Acupuncture - woo or not

lionking

In the Peanut Gallery
lionking
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I know that this topic has been covered before, but the Australian Government is spending money trialling acupuncture in emergency wards:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/a...-get-straight-to-the-point-20090625-cy8r.html

As far as I can tell, acupuncture relies on tapping into the body's "qi":

Two very different theories exist as to how acupuncture works. According to Chinese philosophy, the body contains two opposing forces: yin and yang. When these forces are in balance, the body is healthy. Energy, called "qi" (pronounced "chee"), flows like rivers along pathways, or meridians, throughout the body. This constant flow of energy keeps the yin and yang balanced. However, the flow of energy can sometimes be blocked, like water getting stuck behind a dam. A disruption in the flow of energy can lead to illness.
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So what's the latest scientific view? Is this just a scam capitalising on the placebo effect, or is there some real basis for this? Is this taxpayer money well spent?
 
If it would, probably not be a MDC applicable if you only told it "works", AFAIK all meta analyze point out to sham acupuncture working as well as acupuncture for certain type of illness. As long as you pick somebody with a point, or needle, it does not matter where, you get a similar result (better than doing *nothing* as control). By the same token homeopathy could be told to work... Not really a good point.

Now what would be probably a MDC challenge if you told it works BECAUSE of the meridian, and the meridian really conduct energy or whatever.
 
lionking said:
I know that this topic has been covered before, but the Australian Government is spending money trialling acupuncture in emergency wards:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/a...-get-straight-to-the-point-20090625-cy8r.html

As far as I can tell, acupuncture relies on tapping into the body's "qi":



So what's the latest scientific view?
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Even if there were some empirical effect demonstrated for accupuncture, it would ultimately have a physiological basis and would have NOTHING to do with that qi, yin, and yang crap that was in the quote you posted.

This is actually showing up now, and is being discussed over in Orac's blog (Respectful Insolance). There was a recent paper that claimed to show some success for "electroaccupuncture" where the needles have some electrical current through them. After some discussion, a commentor discovered a paper that described previously how electrical stimulation of the given receptors led to this apparent effect. That paper had nothing to do with accupuncture, but was a physiological study.
 
casebro said:
Acupunture is not WOO, it's placebo!

;)
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Fair enough, but is there evidence of this and if so why would a sophisticated, first world medical service be funding it?

Please understand, I am not a supporter of acupuncture.
 
casebro said:
Acupunture is not WOO, it's placebo!

;)
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If it were just called placebo, of course, it wouldn't be woo. The woo is the fact that it is claimed to act by affecting the qi and yin and yang and "disrupting energy flow".
 
lionking said:
Fair enough, but is there evidence of this and if so why would a sophisticated, first world medical service be funding it?

Please understand, I am not a supporter of acupuncture.
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It's a very difficult technique to blind securely. And because it is invasive and even uncomfortable, it is capable of evoking a particularly strong placebo response. (The bigger the apparent intervention, the greater the placebo response, very often - it's as if the subconscious were saying, I've gone through all that, it bloody well must do something!)

Thus there is some apparently decent scientific evidence saying that it's doing something. This and the politically-correct attitude that SCAM should be supported and promoted is enough to make healthcare providers look at it seriously.

Rolfe.
 
For how to control an acupuncture experiment, I think the only way would be with a general anesthetic.

All the test subjects would be put under, half get acupuncture, half get nothing.

They report how the 'treatment' affected them to a scientitian who has no idea if they got poked or not.
 
lionking said:
Fair enough, but is there evidence of this and if so why would a sophisticated, first world medical service be funding it?

Please understand, I am not a supporter of acupuncture.
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So it gets more people that believe in woo pay them to be insured by them.
 
OK, I hate to dredge up an old thread, but I searched and this is the only recent one I found with "acupuncture" in the title, and it's relevant enough to what I want to know...I can make a new one, if needed.

Randi's latest article, More Evasion, and the comments to it, prompted me to check out this link: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=492. I shared it with my friends, one of them replied with this: http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js4926e/#Js4926e.5, as if it totally counters all argument against acupuncture.

I'm guessing it doesn't, but I will admit that I'm not a doctor or even any sort of scientician, so I'm having a bit of trouble picking through the whole thing. It does make a case for using acupuncture, and it's published by the World Health Organization - as far as I know, they are a pretty rational group not prone to woo...I thought?

I don't know what to make of it, I guess. And I think that a reply like, "well it's woo because I just know it is, and no evidence to the contrary will convince me" is really kind of missing the point of the whole "skeptic" thing.

Has anyone here seen that WHO link before, or would any kind soul individual care to take a look at it?

In particular, this page has a considerable amount of information that all seems to support acupuncture: http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js4926e/6.html
 
rustypouch said:
For how to control an acupuncture experiment, I think the only way would be with a general anesthetic.

All the test subjects would be put under, half get acupuncture, half get nothing.

They report how the 'treatment' affected them to a scientitian who has no idea if they got poked or not.
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That would block the flow of the Qi...or something, perhaps the effect relies somehow on the nervous system. Maybe a drug that blocks memory formation could be used instead.
 
I know several physiotherapists who are convinced it works.

But what exactly does "It works" mean - and is what they use accupuncture?

If spasmed muscle fibres can be triggered to relax by needling, is this accupuncture?
It hardly seems to fit any traditional model.
But are we pedantic to say it is something else?
I get the impression to some people , anything involving the use of accupuncture needles is accupuncture, whether it is targeting accupuncture points or not. Now if I stick enough needles in you, you will feel some effects. Likewise if I smack you with a wok- but is that Chinese medicine, Chinese cooking or just assault with a blunt instrument?
 
I dunno what "accupuncture" is, but you might get more results if you googled "acupuncture"....
:bricks:

Rolfe.
 
Well, to answer my own question...I got home and was able to do some quick Googling, and came up with this as a reponse to that WHO study:

A review of the WHO meta-analysis, by the Medical Director of the British Medical Acupuncture Society, and Editor of Acupuncture in Medicine (one would assume he's an acupuncture proponent).
http://www.medicinescomplete.com/journals/fact/current/fact0803a02t02.htm
It is clear that this report is highly biased in favour of acupuncture; indeed, this commentator had the opportunity to hear a presentation from the author in April 2003. At that presentation, Dr Zhang said that the paper was written: ‘… to show acupuncture works.’ As such, this unsystematic review cannot be used to support the contention that acupuncture is efficacious; however, it may still have some value in terms of hypothesis generation, and in detailing a large number of trials from the Chinese literature. While the latter are likely to be of low methodological quality, they probably represent the best evidence available from a hitherto rather inaccessible portion of the literature.
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He doesn't believe the WHO report is reliable, and he's an acupuncturist.

Furthermore, nearly half the data for the WHO report are from China, where studies are unreliable and biased: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=10406751
and
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T5R-3SRRK1W-4&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6f6589c5aa608c6f796861a7c970f9c0
 
Rolfe said:
I dunno what "accupuncture" is, but you might get more results if you googled "acupuncture"....
:bricks:

Rolfe.
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Hey- I make up the spelling, other people make up the results.
It's Chinese, innit?
 
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