It's sad a time for the family of Chinese actress Xu Ting as she recently passed away from being diagnosed with cancer. She revealed her sickness to the public in July through a blogging site called Sina Weibo where she also documented her battle.
The 26-year-old's death sparked online debate as Xu's initial decision in treating the disease was traditional Chinese medicine treatments rather than undergoing chemotherapy. Among the methods used in this alternative are cupping, acupuncture, back stretching, and gua shua, a treatment involving the scraping of skin to produce bruising.
Xu explained that the reason behind her decision was that she saw firsthand what chemo does to the body. She said she saw friends of hers suffering through the process and the treatment was quite costly, besides.
"I don't want to let chemotherapy torment me to the point where I look unrecognizable, and have lost all my money, and myself," she wrote on the micro-blogging site. Her post garnered a lot of online sympathy from the 300,000 people following her account with her fans urging her to undergo chemo.
"Listen to me, Chinese medicine is absolutely useless to cure cancer, if you don't want to listen to me at least listen to a doctor," one user commented.
"Please abandon the traditional treatments, it's a fantasy. You need to rely on modern medicine to save yourself," another said.
While her fans attacked the traditional method, others were quick to defend it.
"There are many cancer patients who pass away after receiving chemotherapy. Will these same people also say that Western medicine is a sham?" said a writer from the Beijing Evening News.
Others stood on middle-ground saying that Xu should've taken advantage of both types of treatment so that it'll complement each other. Chemo would've directly killed the tumors while the traditional Chinese treatment could've helped with her symptoms.
Despite her decision, Xu does believe in the effectiveness of modern medicine and was even doing fundraisers for children who are affected by the disease. It seems that the real reason for opting for the traditional Chinese treatment was that the actress' financial concern.
Xu, one of seven children, said that she's working hard to pay for their house, her brother's tuition, and her parents' debts. As her condition worsened, the actress eventually put herself through chemotherapy but unfortunately lost her battle to cancer on September 7.
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