I believe that the guy got a dire diagnosis, that your dad came in and did what he did, and that the guy is now up and around. But who knows if what he did was the cause; I’ve seen enough medical shows when unexplainable recoveries happened under Western medical only.
Sorry to hear that. 
It does seem like we are on topic, and talking about acupuncture as the OP said. Are you disappointed because your beliefs have been questioned?
Liar? No, I believe she is reporting what she saw as well as she can. What we are questioning is her interpretation of events. If A happens after B, does B cause A? Is her evidence sufficent to overturn a very large body of medical knowledge that has been well documented? I think not.
I would like to gently suggest you investigate the logic behind those statements. You have said that it does work, but not always – any possibility that the outcomes are merely random? (cf. regressive fallacy) You are assuming that personal experience counts as valid evidence in the scientific community. It does not.
I say again: anecdotal evidence counts for nothing. And it does not improve with quantity. If each piece of evidence is worthless, accumulating hundreds of them does not make any of them more valid. Quantity can not substitute for quality.
That’s pretty much the mantra of believers, and I’ll respond with a counter-mantra: An open mind is desirable, but not one so open that your brains fall out. Intelligent questioning is good, but blind belief is not the same thing as an open mind. In fact, it’s just the opposite. And belief in the face of contradictory evidence is just plain stupid.
One who intends to practice critical thinking needs to assign a value to each piece of evidence. Some things carry more weight than others; a small volume of peer-reviewed, repeatable experiments counts more than a large volume of folk tales and urban legends that cannot be verified.
Western medicine doesn’t know everything, but traditional Chinese medicine knows nothing. You might find it interesting that even the Chinese don’t use it much: “The National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) claims that of the 46 medical journals published by the Chinese Medical Association, not one is devoted to acupuncture or other traditional Chinese medical practices.”(my bold)
It’s not that I don’t believe the story you tell us, it’s that you may be drawing unsupported conclusions. The reason sample size and control groups are mandatory is without them, we don’t know what factor(s) were involved and cannot be sure just what we are trying to prove.
I’m sure I can find (or make up) impressive testimonial or observational evidence to prove almost anything you can dream up. The problem is, it’s not good evidence. Science struggles mightily to separate the good evidence from the bad. Good evidence is what brought us the knowledge, cures and preventions we have today for such scourges as smallpox. It’s what has increased our life expectancy substantually over the last few centuries. Acupuncture and the hairbrained theory behind it has done none of this. It’s time to discard irrational beliefs and concentrate on actually learning how things work and how to improve them, not fantasize over ideas that have been shown to be worthless.
On the other hand, if you want to stick needles in yourself, go nuts. I hope it makes you happy. 
But if you get sick, I hope you visit a real doctor, and take advantage of what science has learned so far. The odds of you improving are vastly better.
To say that the Chinese don’t use acupuncture much is just so incredibly out of left field I don’t know how to address it. They may not write about it in medical journals (for many of the reasons I mentioned in my previous post, plus the anti-traditional pro-Western bias of their media post Cultural Revolution), but they use it very much, even within their Western style hospitals. Your cite doesn’t even say they don’t use it - you’re extrapolating that out of the fact that the government doesn’t publish journals on it. Frankly, I’m not sure why they would - the Chinese consider this all figured out hundreds of years ago, so why would they publish old discoveries?
Western medicine figured out centuries ago that asepis is a good thing. So why do they write new articles about it?
It’s an odd science that doesn’t add to its body of knowledge by new observations, experiments, speculations, and tests. In fact, it’s not science at all. Very few scientific “facts” or laws have survived, unaltered and unchallenged, for 4000 years.
The quote I gave was a secondary quote by Bob Carroll of a NCAHF claim that medical publications in China ignore “traditional” Chinese medicine and respect western medicine much more. It was intended to contrast the larger interest in the West with the non-interest in the East. If true, it seems odd that the originating culture no longer puts much stock in the theory.
Yes, I’d say the lack of publication on a topic compared to prolific publication on an opposing topic does mean something, unless you are claiming that the Chinese gummit is suppressing a large body of work.
