Background
Introduction
Chinese herb medicine has been used worldwide, particularly in Asia for thousands of year. Many safety concerns of toxins and metal contamination in Chinese medicine use have been raised.
In our project, we aim at playing a role of bridging synthetic biology science and social need by devoting our effect in analysis of the scope of Chinese medicine in Taiwan, identification the problems or issues in use, regulation and screening of Chinese herb medicine. Our goal is to design an eco-friendly and safe biosensor product, which is low-cost, effective and can be used by any one to screen toxins in Chinese medicine.
Figure 1. The Project Framework of Herb Taster
Chinese Medicine
In Asia, Chinese medicine has been used for health promotion, disease prevention and illness treatment in Asia for thousands of years. In the past decade, use of Chinese herb as alternative medicine in copying with diseases has become more popular in western countries. According to the social epidemiology analysis on use of Chinese medicine (in our Human Practice)(Table 1), we found that over 5% percent of Taiwanese people using Chinese medicine as the major medical resources for illness treatment. In 2013, over 10% of the Taiwan population had a least one outpatient visits of Chinese medicine service in the past month before interview survey date.
In our analysis, we also found evidence of potential problems in using Chinese medicine in Taiwan (Table 2). There were only neear one third of the Taiwanese population knowing that our government imposes GMP regulation on the manufacturing Chinese medicine and that use of Chinese medicine requires a doctor’s precription. However, there was 6.8% of them reporting the experience of purchase Chinese medicine without the prescription. Inadequate knowledge and inappropriate use of Chinese medicince implies that our population are exposed to potential risks of health hazards.