I agree with you that homeopathy is bunk, but what about acupuncture? Most of the commentary I’ve seen so far has been of the “maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, more research is needed” variety. Come on, I’ve been reading about acupuncture for years–surely medical science has been able to form some tentative conclusions by now.
(2) There’s pretty sparse evidence that it does.
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The one place where acupuncture has been a big success is on the PR front. In 1996 the Food and Drug Administration declared that acupuncture needles were no longer experimental but would henceforth be considered standard medical equipment, along with syringes, trusses, and arch supports. In 1997 a conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health concluded that acupuncture was sufficiently effective to warrant increased use in clinical practice.
Some of acupuncture’s defenders recognize its inadequacies. “Thirty years of active acupuncture research have failed to unequivocally demonstrate its clinical efficacy,” concedes a 1999 paper in the American Journal of Acupuncture. Shall we go back to Tylenol, then? Not at all. “Acupuncture and Chinese traditional medicine are based on a unique philosophical model, and the instruments of biomedical research may be inadequate and inappropriate,” the paper concludes. Translation: Don’t blame acupuncture, blame the test. These guys can rationalize all they like, but I bet when they go in for a root canal the only needle they want to see is a shot of novocaine. For more, see Stephen Barrett’s review in Quackwatch, www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html.
