Acupuncture needs to be tested for it’s effectiveness… Are you serious?

I rarely get angry, but this Steven Salzberg from Forbes magazine really got my goat on this one.  Who the hell does he think he is?  I was sitting in a cafe having tea and as I read on, I could literally start to feel my blood boiling and my face becoming contorted in an odd shape, similar to how it would look if my rabbit got hit by a car.

If we put aside the fact that acupuncture has been around for 5,000 years… seriously, let’s put that aside.  I’ll tell you why it’s near impossible to assess the validity of this great medicine.

• Researchers are Western scientists who know nothing about the intricate theory of Chinese Medicine.
• It’s impossible to do a double blind study.  Let’s say we want to test the validity for Large Intestine 4 for headaches.  Half our control group gets LI4 and the other half gets, let’s say Kidney 5.  Here’s the problem, through as internal pathway based on the circadian clock, the Kidney balances the Large Intestine, so either way you are still balancing the Large Intestine and shifting that headache.  It’s impossible to target just that point!
• EVERYONE IS AN INDIVIDUAL!  Unlike Western medicine that treats high blood pressure as high blood pressure, we treat high blood pressure taking into consideration what else that patient might have symptomatically ‘working’ in the background.  Patient A has high blood pressure with insomnia and migraines, Patient B has high blood pressure with fatigue and leg cramps, Patient C has high blood pressure with dizziness.  All these patients would receive different acupuncture points and herbs.  They are not the same and if you tried to insert them into rigorous scientific scrutiny and research, the results would be all over the map.  Void!

I think this is my favorite section of the article…

“Make no mistake: this is all about greed.  The CAM industry sees Obamacare as a chance to reap huge profits, by forcing insurance companies to pay for ineffective treatments, including many that are wildly implausible.

Homeopaths, naturopaths, acupuncturists, reiki practitioners, energy healers, and other CAM practitioners don’t want to subject their methods to rigorous tests of effectiveness.  They know that their methods have failed scientific scrutiny, time and time again.  So now they want to force health care providers to pay for anything the patient wants. “Our patients believe us,” they argue, “so pay us.”

Forcing health care providers to pay for anything a patient wants, even if it doesn’t work, is guaranteed to drive up costs, without any benefit to patients.  Let’s ditch this bogus “discrimination” clause in the ACA, and insist that all medical care be held to the same high, scientifically rigorous standards.”

Oh Steven, I could go into the average salary of an acupuncturist vs  a Western doctor, not too mention 90% of us work for ourselves and are also ‘business owners’ when docs get to effortlessly join a group.  Acupuncturists literally have to work from the ground up and wear 10 hats to make it all work, all the while staying focused on the reason why they do this in the first place.  The patients…  remember them?

We know and you, as patients, know the wonders that Chinese medicine has done for you and your loved ones.   I hope Obamacare includes all CAM practitioners so that more Americans can experience the wonders of this medicine.

Much love, 

Christina “Mei Wen” Martin, L.Ac., Dipl.AC, MTOM, FABORM.