PAGE.
There are section buttons, which allow you to enter the individual topics.
The platform will contain complete information not only under the section
SCIENCE AND RESEARCH, but also any other information related to TCIM,
under the sections LEGISLATION, EDUCATION, MEDIA, common and individual events,
projects, UNION OF TCIM SUPPORTERS and so no.
Here you can see the first section, the LIBRARY.
Here you will be able to place, say, your publishing activities.
The section will be structured so that it is be possible to search according to the field,
the associations that publish their works here, and so on.
It is intended to provide access to information in the same way as other databases,
and this project may contain, for example, an access button to another database.
This other database will thus gain more viewers as the viewers will have easier access
to the data compared to if the viewers would have to search the database on their own.
The next section is a very important section called SCIENCE AND RESEARCH.
It will contain information from the area and will be structured according to topics.
It will be a database of research centers, scientific journals, case studies and anything else
related to this area. It will also contain research methodology,
which will help Platform members better target their activities
in this area and comply with international research standards.
The next section is EDUCATION.
It contains information on teaching and fields taught.
It will be a global database of opportunities regarding where you can obtain an education
at which schools, to what extent, whether in the form of a classic course
or in any other relevant form in the corresponding field of education.
This will provide easier access for those who are interested in studying
a particular field which they want to devote their energy to.
Since we all want to help people, the next section is also very important.
It is the HEALTHCARE section.
This section will provide information on the achieved integration of TCIM
into national health systems, including a list of facilities that already offer
some of the TCIM fields in their patient care.
The LEGISLATION section is divided into two parts.
The first part is comprised of resolutions by transnational organizations,
such as WHO, WHA, the European Parliament and the others.
The second part contains information about the state of legislation in the individual countries we work in.
At this moment, people from all over the world, from Europe, Colombia,
the USA are present as future speakers at our conference, and I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone.
Legislative activities that are under way or in preparation should be also shown here.
Regarding the MEDIA section, this is an area we should manage together,
both in terms of communication between individual Platform members and the Platform as a whole.
It is very important to acquaint the public with our work,
so that the public space contains relevant and objectively evaluated information,
not only what I think is referred to as „fakes“ today.
The next section is the UNION OF TCIM SUPPORTERS.
It should be noted that, at this moment, a relatively significant part of the population
is being treated with some form of TCIM. In Europe, it may be just over 100 million people.
That is a really large number, which shows the reach and the importance of these fields in healthcare practices today.
The last section I want to show you today is the PLATFORM ORGANIZATION.
This section concerns technical and organizational information,
and we will also communicate some upcoming projects here,
such as petitions or other projects so that we can support each other.
There will, of course, also be a space for mutual discussions.
I want to emphasize that a Platform membership and managing your unique area
that only you have access to will not significantly increase your organizational burden.
In your area you can place a description of your subject and a link to any existing pages
that you have previously created, thus actually sharing and enriching us all with your work.
You can provide publications that already exist, for example a link to your existing database and so on.
I think it is time to connect our efforts in order to help patients.
Together we can do much more. Contradictions weaken the achievement of our goal,
and that is important to bear in mind.
Publication Alternative Medicine (CAM) In the World
To gain a greater overview in this area, our professional chamber has published
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE (CAM) IN THE WORLD, where you will find the most comprehensive
verified information about TCIM so far, and sometimes this information is very surprising.
Here in this slide you can actually see information from the COCHRANE database,
which is a very prestigious database and actually contains an evaluation of the fields of TCIM
(or CAM) and classical medicine.
What surprised me personally was the relatively small difference in efficiency,
which is only 7% according to this database.
Another surprising factor is the credibility of these studies, which is the last column.
Contrary to what we would expect, the difference is not entirely fundamental.
There is also a very important area, namely the patient’s risk,
and despite of what we often hear in the media, we find a rather surprising figure here.
For TCIM, 0.69% was reported in this database and 7% for classical medicine.
