[MUSIC] How relevant are the roots of ancient herbal medicine in today's modern and contemporary oncology care? One of the key elements that needs to be addressed in answering this question is the fact that traditional medicine has influenced the half belief model of patients living in countries where there is high affinity to the use of herbal medicine such as the Middle East. I had the privilege to talk about the need for a culturally sensitive approach to patient care, and for expanding the cross-cultural aspects of medicine with Prof. Adi Haramati. Prof. Haramati is a physiologist and educator at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington DC. We talked with Prof. Haramati, how to achieve a culturally sensitive approach to patient care. Starting from a traditional Native American medicine perspective, and expanding the discussion to the Middle East. >> You're raising a very important issue, the cultural diversity that exists in approaches to health and to disease, inform how an individual will do. The more we understand about each other, it doesn't mean we adopt everybody's practices but by being cultural sensitive, the physician understands and can deliver better care. And so I'll give you an example from the United States and then I'll answer your question about the Middle East. My medical school is in Washington DC, it's in the east coast, it's in a very urban center, very government. We send students everywhere. We have a course that addresses cultural sensitivity and we deal with Native American healing. Now what is the connection between Native American healing and Washington DC? Well, it's not very close. But when our students go to Arizona and they begin to work in hospitals and clinics in Arizona where the Native American population is very high. Not knowing the culture of the Native American community will be a huge disadvantage. But on the other hand, having an awareness of where, say, the Navajo Indian family, how they approach health, what are some of the key elements that impact on health. Our students need that information in order to deliver the appropriate care. And so here's a radical example where understanding the cultural background is as important as understanding the physical history. It's the social history, it's the familiar history, and it's the cultural history. All of that context is critical. Now let's go to the Middle East. The Middle East has long standing systems of care, and yet we have political divides, we have religious divides, we have cultural divides. By understanding each other's place of what motivates them, what herbs are used in cooking, what sort of traditions are involved in the care of the family? As we understand more about each other, we break down barriers. And we'll find that even though they're different, they're also similar. There are many things that are common even within that region. And so what I found in my own experience, as I've gone to different places around the world, is that the more we learn about each other, the more we find lines of contact and lines of commonality, and lines of convergence not divergence. And so I think there's greater hope in the Middle East. As we share information about our cooking, our herbs, our families, our health systems, our view of how we heal. It's going to be a way that will connect us, not divide us. >> So what is the future for Middle Eastern herbal medicine in modern oncology research and practice? In 2012, a multinational team of researchers from Egypt, Turkey, and Israel, set out to answer this question using cancer related keywords which appeared in historical and ethnobotanical Middle Eastern text. A total of 44 herbs were identified as being associated with cancer treatment and related care. The knowledge acquired from traditional texts has in recent years been studied using basic science and clinical research methodologies. With over 140 articles from 12 Middle Eastern countries being published on the use of traditional medicine, primarily herbal medicine for cancer care. In the next interviews, we discuss the implications of these findings with Prof. Efraim Lev, Prof.Bashar Saad, and Prof. Michael Silbermann, the executive director of the Middle East Cancer Consortium. I asked the three professors how they envision the prospects of multidisciplinary and international research collaboration. Whose purpose is to expand the boundaries of palliative cancer care by introducing traditional Middle Eastern herbs. Thereby resonating with the affinity of patients in the region to herbal medicine. >> First of all, I think it's good that history on ethnobotanist, and ethnopharmacologist, and physician, will communicate as we do. And it is very important to create research groups. Because I can go to the sources, and I can get the knowledge from the sources. And people like you and people in the lab should check this materials and see if their historical use is still possible today. >> The future will be, if you create new schools, starting with Western medicine, so called Western medicine, and continue your specialization, and alternative or integrative medicine. >> And you can envision specialization in traditional Islamic Arabic medicine as a stream equal to Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine or the other streams. >> Sure, I think in the future when we have peace we can contribute to both the Israelical knowledge and the Arab knowledge regarding their medicine. We can make a beautiful combination between these two things, knowledge and the tradition that's combine these two things together. We have a lot of resources in the Arab world. What we have knowledge, a lot of knowledge here. We can combine them, I think this would be a very nice future here if we reach this. >> So the first thing I think we ought to start with collaborative research projects. In local institutions, research is not part of the daily dialogue. And here we come and urge them to work with us on the research project. So after a lot of consideration, we thought that the first step would be to carry service, multinational service, which include the multicultural aspects of the problem. And thereby to get an input what is important, what is less important, and how can we continue. I think the logical next step would be to do some clinical trials. So we need patient, and we'll get there. But I'm optimistic because we have good experiences and successes so far. [MUSIC]
