Blood and Chuser across Research Paradigms: Constitutive Links in Mapping Biomedical Cancer onto Tibetan Medical Nosology

Abstract

Collaborative research on Tibetan medicine for conditions difficult to treat by Euroamerican biomedicine, such as many intractable types of cancer, has developed in recent years due to treatment outcomes and growing patient interest. In these collaborations, more nuanced analyses of how one medical tradition’s etiology maps onto the other are required for productive dialogue and sophisticated research methodologies. Building on earlier work that provides the initial etiologic and diagnostic mapping of biomedical cancer onto Tibetan medical nosology, this article develops a further analytical dimension by describing the specific etiologic role of blood (Tib. khrag) and chuser (Tib. chu ser), as well as their specific ontological characterizations in Sowa Rigpa more generally. The Four Treatises and its commentaries elucidate a unique perspective on these substances as implemented in clinical praxis. This analysis furthers work to disentangle contemporary Tibetan medical and biomedical paradigms by highlighting therapeutic and investigative distinctions for cancer and research collaborations more broadly.