Personally, I think that any health care provider should be interested in whether or not their treatment can be proven to be effective. Sure, not all acupuncturists are interested in personally conducting research - but neither are all doctors, only some go into research. But if we never did controlled, double-blind, randomized studies then we’d have no way to be able to tell which treatments actually work.
If acupuncturists as a whole are convinced that their treatment is truly effective then why on earth wouldn’t they be interested in actually proving this?
It reminds of an argument I had with my sister last year regarding another alternative health treatment (chiropractors). She did the whole “research isn’t important - helping the individual is important” schtick. She also seems to think that everyone can be helped by chiropractic - not just those who are currently “sick”, but also those who are generally healthy, in order to maintain their health.
To which I said that the majority of people do not use any given alternative medical therapy (acupuncture, chiropractors, naturopaths, etc…). BUT, if these treatments were actually proven to be beneficial, then I’m sure many more people would seek out these services.
Basically, if you’re a supporter of <insert alternative therapy here>, then the best thing that could happen to encourage people to use said therapy would to have good evidence that your treatment is effective and not a waste of money.
This is the best book to introduce someone to Traditional Chinese Medicine, specifically acupuncture.
Between Heaven and Earth
by Harriet Beinfield, and Efrem Korn.
Basically Western Medicine treats pathologies like a mechanic. Eastern Medicine addresses the whole system. I get acupuncture every week. They offered me a treatment to cure me of my addiction to pot, I took it on a lark, and it actually hurt my lungs to smoke pot after.
I think that one of the benefits of the rise of China will be the entry of Traditional Chinese Medicine into the body of researched literature. A good friend of mine at John’s Hopkins doing his premed was involved in a study about the benefits of Meditation on AIDS patients. It’s coming up, I think a lot of the research will be done by the next generation.
I’ve been thinking about my next step for schooling, maybe I’ll just go pre-med and then get my Masters degree in Acupuncture so I can give a gift to the Musicat’s of the world. I’m sorry Musicat, even if I do straight schooling from her til the end, I wouldn’t be done with all that for another 5 years minimum and then who knows how long the research would take. 
I look forward to some interesting research. One Empirical test that I have seen proven on myself is my Shiatsu teacher has this little device, some kind of piezzoelectric stimulator that if he puts it on one end of a meridian and places his finger at the other end of the meridian you’ll feel the shock travel up the meridian. Since meridians do not correspond to nerves it can’t be simply travelling up the nerve. If you place the ground finger on some other place on the body you’ll feel the shock but not as intensely. -shrugs- I don’t know how to prove it, but I’ve experienced it.
Which would be nice, except that, as I said, there isn’t anyone paying the acupuncturists not to see patients to have the time and financial freedom do many studies. Most acupuncturists I know aren’t independently wealthy and can’t afford to fund their own studies, nor do they have the education in research methods and protocol to really do a good job at it. As I said, this is slowly changing as established health care centers begin to fund acupuncture studies (and chiropractic and herbal and other alternative modalities), but it’s not going to change overnight.
If someone was looking for evidence that acupuncture works, I would direct them to post #2 of this thread. (Thanks, BrainGlutton, that was very helpful.) I think it provides an excellent summary of the latest information.
And thanks for the reading tip, mswas. Maybe I’ll pick that up. Sounds interesting.
Just as an aside, necrotizing fasciitis ! = necrotic tissue due to diabetes. IANAD, but diabetes does not cause the disease necrotizing fasciitis.
Except in IMHO, in which the OP asked for a poll of people offering him their experiences with acupuncture.
I think it’s in pretty poor taste to criticize people for offering their personal experiences when that is exactly what the OP asked for.
Tell you what. We’ll each get infected with the Bubonic Plague. I will be does with nothing but a single antibiotic. You may use the entire spectrum of Eastern medicine. I will be cured rapidly, you will quite possibly die. Eastern medicine is an Oxymoron. It cures nothing. Not one single disease can be cured by Eastnern medicine. Oh sure, “ailments” can- “feeling bad” can- or jus about anything you can fool your body into beleiving it is cured. Black Pague, Scarlet fever, and uch like ravages the East for millenia until modern medicine came in. Not a single cure during those thousands of years- just dudes dying.
