 |
|
|
|||||
Pope Francis, historys first Latin American pontiff who charmed the world with his humble style and concern for the poor but alienated conservatives with critiques of capitalism and climate change, died Monday. He was 88. Bells tolled in church towers across Rome after the announcement, which was read out by Cardinal Kevin Ferrell, the Vatican camerlengo, from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church, Ferrell said. Francis, who suffered from chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed as a young man, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on February 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia. He spent 38 days there, the longest hospitalization of his 12-year papacy. But he emerged on Easter Sundayhis last public appearance, a day before his deathto bless thousands of people in St. Peters Square and treat them to a surprise popemobile romp through the piazza, drawing wild cheers and applause. Beforehand, he met briefly with U.S. Vice President JD Vance. Francis performed the blessing from the same loggia where he was introduced to the world on March 13, 2013 as the 266th pope. From his first greeting that nighta remarkably normal Buonasera (Good evening)to his embrace of refugees and the downtrodden, Francis signaled a very different tone for the papacy, stressing humility over hubris for a Catholic Church beset by scandal and accusations of indifference. After that rainy night, the Argentine-born Jorge Mario Bergoglio brought a breath of fresh air into a 2,000-year-old institution that had seen its influence wane during the troubled tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, whose surprise resignation led to Francis election. But Francis soon invited troubles of his own, and conservatives grew increasingly upset with his progressive bent, outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics and crackdown on traditionalists. His greatest test came in 2018 when he botched a notorious case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, and the scandal that festered under his predecessors erupted anew on his watch. And then Francis, the crowd-loving, globe-trotting pope of the peripheries, navigated the unprecedented reality of leading a universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from a locked-down Vatican City. He implored the world to use COVID-19 as an opportunity to rethink the economic and political framework that he said had turned rich against poor. We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, Francis told an empty St. Peters Square in March 2020. But he also stressed the pandemic showed the need for all of us to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. At the Vatican on Monday, the mood was a mix of somber quiet among people who knew and worked for Francis, and the typical buzz of tourists visiting St. Peters Square on the day after Easter. While many initially didn’t know the news, some sensed something happening given the swarms of television crews. The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, wiped tears from his eyes as he met with journalists in the press room. The death now sets off a weekslong process of allowing the faithful to pay their final respects, first for Vatican officials in the Santa Marta chapel and then in St. Peters for the general public, followed by a funeral and a conclave to elect a new pope. Reforming the Vatican Francis was elected on a mandate to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and finances but went further in shaking up the church without changing its core doctrine. Who am I to judge? he replied when asked about a purportedly gay priest. The comment sent a message of welcome to the LGBTQ+ community and those who felt shunned by a church that had stressed sexual propriety over unconditional love. Being homosexual is not a crime, he told the Associated Press in 2023, urging an end to civil laws that criminalize it. Stressing mercy, Francis changed the churchs position on the death penalty, calling it inadmissible in all circumstances. He also declared the possession of nuclear weapons, not just their use, was immoral. In other firsts, he approved an agreement with China over bishop nominations that had vexed the Vatican for decades, met the Russian patriarch, and charted new relations with the Muslim world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq. He reaffirmed the all-male, celibate priesthood and upheld the churchs opposition to abortion, equating it to hiring a hit man to solve a problem. Roles for women But he added women to important decision-making roles and allowed them to serve as lectors and acolytes in parishes. He let women vote alongside bishops in periodic Vatican meetings, following long-standing complaints that women do much of the churchs work but are barred from power. Sister Nathalie Becquart, whom Francis named to one of the highest Vatican jobs, said his legacy was a vision of a church where men and women existed in a relationship of reciprocity and respect. It was about shifting a pattern of dominationfrom human being to the creation, from men to womento a pattern of cooperation, said Becquart, the first woman to hold a voting position in a Vatican synod. The church as refuge While Francis