This is understandable, because classical medicine uses active procedures, invasive procedures,
that are actually necessary to protect the patient, but it is still surprising to me.
Here, for example, we can see a summary of the use of the alternative medicine
in certain countries around the world, and this use ranges between 30–70% of the population,
which is a very high number. We can see it is 70% in Canada, 48% in Australia and so on.
This shows that this field and this area of TCIM certainly does not belong to the marginal areas of society;
it brings great benefit to whole societies, because it actually often helps patients
to deal with chronic diseases and other diseases.
This is good news also for the future, because we need to work to keep this improving this matter.
Here you can see the map, which shows (the small white numbers)
the number of research centers in particular countries.
We can see that in the last years has actually seen a very significant increase in these activities,
as well as publishing activities, link activities and so on.
This also shows that the time is right for these fields to continue their work in depth.
With the last slide, I would like to show you, is what is important today.
National health systems are often on the verge of their financial capabilities and medicine,
which is developing immensely and has reached the highest stage of development
(but is also very expensive), is a bit worse in comparison to TCIM, which is logical.
At the same time, however, it shows the potential of these alternative fields
– which can relieve the financial burden of, say, EBM medical fields
– for the further development in this direction.
Thank you, that is all. In conclusion, as you have seen, TCIM has the potential to offer something valuable.
That is why I shall now ask the members of the presidium and the guests of the Congress for their contributions.
The first speaker is a genome biologist at Cambridge University,
general secretary and research director of the EUAA
(the European Ayurveda Association),
Professor Madan Thangavelu from the United Kingdom.
Thank you, Professor Madan, for your contribution, which was aligned with the Platform‘s own purpose.
I am now pleased to invite Mrs. Nora Laubstein from Germany,
president of the Association for Natural Medicine in Europe,
a naturopathy worker, to our discussion.
Thank you, Mrs. Nora Laubstein, for your very comprehensive view on this issue.
I think that the future Platform (or in fact in already existing Platform
as we are just launching it) will have an important place in this area and will benefit us all.
Moderator:
And now I would like to ask for the contribution from the author and teacher of Specialized Kinesiology,
Mrs. Carol Ann (McCracken) Hontz from the USA. Greetings and let me ask you for your contribution.
Thank you very much. One paradox came to my mind as I listened.
We care about material hygiene, but we pay much less attention to mental hygiene,
which is precisely the area of psychosomatics – an important element influencing our consciousness.
Thank you very much for your contribution and let’s move to our next guest.
Eva Křížová is a sociologist teaching at Charles University,
specializing in modern medicine and healthcare,
and she has published the book Alternative Medicine in the Czech Republic.
Associate professor Eva Křížová from the Czech Republic, welcome to our panel.
Thank you for your contribution and I hope to see you at the Congress
that closes this time next year and thank you very much again for your contribution.
Now, the President of the EUAA (European Ayurveda Association),
Dr. Peter Kath will be speaking from Germany.
Thank you very much for your contribution and I would say that Dr. Kath himself is an example
of the fact that we all are in the same boat.
And now, in my opinion, the time is coming to build bridges between separate disciplines
and create a multidisciplinary space that connects all these parts into a unity.
Next, I invite a representative of the British Ayurvedic Medical Council,
Amarjeet S Bhamra from the Great Britain, to our discussion.
He is very busy preparing for tomorrow’s Yoga Day right now,
so he asked me to be on our panel as early as possible.
I am happy to welcome him among us and I also wish him good luck with his upcoming Yoga Day,
which is a wonderful event in Great Britain.
Many thanks for the contribution and many thanks to this man, who has
done a great job opening up opportunities for Ayurveda and other systems.
I hope that one day we will also be able to create something similar,
like a parliamentary group, as is the case of the British Parliament.
With the kind invitation of Amarjeet, I was able to visit the British Parliament,
sit in the House of Lords and be part of these beautiful meetings.
I know that Amarjeet has now also initiated a petition for which he is collecting signatures.
