Sham Acupuncture

A recent study showed that so-called sham acupuncture was just as effective as "real" acupuncture in relieving nausea caused by chemotherapy. This follows on the heels of a German study showing the same thing for low back pain. Needless to say, this has caused an uproar in the professional Chinese medicine community, screaming foul and concocting every conceivable reason why this is either scientifically, or even ethically, wrong. This is despite the fact that these are just two in a long line of studies demonstrating the same exact thing.

In the first case, the doctors used needles that did not actually penetrate the skin, so the patient only thought they were getting acupuncture. In the second case, needles were used, but on parts of the body that are not considered acupuncture points. In both cases, there were high rates of success from either sham or real acupuncture. They were not equally bad; they were equally good. To some,this proves either the whole enterprise is s sham, and that a patient merely believing they were receiving a valid technique will improve. To others, this means that (in the case of the first study) that penetration of the skin is not necessary for efficacy, and in the second case, that merely causing the so-called qi to flow can be stimulated even by penetrating areas not traditionally considered to be active points.

If either of these arguments is correct, there is a logical corollary, which is that specialized training is then not necessary to perform the treatments. In the first case, it is not even a medical procedure just to tap on a point briefly with a blunt object. People could do it to themselves or friends or family at no cost. In the second cases, the procedure could be performed by anyone who could be legally trained to insert a shallow needle intramuscularly, probably something one could learn in a six-week community college course, I would wager.