Poor Science Reporting

Acupuncture In The Military

Jason Torpy has posted on NPR's promotion of acupuncture in the military.  What's the harm? 

Acupuncture And Politics

Jann Bellamy has posted on the Science-Based Medicine blog a piece on acupuncture and the political efforts to be accepted as a legitimate health care service.  Until we elect individuals who base decisions on reason and evidence, this will continue.  Think about it, especially if you are inclined to vote for a member of the one of the two major US political parties that is strongly anti-science.

Consumer Reports Drops The Ball: More Evidence

This blogger recently reported this expose of Consumer Reports. For more evidence of the recent shift of this magazine into unscientific medical reporting, the recent subscribed-to email sent out by Consumer Health Digest reports the following:

Consumer Reports goes "quack!"

The September 2011 issue of Consumer Reports has inappropriately endorsed chiropractic treatment by reporting that subscribers who answered its annual survey said that chiropractic treatment had been more helpful to them than various other treatments for back and neck pain. [Barrett S. Consumer Reports gives bad advice about chiropractors. Chirobase, Aug 7, 2011] http://www.chirobase.org/14Misc/cr.html The article acknowledges that the survey data might not represent the experiences of the general population and should not be compared to the results of clinical trials. However, it fails to place the survey's findings in proper perspective. In 1975 and 1994, Consumer Reports thoroughly debunked chiropractic's subluxation concept and warned very clearly about bad chiropractic advice and overselling. The September 2011 report provides no such warnings, shows a subluxation-based chiropractor giving an "adjustment," and recommends using the American Chiropractic Association to help find a chiropractor. The article gives similar uncritical advice about acupuncture and massage therapy.

Acupuncture is based mainly based on nonsensical theories about the flow of nonmaterial energy though imaginary "energy channels." http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html Stating that acupuncturists use needles to "purportedly stimulate and restore healing energy" it advises readers to find practitioners by contacting organizations that espouse this nonsense. Massage can be beneficial, but a substantial percentage of massage therapists advocate and use quack "energy medicine" practices. http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/massage.html

Consumers Union's longtime medical consultant and (Marvin M. Lipman, M.D.) and a few other senior staff members are fully aware of the problem of quackery, but the magazine has published very little about it during the past 15 years. Quackwatch has added Consumer Reports to its list of nonrecommended periodicals in the category headed "Magazines, Excellent Except for Too Many Poorly Reasoned Articles on "Complementary" and/or "Alternative" Medicine." http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecperiodicals.html

Pragmatic Studies And Cinderella Medicine

Harriet Hall has posted on the Science-Based Medicine blog an interesting analysis of two different research methods and their value.

Alt Med - Acupuncture (5 of 20)

(from PT and Alternative Medicine)

History

Crude, non-systematic needling was noted in China in the 1600’s.

A Frenchman, Georges Soulie de Morant, was the first to use the term “meridian” and to equate qi with “energy” — in 1939.

The Chinese government tried to ban acupuncture several times, between 1822 and World War II.

Mao revived it in the 1960s as a cheap way of providing care to the masses; he did not use it himself because he did not believe it worked. It was Mao’s government that coined the term “traditional Chinese medicine” or TCM.

A widely circulated picture of a patient allegedly undergoing open heart surgery in China with acupuncture anesthesia was shown to be bogus.

As acupuncture increased in popularity in the West, it declined in the East. In 1995, visiting American physicians were told only 15–20% of Chinese chose TCM, and it was usually used along with Western treatments after diagnosis by a Western-trained physician. Apparently some patients choose TCM because it is all they can afford.

In surgery in China today, acupuncture is used along with conventional anesthesia and/or pre-operative medication, and it is selected only for patients who believe in it and are likely to have a placebo response.

Support

no research has ever been able to document the existence of acupuncture points or meridians or qi.

It has been shown to “work” (placebo effect?) to relieve pain, nausea, and other subjective symptoms, but it has never been shown to alter the natural history or course of any disease.

Studies have shown that acupuncture releases natural opioid pain relievers in the brain: endorphins. Veterinarians have pointed out that loading a horse into a trailer or throwing a stick for a dog also releases endorphins. Probably hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer would release endorphins too, and it would take your mind off your headache.

Some research of acupuncture for pain relief finds traditional acupuncture effective, but so is a sham form. The sham form involved :(1) the insertion of needles but not into traditional "energy"/chi points on "meridians“ or (2) the use of toothpicks instead of needles.

Summary

Acupuncture is no more effective than traditional “counter-stimulation” procedures (i.e. rubbing, tapping, shaking, heat, cold, etc.)