Pangolin Withdrawal from Chinese Medicine Has Made Significant Progress: Praise Expurgation of Pangolin from the Chinese Medicine Postgraduate Examination Outline

Today, staffs of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation saw a gratifying news on Weibo: In 2020, the outline of the Chinese Medicine Postgraduate Examination was slightly modified compared to 2019: the Chinese medicine part removed pangolin scales which is used as medicine to promote blood circulation. The staff immediately went online to verify the news and they were happy to see was it was true.  Although the physiotherapy agent "Recovery Blood Soup", which uses pangolin as raw material, has not been deleted in the syllabus, it is a huge improvement compared with the past. CBCGDF pangolin protectors still feel cheerful about this.

Since 2015, CBCGDF has been working against the use of pangolins for medicine. The pangolin family has three genera and eight species, all of which are now endangered, and the number of wild populations is very rare. In China, pangolins are secondary class protected animals and have been listed in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2014 Red List of Endangered Species. In 2016, pangolins were included in the Washington Convention CITES Appendix I protected animals forbidden global trade.  In 2019, CBCGDF announced the Chinese pangolin, a native species of pangolin in mainland China, whose functional extinction in mainland China has sparked heated discussions. Due to the illicit trade, the number of pangolins has dropped by more than 90% compared with the 1960s and 1970s, and the important factor that has led to the ban on illegal trade is the huge medicinal market of pangolins.

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that pangolin scales are valuable medicinal materials, which can activate blood circulation, reducing swelling, treating breast milk, amenorrhea, rheumatism and phlegm. However, the pangolin in the Chinese medicine classics actually refers to the Chinese pangolin, not others. As mentioned above, the number of Chinese pangolins in the wild is very scarce, and it is impossible to support the huge market demand.  So where does the large amount of pangolin medicinal materials come from? The answer points to illegal trade.

Most of the pangolin products on the market today are derived from the illegal trade of pangolins in Africa. African pangolins and Chinese pangolins belong to different species, and their medical use is of course unreasonable. As for the medicinal value of pangolin scales, there have been some papers on the research of traditional Chinese medicine prove that the ingredients are mainly keratin and have no medicinal function. The ancient Chinese medical books "Medical Doctors" and "Shen Nong's Herbal Classics" all classify pangolins as the lower medicine. In the "Pharmaceutical Theory", there is even a record of "(Pangolin) drug-like toxicity".

In 2019, CBCGDF proposed in the National People’s Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference (NPC and CPPCC): "Refer to the "Notice of the State Council on Prohibiting the Trade of Rhinoceros Horn and Tiger Bone" (Guo Fa [1993] No. 39), cancel the medicinal standard of pangolin, and remove the pangolin from the Pharmacopoeia.  Then use the tablet pharmacy. The traditional Chinese medicine preparations containing the pangolin components have been sealed up and prohibited from being sold. The stocks should be publicly destroyed, and the possibility of entering the market is completely eliminated. At the same time, the artificial breeding license is stopped, and the inspection is rectified. Existing pangolin artificial farms, establish a scientific and perfect management system for protective breeding of pangolins, strict breeding standards, fine lineage management, guarantee the maximization of genetic diversity, serve the release and field research. "

The Expurgation of pangolin from the Outline of the Chinese Medicine Postgraduate Examination not only reflects the rigorous scientific trait of Chinese medicine, but also the progress of the times. It is also a major progress in the withdrawal of pangolins from the Chinese medicine market, huge achievement of a concern of China's biodiversity conservation protectors.