Statement #1:
The holocaust never happened. Hitler loved Jews and respected Jewish culture. The photographic evidence of the camps, including the bodies and atrocities, were all fakes designed by the State of Israel to generate international sympathy.
Statement #2:
Traditional Chinese Medicine is an effective treatment for numerous medical conditions. Acupuncture has been around for centuries and is widely practiced in China and elsewhere. Science has proven its efficacy in controlled experiments.
With any luck, that first statement should generate dozens of hits from watchdog groups berating me for spreading the vile lie of Holocaust denial.
The second statement, or words perilously close to that effect, has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, a previously prestigious medical publication now revealed to be no better than the National Enquirer or any other sleazy tabloid, fit only for lining bird cages and wrapping week-old fish. Thanks to this wonderful article by Harriet Hall, it turns out that the first reference to “needling” in Chinese medical literature is from 90 B.C., although it doesn’t refer to acupuncture. It’s talking about lancing abscesses and bloodletting. The technology required to make sufficiently thin needles didn’t even exist until 400 years ago.The Chinese government tried to ban acupuncture several times around the turn of the twentieth century. The actual term “Traditional Chinese Medicine” was coined by Mao Tse Dung in the 1960′s! (Go read Harriet’s article linked above. It’s awesome.)
So riddle me this, campers: Why (and how) do science denialists get away with these outrageous lies? Not just on their websites and to their minions where anything goes, but even the mainstream media regularly assumes that “TCM” is “ancient”. All you have to do is go to the source: China. (I already wrote about this.) Come to think of it, if acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine were really so wonderfully efficacious for so many disorders, wouldn’t people in China be using it instead of attacking, beating, and sometimes killing doctors for failing to heal their loved ones with “conventional” medicine?
Acupuncture is a con, pure and simple. Originally perpetuated by Mao in the Communist era, renounced by Chinese physicians in 1980, it persists in affluent cultures as the refuge of quacks making a quick buck by relieving the naive of their hard-earned dollars.
Where’s the outrage? Newspapers that wouldn’t be caught dead promoting Holocaust denialism have no qualms about continuing to report the falsehood of acupuncture’s antiquity. Even the august Dr. Steven Novella fell for it in this post from 2007 (just because something’s old doesn’t make it right/better; true, but acupuncture isn’t even old).
Why isn’t every media mention of “traditional Chinese medicine’s 4000 year old medical techniques” met with the same howls of rage at perpetuating a lie as the historical revisionism that is Holocaust denial? I’d like to see letters to the editor loudly correcting the misperception of the antiquity of acupuncture every time it’s mentioned. All a lie requires to continue is for the truth to keep silent.
I’m sorry Dino, but this variant on the reductio ad Hitlerum is a rather bad idea. Are you familiar with Godwin’s law?
Why not compare statement #2 to something more medicine related, but just as ridiculous – for example that drinking the blood of a unicorn cures cancer? You’ll make the same point, but without the appeal to emotion the Holocaust reference makes.
Statement #2 is most likely based on ignorance, statement #1 you mostly hear from malevolent groups.
Statement #1 denies genocide on millions of people, statement #2 denies the lack of efficacy of a treatment (which can not, in any way, be the cause of such a vast number of casualties).
I do quite agree that the public should be educated on the lack of (evidence of) efficacy concerning TCM.
By: T4 on August 15, 2010
at 12:54 pm
Have never had much respect for NEJM anyway.
By: mamadoc on August 15, 2010
at 3:19 pm
Ugh – I’ve had several well meaning people tell me I should look into acupuncture. Thank you for the link to the article. I may have use for it in the future…
By: dyspatient on August 15, 2010
at 9:50 pm
I am in no way defending statements made in NEJM, but, there have been articles in the Cochrane review that have slightly favorable outcomes over controlled experiments using random needle placement (placebo in this case). What comes to mind are articles about tension headache and chronic low back pain.
Reviews against acupuncture that found no evidence included those of acupuncture for smoking cessation.
Reviews that are equivocal include acupuncture to improve rates of IVF success due to poor experimental design.
view the Cochrane reviews dealing with acupuncture here:
http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/topics/22_reviews.html
By: medstudentitis on August 15, 2010
at 11:23 pm
I tried acupuncture once for tendinitis in my wrists when a more traditional doctor could do nothing for me. I think I had two or three appointments and while it did absolutely nothing for my wrist pain, it was rather relaxing to lie there and not have to do anything. I also got a head massage as part of the “treatment”. OMG, I’d go back just for that! The needles, though? Eh.
By: Janet on August 18, 2010
at 12:22 am
What’s intriguing, though, is that you can’t even make a quick buck with quackery… seriously, it’s a very long and involved process in most “non-traditional” modalities to become a practitioner. I would go as far as to say there is an industry there… an industry that makes money not from the treatment of people, but from TRAINING new and hopeful practitioners…
By: Réka on August 18, 2010
at 7:51 am
Dino,
Went to an MD who is trained in accupunture. Severe back pain/spasms were gone after 4 sessions. Tried pain medication/traditional remedes prior to the accu. Would never have believed it if I hadn’t tried it myself.
By: jon on August 30, 2010
at 3:49 pm
I have to join with Jon.
If you never felt how acupuncture helps with certain pains, then you can not believe it.
I do not say that it helps with everything, that is th same mistake done with other things too..like for an example herbs.
Heart medication, pain killers…a very big ammount of modern medication was derived from plants and was known for hundreds, if not thousand years.
Modern medicine just had the needed technic to derive and measure it safer.
Like Digitalis, it sure was not easy to derive a medicine from that plant a couple of hundred years before. You always had the risk that the dose was too high and now we can measure it perfectly.
There are many quaks who practice akupunkture, that sure is also a big reason for the bad press.
So maybe it is just the plkacebo effect, but then why is it working with animals?
Like with dachshound that have problems using their hind legs, are treated with acupunture and medication and are better then animals which get only medication?
We know that capsaicin helps with rheumatic problems..and why? Also heat or cold can help…because it is affecting the nerves.
Acupuncture does just that, irritating the nerves like capsaicin ointment, heat or cold does. The nerves are firing, things are happening in skin and muscles, inflammation is lessening, the circulation and blood flow gets better.
I would not use acupuncture or homeophatic medicine for cancer or other serious conditions as only treatment.
But it can help while you have a chemo treatment or surgery.
Maybe also just placebo, maybe not..maybe it really helps with pain and the urge to vomit…if it helps, than does it matter if you can measure it with science?
Prayers also help people, the body is producing more endorphines, is lowering the blood pressure and heart rate.You can not put prayers into a pill or precribe it as mg per dose..is it quack?
Should we not pray when we know it may help, or when we know it will help?
Not as the solely therapy, but if it helps, why not take it too?
By: cyrell on January 23, 2011
at 11:01 am