And by the way, I would like to remind you that I also initiated a petition in the Czech Republic.
The petition received 40,000 signatures and was discussed by the Petitions Committee of the Czech Parliament.
The results of the discussion mainly concerned education and related areas.
This is one of the steps that, as Amarjeet mentioned, are being taken on this path, which will certainly be very long.
Good luck, Amarjeet, with your big event tomorrow.
Now, I would like to invite another guest to our panel.
She is a teacher, researcher, publicist and writer who has worked at Charles University in Prague
– professor Anna Strunecká from the Czech Republic.
I see the portfolio of our individual contributors to the Platform is constantly growing,
which is very gratifying. More such well-founded contributions are needed,
contributions which are often supported by scientific research.
At this moment, we have more than 18,000 documented studies of top quality
in the alternative fields in the Cochrane and PubMed databases.
This indicates a growing interest in this area also from the scientific field.
And now, our next guest is a member of the Czech Parliament,
facilitator and One Brain Kinesiology therapist,
Mgr. Miloslava Rutová from the Czech Republic.
I modestly add myself to that wish, it is our common interest.
And now I welcome another panelist, associate professor of physiology
at the Medical University of Graz with an extensive interdisciplinary overlap.
He works with chronobiology and physics – Maximilian Moser from Austria.
Thank you for your contribution and I can confirm that associate professor Moser
definitely takes his field seriously, because he asked me not to organize this conference
on a Saturday next time, as it is not very appropriate from a chronobiological point of view.
And his contribution concerns the most basic force of the universe, which is resonance.
For example, one of the most important scientists who ever lived was Nikola Tesla,
and he left us the greatest work about resonance.
And now I would like to invite another guest to our conference.
She is the editor-in-chief of the VHL TCIM Americas,
and a physician practicing acupuncture and homeopathy.
Her name is Natalia Aldana-Martinez and she is from Colombia.
Thank you for your contribution.
It seems to me that we have the same dreams and the scope of your project is very large
and respectable, not only because Dr. Geetha Krishnan informed me about your work
during my visit at the WHO in the Office of Alternative Medicine in Geneva.
This is how I actually learned about your project and started suggesting we cooperate
on these very common goals of ours.
I would like to say here, that we also have relatively extensive and relatively
complex experiences here in Europe.
One of the greatest such experiences was the European Union-funded CAMbrella research,
which included around 112 research centers, in which they actually worked on mapping
these areas and on the scientific education in these areas.
The output in the final report was presented to the European Parliament.
These are, I think, just some of the things that have taken place here on our continent,
because we are divided by a relatively large distance, but
I don’t think that distance matters.
Your expression of support for all others – fields, groups and so on – is gratifying to me.
On the basis of this statement, I don’t think that there is anything that can prevent us
from coming together and actually multiplying our efforts in this way.
Given that there is a certain historical development, it is quite natural
for these efforts to arise anywhere in the world, in China, in India,
and finally in also Europe. But I don’t think that it is important where it arises
or thanks to who.
Our goal is just one thing – to help people on their way to health, to help fields
to work normally as their habilitation allows; everything else is secondary.
The name Pfeiffer does not matter nor does the name of any other organization.
What matters is that we benefit the people. This is not about duplicating anything
or a database duel or anything like that – that would be the hardest and worst thing
that could happen to us. It is quite the opposite, unity is the only way forward.
We are all human, we all have a soul, we all have bodies, we all have needs, dreams and everything else.
So, I hope that our common dreams will intersect, and I am sure they will,
because what you have described here is our common dream.
I am happy that someone is creating something similar that covers all those important aspects
that, for example, our efforts do not include at this moment.
We can actually continue to connect our joint efforts at any time.
During my visits to various congresses and other events,
I have also noticed a certain distancing towards complementary and alternative medicine.
I understood that it is one of my life tasks to dissolve this barrier
so that we do not ask unimportant questions but follow what is important.
Thank you for your contribution, it was amazing and I look forward to further possible cooperation.
