Chi, placebo, and vanishing tumors: the limits of Eastern medecine....

Factual Questions
1

I remember seeing a documentary when I took an Asian history class with two Harvard professors in China/Taiwan (don’t remember exactly, but the documentary talked a lot about Taoist precepts, so I think it was in Taiwan). One of the professors had lived there for a long time and studied eastern medecine, and the other was visiting to make the documentary (and to play the skeptic who, in the end, starts to believe in Eastern medecine).

Aside from showing the views of Eastern and Western medecine in Asia, the documentary showed lots of ways that Eastern doctors “unblock the chi”: accupuncture, some sort of suction pots on the back, massage, different rocks, etc.

At one point, they showed people that were being cured of things like tumors and (I think) certain cancers just from these practices, which is to say without any medecines. In the end, the skeptical professor was asked if there were any chronic problems he had had all his life, and, if I recall correctly, he said that he had arthritis. Well, he went to one of these doctors and they fixed him right up. He was shocked. It was a condition that doctors in the US couldn’t fix, yet this Asian doctor fixed him right up.

My questions are:

  • What sorts of things can be cured by Eastern medecine that can’t be cured yet with Western medications/surgeries?

  • When I told my father (who works in medecine) about the documentary, and he was dubious. He said that a large part of the cures probably comes from a placebo effect in which people who believe in chi, and “blockage” therein, are cured by being convinced that the normal flow has been restored. Is this true/probable?

  • Are Eastern practiced being researched more and more by Western experts?

2

I’ve got no idea. I just wanted to comment on your father’s comments regarding the placebo effect. I don’t understand why this is always whipped out during arguments against Eastern medical practices. It’s not as if Western science properly understands the placebo effect. Given that, isn’t saying “no, that’s the placebo effect” just saying “yes, whtaver we’re talking about works, but I’ll give it a new name”. Who cares if its chi or whatnot that does it, as long as the predictions equal the outcome (e.g. “Your arthritis will be gone” -> “My arthritis is gone”).
Newbie here. is this considered a hijack?

3

The placebo effect is the expected difference in outcome between a known non-functional technology and absolutely no treatment.

If a Eastern traditional medical technology were subjected to a scientific test, there might be three different test groups:
A) No treatment at all.
B) A treatment not thought to have any affect on the symptoms,
C) The “real” treatment.

If the success rates between B and C are close enough, it is likely that “C” does not function by the method purported (“chi”, “penicillin”, “1920’s style death rays”, etc.) but rather entirely by mental suggestibility.

And there are some in the medical field who do not care if medical success is due to the placebo effect or not. But that should not deter research into whether the hypothesized method of success works or if it’s due to the placebo effect.

4

Well, I agree with you by and large. However skeptical my father may be of things that don’t seem “normal” to him, he didn’t say that he didn’t believe, nor did he say that someone being healed by, say, someones prayers isn’t being healed by the same placebo effect as someone healed by a massage.

5

Good information about the current state of medical science, from whatever tradition or background, is available from many sources. TV documentaries are not one of them. There are simply too many things you don’t know about the material presented to you for it to count as ‘good information’. Was the production team biased? What control did the featured subjects have over their participation? Was anyone on the production team qualified to assess or comment on what they filmed? Which material was left out, and why? Do the experts featured actually have the relevant credentials they would need to comment with authority? Are the experts who took part happy that their views were reported accurately? Were any of the findings replicated by an independent lab or study? And so on and so forth. Countless imponderables.

None. There are, however, many examples that go the other way. Western surgery can effect a kidney transplant. Your local acupuncturist cannot.

All you can say is that it’s possible. But it’s hard to say anything more than that about the material presented in a TV show, for all the reasons stated above, and more. If you search for information about the placebo effect, you’ll find lots to read, some of it interesting.

There is no trend towards more or less study of Eastern medical theory, myth, practice and superstition. It goes on all the time, and has done ever since it was possible for the different traditions to share information and exchange views.

6

Comparison studies of placebo needle vs. real needle in acupuncture. