I used to think that practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine made extensive use of acupuncture and herbal concoctions — if I thought about animals at all it was only in the belief that their parts played a small role. I was, therefore, startled to find that rhinos, tigers and bears are being killed for traditional Chinese medicine in such numbers that their existence is threatened. A century ago, there were an estimated one million black rhinos in Africa; there are now perhaps 2,500. At the turn of the 20th century, there may have been 100,000 tigers in India; there are now fewer than 5,000. As many as 10,000 bears are kept in squeeze cages on “bear farms” in China, with steel catheters inserted into their gall bladders to drain off the bile. When the bears outlive their usefulness, they are killed.
North and South American bears are also being killed for their gall bladders, which are then smuggled into China. There are five species of rhinoceros — three in Asia and two in Africa — and all are being slaughtered for their horns, which, when ground into a powder, are said to cure a variety of ailments. Tigers, endangered throughout their range, are killed for their bones, which are made into a “tiger-bone wine” or soup that is said to give the drinker the sexual stamina of the tiger.
The driving force behind animal poaching is not medicinal but monetary. To a poor herdsman in India, an animal passing by that might be worth $10,000 is an irresistible temptation. The parts of these animals are worth a fortune to middlemen, and are even more valuable to the purchasers of the medicines. Ground rhino horn is one of the most valuable natural substances in the world. As long as users are willing to pay astronomical prices for bones, powdered horn or bear gall, poachers will continue to slaughter the animals.
While plants can be picked, leaves plucked, fruits, vegetables, and nuts harvested, and seeds collected without threatening the species, some animals must be killed so that the valuable parts can be harvested for use in Chinese medicine. The bones or skin of a tiger or the gall bladder of a bear cannot be removed without killing the animal, and while some clever entrepreneurs have figured out how to obtain bear gall from a living bear, the technique is so awful that death for the bear might be preferable. It is possible to anaesthetise a rhino and saw its horn off, but it is a difficult, cumbersome, and dangerous process that might result in the death of the rhino anyway, so poachers take the easier path and simply shoot the animal.
In the not-so-distant past, people such as Ernest Hemingway hunted rhinos for the thrill of shooting a large animal with a powerful gun from a great distance. The animals’ stuffed heads were hung on the wall and their feet turned into umbrella stands, but overall demand for such trophies was modest. In reality, most rhinos dying at the hand of man during the past century were killed to meet medicinal demand for their horns, with a substantial number being killed for dagger (jambiya ) handles in Yemen. The three Asian rhino species — Indian, Javan and Sumatran — were the first to go, hunted almost to extinction, but the horn of the African black rhino, highly prized for carving dagger handles, is also sought. The seemingly innocuous pursuit of carving dagger handles has brought the black rhino to such low levels that its existence is threatened too.
Where once there were eight subspecies of tigers in Asia, there are now five, and three of these are close to extinction. They are being hunted because traditional Chinese medicine needs the bones, flesh, fat, eyeballs, teeth and claws, and fashion needs the pelts.
Most medicinals prescribed in traditional Chinese medicine are of a vegetable or herbal origin; only a few originate in animal parts. Of these, many are from domestic animals such as pigs, cows, horses, camels, goats and sheep. But a few come from wild animals, such as lions, leopards, deer, monkeys, otters and beavers. I am not offering a blanket criticism of the principles or practices of traditional Chinese medicine, but rather I am pointing out that some irresponsible people, often perverting the fundamentals of this venerable tradition, carry a large responsibility for the destruction of some increasingly endangered species. It is a terrible anachronism that so many people today rely on largely ineffectual animal-related remedies, but the real tragedy is that large numbers of animals have to die to provide these nostrums.
There are millions of people in China, South-East Asia, and elsewhere with little access to education on science. They are therefore ignorant of the composition of the potions they so eagerly consume and they know little about the endangerment of animals. A wider understanding of the traditions, the medications, and the status of the endangered species might possibly save even more lives — human and animal.
Tigers and rhinos are heading for extinction, perhaps in our lifetime, almost certainly in the lifetime of our children’s children. They will certainly know what a tiger is — we live in an age of eternally preserved video images — and all those tigers in cages, zoos and circuses will ensure that these powerful cats will not be relegated to the trash bin, like the dodo or the passenger pigeon. In The Outermost House, Henry Beston wrote: “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilisation surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.”
Surely the most distorted image it is possible to conjure is that animals were put here for our use. Domestication for food is easy to rationalise — it will be a long time before people stop eating cows or chickens — and the use of oxen, camels, or buffalos as beasts of burden is not likely to cease until Third World agriculturalists obtain inexpensive internal combustion engines. But enlightened human beings, even those who have used animal parts for medicine for thousands of years, should recognise that most of these nostrums are only primitive superstitions, and more critically, that the animals providing these often useless pharmaceuticals are becoming extinct.
There are arguments to be made — not all of them convincing — that it is necessary (and morally acceptable) to use animals such as mice, rats, rabbits, or monkeys in tests that might have beneficial applications for human medical needs. These animals are sacrificed for a “higher purpose”, namely the production and testing of vaccines, hormone preparations or even cosmetics. The number of laboratory mice and rats that die every year in the name of medical research must be astronomical. Within the precepts of Chinese medicine, however, some animals are killed to provide what practitioners are convinced are cures for ailing people, or people who might be sexually dysfunctional. In many cases, these prescriptions do not work, or do not work as well as some synthetic pharmaceuticals. But it is not, after all, the use of animal parts per se that is the problem — it is the slaughter of the animals for what might be specious applications, or worse, the slaughter of critically endangered species.
Richard Ellis is the author of Tiger Bone and Rhino Horn: The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Chinese Medicine, to be published in June by Island Press.
ON THE CRITICAL LIST
Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris); number thought to survive: 4,000
Amur (Siberian) tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), 450
Almost every body part of the tiger — teeth, claws, bones, fat, eyeballs — is used in Chinese medicine. Most of the uses have to do with increasing virility; to somehow transfer the strength and savagery of the tiger to men whose sexual prowess needs enhancing. And, of course, the beautiful striped coat of the tiger is valuable for non-medical reasons.
African black rhino (Diceros bicornis), 2,500
Northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), 100
Indian rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis), 2,400
Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), 50
Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus), 100
It is only the horn (and sometimes the toenails) of rhinos that are used. In Yemen, the horns are carved into dagger handles that are worn by young men upon achieving manhood. Ground rhino horn is not used as an aphrodisiac, but is prescribed for everything from headache and toothache to infertility and fevers.
Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus), 10,000 in “squeeze” cages in China. Bear gall (bile) is used for a variety of ailments, but especially gall and kidney stones, stomach ache, and fevers. (The bears are not killed until their gall bladders run dry of bile.)
In all cases, numbers are estimates.
