Does Acupuncture Work?

 
Orac is the nom-de-plume of a doctor who debunks the claims of non-evidence-based medicine (also known as "woo") on Respectful Insolence. His latest is a posting on the value of acupuncture based on recent scientific studies [Sham acupuncture is better than "true" acupuncture!]. Here's how Orac begins ...

Believe it or not, there was a time when I didn't consider acupuncture to be a form of woo.

I know, I know, it's hard to believe, given the sorts of posts I've done recently on acupuncture, but it's true. Certainly, I didn't believe the whole rigamarole about needles somehow "restoring the flow of qi" or anything like that, but I did wonder if maybe there was some physiologic mechanism at work behind acupuncture that produced real benefits in terms of pain relief above that of placebo. Sure, I may have dismissed homeopathy as the pure magical thinking that it was, but acupuncture I wasn't so sure about.

Obviously, that's changed.

The reason my opinion has changed and now I place acupuncture firmly in the "woo" category is that I've actually been reading the scientific literature on acupuncture over the last year or so....

None of us have time to investigate every form of superstition and irrational thinking. Sometimes we have to rely on trusted experts to do the required homework. Orac is one of those.

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