Or we’ll each have a finger cut off, and I get modern surgery to reattach, you get the entire panoply of Eastern Medicine.
Yeah, if you beleive in it, Eastern medicine can fix your dope problem. **IF **you beleive in it. But it can’t save your life or regrow your finger.
Your Accupunturist doesn’t have to do a “study” or pay a dime. He writes up a “case study”. That means you document that single case with photos and stuff. This would include testimony that the foot actually was necrotic, including results of blood tests (all of which were hopelfully already done by the MD), with “before and after” pictures. Trust me, any medical journal would love a out and out Lazerus type miracle like that. All for the cost of a few hours and a couple of digitital Photos. And since a study could save tens of thousands of feet from being amputated and thousands of lives- how could he* not *spend those few hours? :dubious:
Why are you making it an either/or? There’s plenty of room for both. I’m with you all the way on the bubonic plague. And the fingertip replacement. And organ transplants and treatment of premature babies and general hygiene standards and blood transfusions and all the rest of the wonderful things Western Allopathic medicine has given us. Kudos and huzzah!
But there are a few things it sucks at: long term pain management. Allergies, recurrent migraines, obesity, asthma, low-level infertility and turning breech babies. Antibiotic resistant bacteria, antifungal resistant yeast infections, warts, many cases of dermatitis, eczema and psoriasis, depression and stress. Just so happens that acupuncture and other alternative modalities sometimes have success where Western modalities don’t. It’s actually kind of nice how one complements the other. So to speak.
I cited three, count em THREE (and there were like 140 more but after a while it gets tedious)published studies that did in fact make that very claim- that in at least the single case under study- Acupuncture caused necrotizing fasciitis. Sure, it was the needle, but that is what accupuncture is mostly about- the needless and medically useless stabbing of dudes with needle- something that (suprise, suprise) leads to infections.
**I **made no error, all I did was quote from published studies which made that claim. You are free to rebut those published, peer reviewed and cited studies if you care to. Please let us know how that works out. :rolleyes:
OK, if you’re looking for personal experiences here’s one for you. I have cluster headaches, not life threatening but incredibly painful. Sometimes these get to happening too frequently and I’d do just about anything to get rid of them.
Four years ago my wife talked me into getting acupuncture for these. An ancient, smiling Chinese woman stuck me with needles in a variety of places over a three-week period.
The results? My wallet was lighter and my headaches were completely unaffected. Neither the severity nor the frequency was reduced in the slightest degree. You know what was really infuriating? The ancient, smiling Chinese woman told me it was my fault because I didn’t believe in her treatment. Of course, that was BS as well. My wife was Asian (Thai) and tried acupuncture and a lot of other “traditional” medicines as well. She believed in this stuff but she still died from thymic tumors. In her case, Western medicine couldn’t cure her either but did extend her life. Asian/traditional medicine did nothing at all except keep the ancient Chinese woman smiling because she’d found yet another pair of suckers that would pay her for a completely useless treatment.
To quote some very learned person whose name I can’t remember; "reality is what keeps on happening even if you don’t believe in it."
Regards
Testy
I’m not arguing with the studies. You’re misrepresenting the conclusion. Which is this:
To say that that means the same thing as “acupuncture causes necrotizing fasciitis” is simply incorrect.
Maybe you could cut and paste, from one of your cites, the sentence, “Acupuncture causes necrotizing fasciitis.” Even though you’re saying all you did was quote from the studies, I can’t find that sentence in any of them. Could you please tell me which study it’s from and what page it’s on?
From the OP:
And just what is the motto of the Straight Dope? “Spreading Ignorance”?
Medically useless?
Okay… am I the only one who read the other thread? Anybody who really wants to be informed on acupuncture should read it. The cites are all there.
Of course not, Musicat. It’s also not “Spreading Arrogance.”