did not allow women to be ordained, the voting reform was part of a revolutionary change in emphasizing what the church should be: a refuge for everyonetodos, todos, todos (everyone, everyone, everyone)not for the privileged few. Migrants, the poor, prisoners and outcasts were invited to his table far more than presidents or powerful CEOs. For Pope Francis, it was always to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people, not to exclude anyone, said Farrell, the camerlengo, taking charge after a pontiffs death or retirement. Francis demanded his bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pressed the world to protect Gods creation from climate disaster, and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war, poverty, and oppression. After visiting Mexico in 2016, Francis said of then-U.S. presidential canidate Donald Trump that anyone building a wall to keep migrants out is not Christian. While progressives were thrilled with Francis radical focus on Jesus message of mercy and inclusion, it troubled conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teaching and threatened the very Christian identity of the West. Some even called him a heretic. A few cardinals openly challenged him. Francis usually responded with his typical answer to conflict: silence. He made it easier for married Catholics to get an annulment, allowed priests to absolve women who had had abortions and decreed that priests could bless same-sex couples. He opened debate on issues like homosexuality and divorce, giving pastors wiggle room to discern how to accompany their flocks, rather than handing them strict rules to apply. St. Francis of Assisi as a model Francis lived in the Vatican hotel instead of the Apostolic Palace, wore his old orthotic shoes and not the red loafers of the papacy, and rode in compact cars. It wasnt a gimmick. I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful, he told a Jesuit journal in 2013. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. If becoming the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope wasnt enough, Francis was also the first to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th century friar known for personal simplicity, a message of peace, and care for nature and societys outcasts. Francis sought out the unemployed, the sick, the disabled and the homeless. He formally apologized to Indigenous peoples for the crimes of the church from colonial times onward. And he himself suffered: He had part of his colon removed in 2021, then needed more surgery in 2023 to repair a painful hernia and remove intestinal scar tissue. Starting in 2022 he regularly used a wheelchair or cane because of bad knees, and endured bouts of bronchitis. He went to societys fringes to minister with mercy: caressing the grossly deformed head of a man in St. Peters Square, kissing the tattoo of a Holocaust survivor, or inviting Argentinas garbage scavengers to join him onstage in Rio de Janeiro. We have always been marginalized, but Pope Francis always helped us, said Coqui Vargas, a transgender woman whose Roman community forged a unique relationship with Francis during the pandemic. His first trip as pope was to the island of Lampedusa, then the epicenter of Europes migration crisis. He consistently chose to visit poor countries where Christians were often persecuted minorities, rather than the centers of global Catholicism. Friend and fellow Argentine, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, said his concern for the poor and disenfranchised was based on the Beatitudesthe eight blessings Jesus delivered in the Sermon on the Mount for the meek, the merciful, the poor in spirit and others. Why are the Beatitudes the program of this pontificate? Because they were the basis of Jesus Christs own program, Sánchez said. Missteps on sexual abuse scandal But more than a year passed before Francis met with survivors of priestly sexual abuse, and victims groups initially questioned whether he really understood the scope of the problem. Francis did create a sex abuse commission to advise the church on best practices, but it lost its influence after a few years and its recommendation of a tribunal to judge bishops who covered up for predator priests went nowhere. And then came the greatest crisis of his papacy, when he discredited Chilean abuse victims in 2018 and stood by a controversial bishop linked to their abuser. Realizing his error, Francis invited the victims to the Vatican for a personal mea culpa and summoned the leadership of the Chilean church to resign en masse. As that crisis concluded, a new one erupted over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington and a counselor to three popes. Francis had actually moved swiftly to sideline McCarrick amid an accusation he had molested a teenage altar boy in the 1970s. But Francis nevertheless was accused by the Vaticans one-time U.S. ambassador of having rehabilitated McCarrick early in his papacy. Francis eventually defrocked McCarrick after a Vatican investigation determined he sexually abused adults as well as minors. He changed church law to remove the pontifical secret surrounding abuse cases and enacted procedures to investigate bishops who abused or covered for their pedophile priests, seeking to end impunity