(SV*)null
interpreting the void as SamV
Let's be clear about this, using acupuncture anesthesia you can perform *open heart surgery*. This was documented well by Norwegian doctors in the 1960's who observed and took photos of this and many other marvels. Midwives around the country are today using acupuncture to turn breech babies, induce labour and make the birth less painful. These are not imaginary effects - until you can explain the mechanism of these observed effects, you don't have a scientific rebuttal. Because the studies to show them working exist - see for instance http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9820259
There are plenty of avenues for scientific exploration that are only begrudgingly and slowly being uncovered. Some of them are very modern. The pathways of the lymphatic system have been found using radiotracers to closely correspond to the paths of the Chinese acupuncture channels, described over 2000 years ago (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11863401, but note: the "control" method of this experiment is flawed; the scientists clearly fail at basic rigour, as the channels/meridians cover the entire body). There was also some interesting research into the effects of using electricity with acupuncture in the 19th century, and if you put "electroacupuncture" into pubmed, you'll find a huge amount of new research in this area.
He accuses the society of "alternative medicine" practitioners (whatever that means - especially in China, where scientific medicine has been integrated successfully with acupuncture and other traditional methods) of ignoring results. Especially with this quote;
"If my healing art is not shown to work then it must be the fault of the trial."
Frustrating as it might be, that's right. You can have 100 failed studies, and they're not necessarily showing anything other than either the study was bad, or the people carrying out the study were not testing the right thing - the researchers failed to make it work. If someone comes along with a study that *does* work, then those 100 failed studies don't detract from the successful study. They merely highlight how tricky it is to get it working. If there are no successful studies to the contrary, it's a different story. But you just can't say that for acupuncture. There are too many successful results, and too many cross-trained people who choose acupuncture as the more effective and safe treatment approach.
The scientific method should never be a shackle or a set of blinkers with which you ignore everything which hasn't already been proven. What is more important - "double blind" testing, or simple repeatability of a successful method? Yes, a double-blind result is better than a single-blind or otherwise controlled experiment. But surely, if scientists are sticking to their guns and saying that they must be able to contrive a valid "placebo", somehow run it double blind, and worry about what is clinically effective second, what is the point of the process? And I'm sorry, offering a bottle of wine as a reward for producing proof is not going to fund the level of studies which they are demanding.
The big questions facing scientific medicine - such as, what is "Placebo" and why is it so effective at treating disease and illness, and what is the mechanism of action of acupuncture, are still largely being ignored by a body with too much face to lose over this debate to be wrong.
But why believe someone ranting on a stuff column? Why not read some of the areas work is being done.
Here's a 20-year-old result showing a method of imaging acupuncture meridians; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2907231
In this later study, researchers use this method to answer relevant questions such as "which physical organ do these vague-sounding Chinese functional organ groups such as "Pericardium" or "Triple Energizer" correspond to? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2883838
The Koreans showing that it's not just preconceptions; that indeed, people who have had acupuncture before feel the same thing as the naïve: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12067096 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15974491
A lot of the problem is that it is far too easy to rant about "hundreds of studies" without fronting up with links to the actual research. I didn't search hard for those results - sure, there were unsuccessful studies I didn't link to, but that's the nature of research - your studies don't always work, but you've still got to publish it.