At stake is a joint ordinance of the Ministries of Health and Science and Higher Education, validating the creation of a degree in traditional Chinese medicine.
The head of the European Council of National Medical Associations, Portuguese doctor José Santos, said he believes the degree would jeopardise “all that is scientifically conditioned and which scientific training proves to be effective.”
Speaking to Lusa News Agency, José Santos explained that he had sent a request to his European counterparts querying whether their countries offered degrees in traditional Chinese medicine, but did not receive a positive reply from any of them.
Among the countries that responded negatively were Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, Romania, the United Kingdom, Greece and Switzerland.
“I did not find a single country with such a degree”, Santos said.
The only exception was Austria, which in some universities offers postgraduate courses in Chinese medicine, limiting its attendance to doctors, dentists, vets, pharmacists, science graduates, or people with recognised experience in alternative medicine.
In Portugal, the degree, like any other, would be open to anyone with an interest in enrolling and who can afford to pay the Public Higher Education tuition fees.
Santos expressed further concern that Chinese Medicine could one day be taught in universities: “We have opened an enormous space in which people could seriously damage public health, by delaying diagnoses or therapeutic proposals.”
The degree, Santos believes, would be “attended by non-doctors who would act as pseudo-doctors within a ‘medical’ field, which could entail serious public health hazards.”