for the hierarchy. He sincerely wanted to do something and he transmitted that, said Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean abuse survivor Francis discredited who later developed a close friendship with the pontiff. A change from Benedict The road to Francis 2013 election was paved by Pope Benedict XVIs decision to resign and retirethe first in 600 yearsand it created the unprecedented reality of two popes living in the Vatican. Francis didnt shy from Benedicts potentially uncomfortable shadow. He embraced him as an elder statesman and adviser, coaxing him out of his cloistered retirement to participate in the public life of the church. Its like having your grandfather in the house, a wise grandfather, Francis said. Francis praised Benedict by saying he opened the door to others following suit, fueling speculation that Francis also might retire. But after Benedicts death on Dec. 31, 2022, he asserted that in principle the papacy is a job for life. Francis looser liturgical style and pastoral priorities made clear he and the German-born theologian came from very different religious traditions, and Francis directly overturned several decisions of his predecessor. He made sure Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, a hero to the liberation theology movement in Latin America, was canonized after his case languished under Benedict over concerns about the credos Marxist bent. Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Benedict had relaxed, arguing the spread of the Tridentine Rite was divisive. The move riled Francis traditionalist critics and opened sustained conflict between right-wing Catholics, particularly in the U.S., and the Argentine pope. Conservatives oppose Francis By then, conservatives had already turned away from Francis, betrayed after he opened debate on allowing remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments if they didnt get an annulmenta church ruling that their first marriage was invalid. We dont like this pope, headlined Italys conservative daily Il Foglio a few months into the papacy, reflecting the unease of the small but vocal traditionalist Catholic movement that was coddled under Benedict. Those same critics amplified their complaints after Francis approved church blessings for same-sex couples, and a controversial accord with China over nominating bishops. Its details were never released, but conservative critics bashed it as a sellout to communist China, while the Vatican defended it as the best deal it could get with Beijing. U.S. Cardina Raymond Burke, a figurehead in the anti-Francis opposition, said the church had become like a ship without a rudder. Burke waged his opposition campaign for years, starting when Francis fired him as the Vaticans supreme court justice and culminating with his vocal opposition to Francis 2023 synod on the churchs future. Twice, he joined other conservative cardinals in formally asking Francis to explain himself on doctrine issues reflecting a more progressive bent, including on the possibility of same-sex blessings and his outreach to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Francis eventually sanctioned Burke financially, accusing him of sowing disunity. It was one of several personnel moves he made in both the Vatican and around the world to shift the balance of power from doctrinaire leaders to more pastoral ones. Francis insisted his bishops and cardinals imbue themselves with the odor of their flock and minister to the faithful, voicing displeasure when they didnt. His 2014 Christmas address to the Vatican Curia was one of the greatest public papal reprimands ever: Standing in the marbled Apostolic Palace, Francis ticked off 15 ailments that he said can afflict his closest collaborators, including spiritual Alzheimers, lusting for power and the terrorism of gossip. Trying to eliminate corruption, Francis oversaw the reform of the scandal-marred Vatican bank and sought to wrestle Vatican bureaucrats into financial line, limiting their compensation and ability to receive gifts or award public contracts. He authorized Vatican police to raid his own secretariat of state and the Vaticans financial watchdog agency amid suspicions about a 350 million euro investment in a London real estate venture. After a 2 1/2-year trial, the Vatican tribunal convicted a once-powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu, of embezzlement and returned mixed verdicts to nine others, acquitting one. The trial, though, proved to be a reputational boomerang for the Holy See, showing deficiencies in the Vaticans legal system, unseemly turf battles among monsignors, and how the pope had intervened on behalf of prosecutors. While earning praise for trying to turn the Vaticans finances around, Francis angered U.S. conservatives for his frequent excoriation of the global financial market that favors the rich over the poor. Economic justice was an important themes of his papacy, and he didnt hide it in his first meeting with journalists when he said he wanted a poor church that is for the poor. In his first major teaching document, The Joy of the Gospel, Francis denounced trickle-down economic theories as unproven and naive, based on a mentality where the powerful feed upon the powerless with no regard for ethics, the environment or even God. Money must serve, not rule! he said in urging political reforms. He elaborated on that in his major eco-encyclical Praised Be, denouncing the structurally perverse global economic system that he said exploited the poor and risked turning Earth into an immense pile of filth. Some U.S. conservatives branded Francis a Marxist. He jabbed back by saying he had many friends who were Marxists. Soccer, opera and prayer Born Dec. 