Category: Acupuncture

Acupuncture needles

UK Recommendations Wrong on Acupuncture

NICE draft recommendations on acupuncture don't even make sense from an EBM perspective, and utterly fail to consider SBM principles.

/ August 5, 2020

Chinese government recommends bear bile for COVID-19

The Chinese Government is relentlessly promoting TCM for COVID-19, including a remedy containing bear bile, which is cruelly extracted from the gall bladders of living wild or "farmed" bears.

/ May 7, 2020
Acupuncture needles

Acupuncture for Migraine Unconvincing

The evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture in migraines remains unconvincing, and a new study changes nothing.

/ April 1, 2020

Legislative Alchemy 2019: Acupuncturists score Medicare coverage and scope of practice expansion 

Through the magic of legislative alchemy, acupuncture has already scored some big wins in 2020, including Medicare coverage.

/ February 13, 2020
Acupuncture

More evidence that acupuncture doesn’t work for chronic pain

Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo whose real history has been retconned beyond recognition. A new systematic review of systematic reviews of acupuncture for chronic pain highlights that conclusion and catalogues the many weaknesses in the design of acupuncture clinical trials.

/ January 6, 2020

NCCIH surveys physicians on their recommendation of “complementary health approaches,” with depressing results

The NCCIH recently published a study examining the percentage of US physicians who had recommended "complementary health approaches" to their patients in the last year. The percentages are far higher than they should be.

/ December 16, 2019
Acupuncture for xerostomia

Spinning a negative acupuncture study: Same as it ever was

Investigators at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reported the results of a trial of acupuncture for xerostomia (dry mouth) secondary to radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. It was a negative trial, but investigators still tried to spin it as positive, but with a twist. There was a large difference between results found at M.D. Anderson and the second site in China....

/ December 9, 2019

“Eliminating cancer” with Traditional Chinese Medicine and other state-sanctioned quackery

State-approved continuing education courses pump a steady stream of fresh pseudoscience into acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine practice. Courses include claims of "eliminating cancer" and "reversing pediatric asthma" as well as anti-vaccination tropes.

/ October 24, 2019

New Florida law forces physicians to endorse pseudoscience

A new Florida law forces physicians to endorse chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage as non-opioid alternatives for pain, even if the physician disagrees with that advice.

/ September 12, 2019

Veterinary quackery at the San Diego Zoo

As I was spending a quiet Saturday night watching Animal Planet, I was disturbed to see out and out quackery on The Zoo:San Diego, as an elephant named Tembo, who was suffering from arthritis of the hip and one of her legs, was being subjected to thermography and acupuncture. Yes, as with human medicine, acupuncture quackery has infiltrated even the highest levels...

/ September 2, 2019