The walls of a spacious room called 'Department of Chinese Traditional Medicine' in the cancer hospital of a large city in China are lined with long shelves holding glass bottles. The liquid in the bottles is clear. The properties of the liquid in the bottles are less clear. Although most are suspected to provide immune system modulation, a single bottle has an available description of its antitumor mechanism via natural killer cell regulation. But the number of the bottles on the shelves speaks silently of their important effect.
In a ward on a bed sits a teenaged Chinese girl dressed smartly in denim jeans. She has successfully completed treatment for de novo Hodgkin disease and is now receiving an infusion from one of the bottles to 'boost her immune system.' In a ward in another city sits a middleaged Chinese man wearing a gray-blue suit with mandarin collar. He has been successfully treated for relapsed acute promyelocytic leukemia with an infusion from a different bottle, one that contained arsenic.
The first case exemplifies the historical observation of the Chinese that certain traditional compounds have medicinal effects. The second case exemplifies the progression from observation to research that characterizes contemporary Chinese academic medicine. Investigators in the International Outreach Program at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, are privileged participants in this process.
Danny Thomas, founder of St. Jude, was committed to improvement of child health through research in biology and pediatrics. The China outreach program seeks to fulfill one of the missions of the hospital, i.e., to ensure that specialized training of physicians, scientists, and health care personnel will be shared with other hospitals worldwide. Because China is the most populous country in the world, the impact of efforts there may well be significant. The St. Jude International Outreach Program in this area includes three independent partner sites: Taiwan, Hong