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants. He credited his devout grandmother Rosa with teaching him how to pray. Weekends were spent listening to opera on the radio, going to Mass and attending matches of the familys beloved San Lorenzo soccer club. As pope, his love of soccer brought him a huge collection of jerseys from visitors. He said he received his religious calling at 17 while going to confession, recounting in a 2010 biography that, I dont know what it was, but it changed my life. . . . I realized that they were waiting for me. He entered the diocesan seminary but switched to the Jesuit order in 1958, attracted to its missionary tradition and militancy. Around this time, he suffered from pneumonia, which led to the removal of the upper part of his right lung. His frail health prevented him from becoming a missionary, and his less-than-robust lung capacity was perhaps responsible for his whisper of a voice and reluctance to sing at Mass. On Dec. 13, 1969, he was ordained a priest, and immediately began teaching. In 1973, he was named head of the Jesuits in Argentina, an appointment he later acknowledged was crazy given he was only 36. My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative, he admitted in his Civilta Cattolica interview. Life under Argentinas dictatorship His six-year tenure as provincial coincided with Argentinas murderous 1976-83 dictatorship, when the military launched a campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regime opponents. Bergoglio didnt publicly confront the junta and was accused of effectively allowing two slum priests to be kidnapped and tortured by not publicly endorsing their work. He refused for decades to counter that version of events. Only in a 2010 authorized biography did he finally recount the behind-the-scenes lengths he used to save them, persuading the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so he could say Mass instead. Once in the junta leaders home, Bergoglio privately appealed for mercy. Both priests were eventually released, among the few to have survived prison. As pope, accounts began to emerge of the many peoplepriests, seminarians, and political dissidentswhom Bergoglio actually saved during the dirty war, letting them stay incognito at the seminary or helping them escape the country. Bergoglio went to Germany in 1986 to research a never-finished thesis. Returning to Argentina, he was stationed in Cordoba during a period he described as a time of great interior crisis. Out of favor with more progressive Jesuit leaders, he was eventually rescued from obscurity in 1992 by St. John Paul II, who named him an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He became archbishop six years later, and was made a cardinal in 2001. He came close to becoming pope in 2005 when Benedict was elected, gaining the second-most votes in several rounds of balloting before bowing out. By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press ___ Associated Press writer Colleen Barry contributed from Milan. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Category:
E-Commerce
Behind the curtain of generative AI breakthroughs and GPU hype, a quieter transformation is taking place. Data center architecture and its prowess have become a fierce battleground as AI models expand in size and demand ever-greater compute power. Today, AIs performance, scalability and cost are all tied to the choice of network fabric. Broadcom, once known for its dominance in networking and semiconductors, is back on the rise as one of the most consequential players in AIs infrastructure revolution. Theres a shift happening in the market. Today, real AI innovation isnt just limited to models or the infrastructureits in what connects them, Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcoms Core Switching Group, told Fast Company during the NTT Upgrade 2025 event. AI is not just about GPUs or compute anymore. Its about how data moves, power is managed, and how systems scale. Founded in 1991 as Broadcom Corporation, Broadcom began as a semiconductor company focused on wireless and broadband communication, operating from a modest Los Angeles garage. A major turning point occurred in 2015 when Avago Technologies acquired Broadcom for $37 billion, leading to Broadcom’s transformation into a global semiconductor and infrastructure technology leader. Avagos origins trace back to HP’s semiconductor division, linking Broadcoms current parent company to HPs semiconductor legacy. Through strategic acquisitions, including ServerWorks in 2001 and VMware in 2023, Broadcom expanded its reach, especially in the data center space. Its influence is vast, yet often underestimated. The companys reputation is driven by high-speed Ethernet chips like the Tomahawk series, which are crucial for high-bandwidth networking within data