Now, I would like to welcome Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharyu from the USA,
assistant professor at Cornell University, and Fulbright public health specialist
specializing in integrative medicine.
I would like to thank Fulbright’s specialist Bhaswati and I have to express my regret
that she does not have more hands, like the goddess Kali. But
I think that these two hands she offers have done more than many others,
so I thank her for her work.
Just one note: As we saw in the statistics, in some countries, up to 70%
of future young doctors will encounter patients who have used some form of
alternative medicine. It is important to inform these young doctors, so that
they are able to harmonize and understand the interactions of the individual procedures
in a way which is safe for the patient. For this reason, providing future doctors
with at least basic information about alternative medicine should be a very important
part of university educations.
Moderator:
I would now like to welcome among us an organizer in the field of integrative medicine,
a man who has been working on this subject for many years and who also has great merits
in this field. Welcome, John Weeks from the USA.
Thank you for your contribution. Mr. Weeks mapped out the situation in the USA very nicely.
It is clear that you have a lot of experience in this field.
I would like to draw your attention to the previously mentioned book Alternative Medicine
(CAM) in the World. It is fully indexed and contains a lot of interesting information,
which you can use for your work whenever necessary.
The book also contains a section on some interesting research.
This research is being conducted in the USA by an organization we would not expect,
namely NATO. NATO has received a relatively large grant for a research project,
which is one of the best so far. It started because military medical service
administration found that perhaps more than 50% of all US military members use these methods.
Those suffering from post-traumatic syndromes and many other diagnoses are mentioned especially.
This led to of the military needing to orientate itself in these areas,
and this work continues to this day with a very significant budget of more
than 100 million US dollars. One of the goals was to include TCIM methods in military health care,
which is very interesting, and I admit that this surprised and pleased me a lot,
because the benefit can be very significant in „combat conditions“.
This book also contains a lot of other information that is more European-centered,
but I think we will gain great information power as we unite.
I am seeing a lot of work on the American continent and it deserves great respect.
But what I observe elsewhere is similar. Whether I see traditional Indian science,
Chinese medicine, other disciplines, I see a huge amount human experience that cannot
be replaced by anything else. At one period in time, one idea won, at another period
in time the other idea won. That is a natural development.
CONCLUSION
All of us here, are people who have some experience in this field –
I would really call you personalities in these fields – and I would like to mention
in advance an activity that came to my mind during this panel today.
I think that in the interests of introducing TCIM to other people – which is necessary–
it would be good to consider the possibility of each of us describing our personal journey
to TCIM to a reasonable extent. I think many people would be very interested in it,
and that it would be relatable to people. We all found our own path, whether it was the path
of science or a path from elsewhere. I think this is very valuable.
I am not going to ask you for your decision now, I will contact you by email and ask you
for your opinion on this matter. Thank you for your thumbs up… and if any of you would like
to remind me of anything at the end of today’s panel, feel free to do so.
Mgr. Miloslava Rutová:
It is my younger son’s birthday today and I feel that today the Platform was born.
Thank you all very much for that.
Our time is almost up, there are eight minutes left.
Personally, I want to say: Thank you all, thank God we can be here on one planet.
Thanks for all the difficulties we experience, because they train us and give us inner strength.
I wish you great success in your life journeys and we will hopefully be in touch.
We are connected, perhaps by a stronger bond than the bond of this relationship,
because the meaning of life and the goal of life is perhaps stronger than anything else,
and I think we all agree on that.
Thank you all once again for participating.
I look forward to the second part of the Congress here in Prague on 11–13 June 2021.
It will take place in a beautiful space under the auspices of the City of Prague
in Prague’s large City Hall. You can also look forward to a very unconventional meeting
on board a ship, where we will have a celebratory dinner and you will have the possibility
to expand your network, as it is common at congresses. And
I look forward to being able to get to know you all in person.
It is still an important for us to be able to shake hands and look each other in the eye;
that is worth more than 100 emails.
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