Quote Originally Posted by OakLeaf View Post
Well the last two links are to the same article (one is an abstract only), and none of them reviews any TCM methodologies. And, in other contexts, I know the scientists here have decried meta-analyses over and over again.
Sorry about the duplicate link. There is plenty of criticism out there on TCM methodologies. Most of the studies require subscriptions to the sites and I wanted to give non-subscription links.

A reputable acupuncture physician prescribes traditional Chinese herbs that have been tested over thousands of years. If they don't buy their herbs directly from the grower (or grow them themselves!), they know which brands are produced according to GMP. Acupuncture physicians trained at quality US schools are also educated in north/western medical principles so that they can coordinate their efforts with practitioners of north/western medicine. I'm pretty sure, but not 100%, that the same is true with Chinese-educated doctors.

Historically, for reasons that have much to do with misogyny, European and North American industrialized medicine suppressed traditional medicine to the lasting detriment of both. The same is not true of Chinese medicine where techniques and understandings are viewed as complementary and not distinct, and a unified system of medicine has been allowed to evolve.


Leaf through a PDR some time and observe what percentage of FDA-approved drugs carry the notation "mechanism of action is unknown," including most popular psychotropics. Then come back and talk about how herbs don't work because north/western doctors don't understand how.

My acupuncture doctor retired from a long career as an environmental engineer and spent two years in medical school before transferring to acupuncture college because he didn't want to be a pill-pusher (his words). It's not like he's lacking in "scientific" background.


I think there can be a lot of potential problems when Chinese herbs are used by people with a north/western understanding of medication - i.e., throw things at the illness until something sticks. TCM has much more to do with treating the person, not the condition, and so even more than with psychopharmaceuticals, it's important that Chinese herbs be prescribed by a trained provider.

Chinese herbs have not been scientifically tested over and over again for 1000s of years. Scientific methods are much newer than that. Instead, much is tradition. And much of the tradition is more myth than fact. For example, acupuncture has a questionable history, with some kind of needling going in and out of popularity in various countries, has varied in how it was practiced over the years, and became popular in China when Mao pushed it as cheap medical care. Mao was the one who called it traditional. Acupuncture has now been studied using scientific methods and has come out wanting, no better and sometimes worse than sham acupuncture (placebo). The quality of research coming from China on acupuncture is extremely poor and uncontrolled. My opinion has nothing to do with some kind of eastern/western dichotomy or prejudice. It only has to do with evidence. That is all I care about.

Harriet Hall says it better than me:

Guess what? It doesn’t matter where you put the needle. It doesn’t matter whether you use a needle at all. In the best controlled studies, only one thing mattered: whether the patients believed they were getting acupuncture. If they believed they got the real thing, they got better pain relief – whether they actually got acupuncture or not! If they got acupuncture but believed they didn’t, it was less likely to work. If they didn’t get it but believed they did, it was more likely to work.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/...puncture-myth/

No matter how sincere the practitioner is, the underlying theory of acupuncture has no good science behind it. Accreditation of practitioners is not based on validity of what is being taught, unlike evidence based medicine.

Phrases like "treating the whole person, "complementary medicine," and "traditional medicine" are warm and fuzzy but essentially meaningless. Ask you doctor, does she not treat all of you? There is only one medicine, the medicine that has demonstrable knowledge of the risks and benefits of its tools so decisions can be made on how to treat an individual. I don't care what part of the world it comes from.

I know that periodically I come down hard on altmed. I know that I risk offending some of you when I criticize what you believe to be true. I acknowledge that there are good reasons why people lost trust in Big Pharma. But I trust Big Altmed even less. It pretends to be the underdog when it often is big business with a strong lobby resisting regulation. People who criticize altmed are sometimes slapped with lawsuits to shut them up, with no regard to free exchange of ideas. When I worked on lobbying on health care issues I was threatened with a suit for criticizing a particular alternative medicine practice. Everything I said could be backed up by the facts but facts were not relevant to those making the threat.

Altmed marketing is misleading. Altmed treats supplements as food and not drugs but then want people to take them like they are drugs. The get away with the quack version of a "miranda" warning:
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.


They couch their claims in vague language like "boosts the immune system," "detoxifies the liver," "cleanses the whatever" or "good for heart health."

Pseudo-science passes for science. And people like Oprah get enamoured of the latest fad.

It wore me out. But I can't keep my mouth shut.