architectures. Now, the 60-year-old semiconductor giant isnt chasing headlines with ChatGPT-style theatrics. Instead, its embracing a less flashy but more foundational role: building the infrastructure for AI developers to scale the technology. Velaga and his team are quietly helping tech giants and hyperscalers (large-scale cloud service providers that offer extensive computing resources) rethink the architecture of their data centers through deeply integrated systemscodesigned chips, bespoke interconnects, and a commitment to Ethernet, even as others in the industry begin to move on. Currently, Nvidia dominates the data center network market with its GPU and Ethernet-integrated data center network platforms like Spectrum-X, which promise to drive AI training to new heights. As of 2025, Nvidia commands an estimated 25% share of the entire data center segment, and a dominant 98% share in data center GPU shipments. However, according to Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, the companys strength in custom AI processors and Ethernet networking products is fueling its growth. Broadcom expects to capture a significant portion of the expanding market, projecting its serviceable addressable market (SAM) for AI processors and networking chips to reach $6090 billion by fiscal 2027, given the company maintains its current market share of approximately 55% to 70% in the AI chip segment. While Nvidia offers both InfiniBand and Ethernet in its data center portfolio, Broadcoms Velaga contends that Ethernet is poised to become the backbone of tomorrows AI infrastructure, and the company is investing heavily to innovate the technology further. Were seeing hyperscalers including Meta and others, really leaning into Ethernet for AI infrastructure. Unlike alternatives like Infiniband, Ethernet is inherently designed to handle data failures, recalibrate quickly, and maintain performance for AI models even under real-world conditions like heat and congestion, Velaga told Fast Company during the event. Ethernet is built for all these use cases, and beats infiniband. What is Ethernet and Why Now? Ethernet is a foundational networking technology that enables wired communication between devices in data centers. It transmits data through physical cables like twisted pair or fiber optics, connecting servers, storage, and networking equipment. In modern data centers, Ethernet link speeds have scaled from 1 Gbps to 400 Gbpswith 800 Gbps already on the horizon, to handle the massive data throughput demanded by AI workloads. Moreover, the technology facilitates high-speed data transfer between GPUs and storage, enabling efficient AI training and the creation of distributed GPU clusters. Broadcoms argument is simple: Ethernet, the backbone of the internet for decades, is finally ready for its AI prime time. Ethernets openness, flexibility, and multivendor support give tech giants like Meta and Google the freedom to innovate without being boxed in by a proprietary stack. Ethernet lets you scale horizontally across thousands of GPUs. Copper has always been the cheaper and more reliable option compared to optics. For a while, people tried cramming as many racks as possible into data centers utilizing copper networking, but that approach just isnt sustainable, Velaga said. Now, were seeing a shift toward optics to meet higher power and bandwidth demands. Now, with our current and upcoming chipsets that integrate copackaged photonics, were very well positioned for helping enterprises with future workloads. Another alternative, InfiniBand designed for environments that demand ultrafast data transfer and minimal latencysuch as HPC clusters and advanced data centers. Known for its high throughput (up to 400 Gbps) and ultralow latency (as low as one microsecond), its currently a popular choice for mission-critical workloads requiring rapid, reliable communication. However, InfiniBand operates on the assumption of a flawless environmentand according to Velaga, thats precisely the problem. He explained that modern data centers and GPU clusters exist in far-from-perfect conditions. As organizations scale their AI infrastructure, they quickly run into challenges like heat, signal degradation, and system noise. In the real world, systems arent perfect, he said. Theres noise, heat, jitter. InfiniBand assumes everything is lossless. Ethernet was built to deal with reality. Tomahawk5 vs. Spectrum-X: A Battle of Philosophies NVIDIAs SpectrumX isnt just Ethernetits NVIDIAs customized version of it. The company markets SpectrumX as a purpose-built platform for AI, combining proprietary clustering with claimed performance and efficiency gains: 1.61.7 times higher network throughput, 2.5 times better bandwidth for collective operations, and 1.7 times improved power-performance, leading to a lower total cost of ownership for distributed AI training. By April 2025, SpectrumX had been adopted by major tech players including Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and leading hyperscalers. But Velaga argues that real flexibility and reliability come from open-standard Ethernet, where any GPU can plug in without locking users into a single vendors ecosystem. NVIDIAs market approach, he says, is contradictory to Ethernets core principles: openness, interoperability, and customer choice. When someone says their Ethernet is better than others, they probably dont fully understand what Ethernet is, he asserts. The beauty ofEthernet is you can connect any GPU from any vendor using our switches, and it just works. Thats interoperability. Solutions that lock you into one vendors world are not scalable. Currently, Broadcoms main competitors to Nvidias Spectrum-X are its Tomahawk5 and Jericho3-AI switch ASICs. Tomahawk5 is a high-throughput Ethernet switch designed for hyperscale and AI data centers, featuring advanced congestion management to reduce latency and supporting interoperability with any vendors data center infrastructure, helping customers avoid vendor lock-in. Likewise, Jericho3-AI is purpose-built for AI and machine learning workloads, enabling near-lossless Ethernet performance across large-scale clusters, similar to the performance claims made by Nvidias Spectrum-X. Id challenge NVIDIA and others any day on both interoperability and performance. Broadcoms Ethernet offerings are miles ahead of Spectrum-X or any proprietary offerings out there, Velaga told Fast Company. Strategic Partnerships and Silicon Ambitions Amidst the Rise of AI Broadcom is creating custom silicon for AI leaders like Alphabet, Meta, OpenAI, and Apple, designing ASIC chips tailored to optimize bandwidth, memory efficiency, and power draw for AI workloads in data centers and AI architectures. The company also provides key technologies such as high-bandwidth Ethernet switches, PCIe connectivity, and optical interconnects, all essential for scaling AI clusters. Velaga emphasized that these innovations enable clients to achieve superior data movement, processing speed, and energy efficiency, far surpassing off-the-shelf solutions. Our goal is to help customers differentiate themselves, Velaga said. We provide the tools they need to build what works best for themwithout dictating the approach. They want flexible, cost-effective networking solutions to optimize their data centers and accelerators. With our Ethernet portfolio, ASICs, and silicon innovations, we are empowering large-scale GPU clusters to perform efficiently and at scale, essential for advancing AI. He added that Broadcom’s flexible approach positions the company as a key collaborative partner, an advantage likely to grow as AI infrastructure evolves. Despite his confidence, Velaga admits there are risks. AI investment is surging now, but what if the momentum stalls? Everyones asking how long this wave will last. From my perspective, it feels like a real paradigm shift, he said. LLMs are changing how companies analyze data, make decisions, and engage with customers. Theres a lot at stake in this cycle. What keeps him up at night isnt hypeits execution. We have to keep delivering innovation and scale so our customers stay confident in Broadcoms ecosystem. And so far, the signals are strong. Our customers arent pulling back, theyre doubling down. Were ready to lead. Whether the boom continues or levels off, Broadcom is betting that the demand for fast, open data movement will only intensify. If Velagas vision is right, tomorrows AI data centers will be stitched together with open Ethernet, copackaged optics, and modular designs. We want to be the connective tissue of AI, he said. Its not the flashy partbut its the part that makes everything else work.
Category:
E-Commerce
When I visited Malaysia and Singapore as a child, I was always curious about the many Chinese herbalist shops we’d pass on busy shopping streets. They looked like they were from another universe. As I peered through the windows, there were glass canisters full of mysterious ingredients: goji berry, bird’s nests, pearl dust, tiger bones, gazelle antlers. We never went inside. My parentswho were trained as a nurse and a biochemist respectivelybrushed aside Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as unscientific at best, and dangerous at worst. So I grew up skeptical of these practices. I rolled my eyes when people suggested taking ginseng tea to boost my energy. I stayed clear of acupuncture and cupping. My family’s perspective wasn’t uncommon. For centuries, those immersed in Western medicine have treated TCM with suspicion, mockery, and sometimes hostility. We’ve seen this play out in the Western media over the last decade. The Smithsonian Magazine reported that TCM’s use of pangolin scales is driving the creature towards extinction. The Economist argued that TCM dangerously peddles unproven remedies. When the World Health Organization began officially evaluating TCM practices, top science journals and magazinesScientific American and Naturecalled this a bad idea. Still, some Americans are intrigued by the promises of Chinese medicine. Kim Kardashian gushes about her Chinese herbalist and Gwyneth Paltrow promotes acupuncture and Chinese herbal remedies. Now, interest in TCM is trickling down into the mainstream, particularly among women and people of color who feel that the Western medical establishment has failed them in some way. There are now several startups, including Qi Health and Nooci, that are trying to make TCM more widespread. One of the most established is Elix, a five-year-old startup that wants to make TCM herbal formulas more accessible and widespread. Lulu Ge, who incubated the company at Wharton Business School, is on a mission to prove that TCM is effective at tackling many women’s health problems including premenstrual syndrome, fibroids, endometriosis, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. We’ve talked to thousands of women who say they feel like their doctors aren’t taking their concerns seriously, Ge says. But Chinese doctors have been treating these issues for centuries with herbal formulas. [Photo: Courtesy of Elix] Ge is trying to create a more systematic approach to TCM, standardizing treatment, sourcing ingredients in such a way that the formulas are consistent, and conducting clinical studies to prove their effectiveness. This appears to be a winning strategy. Elix has had 60,000 subscribers since launching in 2020. More than 90% of women who try the formulation come back. Given how much resistance there still is to TCM, Elix has an uphill battle ahead to achieve more mainstream adoption. But Ge, and other TCM advocates, believe there is more openness than ever before. If we could combine and integrate Western and Chinese approaches, we could really achieve a Golden Age of medicine, says Elizabeth Fine, dean of clinical education at Emperor’s College of Traditional Oriental Medicine, and an Elix advisor. Our studies are finding than when you introduce Chinese medicine into Western therapies, you get a much stronger effect. Chinese Medicine and Marginalized Americans Before Paltrow and Kardashian, members of the Black Panther Party and Puerto Rican activist group, the Young Lords, embraced Chinese medicine. Back in the early 1970s, when heroin was ravaging Black and brown neighborhoods in New York, the prevailing way to treat addiction was to use another drug, methadone. But several Black doctors learned from Chinese communities that acupuncture could be a viable, drug-free alternative. So these groups opened an acupuncture clinic in Bronx called the Lincoln Detox Center. (At the time, acupuncture was illegal in several states in the U.S.; the government worked to shut the Bronx clinic down and succeeded in 1978.) The relationship between Chinese medicine and other people of color goes back to the mid-1800s, when Chinese immigrants arrived in the U.S. to work on the railways during the Gold Rush. They brought herbs, ointments, and teas in case they got sick because few other forms of healthcare were available to them. Over time, Chinese doctors set up shops in Chinatown and would treat American patients as well. Minoriy groups, who could not afford to go to Western doctors, were particularly open to these doctors. [Photo: Courtesy of Elix] Ge sees Elix as part of this tradition. More than half of Elix’s customers are women of color. This makes sense to her, given that these communities have had more exposure to TCM than their white counterparts. On top of this, there is a lot of research showing that Black women experience discrimination in the healthcare system. In our one-on-one sessions with customers, we’ve had many women of color tell us they’ve felt marginalized or gaslit by doctors in the healthcare system, she says. But more broadly, many women’s health problems have not been studied as thoroughly. There are many reasons for this, according to experts. For centuries, women were not included in clinical studies, since the male body was considered normative. And even today, women are underrepresented in medical research. As a result, conditions like premenstrual syndrome and polycystic ovarian syndrome remain poorly understood. How Chinese Medicine Sees The Body In some ways, the principles of Chinese medicine are particularly suited to tackling women’s health conditions, which are often associated with hormonal shifts. According to Ge, the Chinese approach takes a much more holistic view of the body. It is interested in how the systems work over the course of a day, a month, and the year. If a patient feels unwell, the first step is to see how their body is out of balance, then figuring out how to balance it again. As a result, Chinese doctors are generally attuned to how a woman’s body changes over her menstrual cycle. If a woman feels more fatigued before her period or experiences a migraine, they have a keen sense of how their hormones are fluctuating and have herbal remedies designed to mitigate the shifts. [Photo: Courtesy of Elix] This contrasts with Western medicine, where doctors tend to be very specialized, which can make it hard to treat syndromes related to the menstrual cycle. I’ve seen this firsthand with my menstrual migraines. Since my gynecologist doesn’t specialize in headaches, she referred me to a neurologist. My neurologist prescribes me the latest migraine treatments, but he is not trying to treat the underlying hormonal shifts that are causing the migraine in the first place. Mark Shrime, a Harvard Medical School professor and the editor the BMJ Global Health journal, says specialization is one of the strengths of Western medicine, which has allowed us to understand the human body in great depth. And, ultimately, when the healthcare system is working as it should, he says doctors should be thinking about how to treat the patient holistically. It’s a generalization to say that allopathic medicine [i.e. Western medicine] is irreparably siloed or doesn’t think holistically, Shrime says. Western doctors are trained to look beyond a particular symptom. But Chinese medicine partitioners tend to be generalists, which influences how they treat patients. When it comes to their menstrual cycles, women face a wide range of symptoms, including cramps, headaches, depression and anxiety, bloating, fatigue, muscle and joint pain, gastrointestinal problems, sleep disturbances, and many more. TCM has developed a way of organizing these symptoms into patterns, and has identified particular herbs that can counter these issues. When building Elix, Ge worked with TCM practitioners to categorize patterns and match them with specific formulas known to bring relief. It has also built a supply chain to source the herbs from trustworthy suppliers. Each batch of formulations is tested for both quality and consistency. One issue with traditional medicine is that it was hard to ensure the quality of the herbs, says Fine. If you weren’t getting results, you couldn’t tell if it was quackery, or if the quality of the herbs just wasn’t good. Elix customers take an in-depth survey about their menstrual cycle which covers everything from period symptoms to chronic condition like fibroids. Using an algorithm, Elix will match these symptoms to a particular pattern and prescribe a formula. Our goal is to standardize this approach to medicine by identifying common patterns and provide the right formulations for each, Ge says. My biggest goal is to bring some clinical rigor to TCM, and to do so, we need to have some standardization and repeatability in place. The Translation Problem Ge believes that her brand has grown thanks to the efficacy of the formulas. Many customers provide feedback and reviews saying that Elix has relieved their symptoms. In some cases, women have reported that their PCOS has gone away completely. Elix continues to grow, particularly among those who are frustrated with the healthcare system and are inclined towards experimenting with Chinese medicine. But to scale, Elix must go beyond these early adopters and tap into mainstream consumers who are less familiar with, or even skeptical of, TCM. One way Ge is doing this is by translatng the principles of TCM into language that is more familiar to those immersed in Western medicine. Chinese medicine is based on the concept of qi, which refers to the universal life force, and balancing the ying and yang energies in the body. Many people recoil at this language. But Ge says that ying and yang maps neatly into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. And when Chinese medicine describes being out of balance, this often maps onto the concept of experiencing inflammation of some kind. We’re truing to explain these concepts from a Western medicine perspective so that they don’t feel so foreign and weird to people, says Ge. [Photo: Courtesy of Elix] Jonathan Leary, founder of the Remedy Place wellness clubs, has been open to incorporating treatments from other medical traditions into his clubs, including acupuncture. He agrees with Ge that translating these approaches into language that consumers will understand is key to to their success. One of my priorities is to bring alternative medicine mainstream, Leary says. When we communicate about it in a way that is relatable and scientific, people have quickly adapted. Winning Over Skeptics With Clinical Studies But Ge is also trying to provide evidence that her formulations work in a way that is understandable to Western doctors. This isn’t easy, partly because the format of clinical trials is about isolating a particular pharmaceutical compound, giving it to patients, and seeing how well it does against a placebo. The goal is to see the same result among a large proportion of those within the trial. In contrast, Chinese medicine recognizes that each patient is unique and formulations must be tailored to the individual’s symptoms. Still, Elix is now conducting several independent clinical studies to see how the herbal formulations affect hormone-related symptoms. It recently released the results of a study around PCOS, a condition which affects between 6% and 13% of reproductive-aged women, and results in irregular periods, weight gain, and infertility. There is a lack of medical research into PCOS, and as result, there are no FDA-approved drugs to treat it. The results of the Elix study found that 89.3% of participants who used Elix’s formulas were able to regulate their cycle, and 71.4% found that it had improved their PCOS symptoms. There’s a long way to go before TCM is widely accepted in America. But Elix reveals a possible path by which more people are able to learn more about the Chinese approach to medicine, and access treatments that might help them. And now, it seems Western medicine is beginning to open up to these approaches. I would never recommend Chinese medicine as an alternative to going to your doctor, says Shrime. But I think there’s a greater acceptance of these treatments to complement allopathic medicine. There’s a recognition that some of these herbs do make you feel better, so if they don’t interact with another drug, I wouldn’t say no to a patient who wanted to try them.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||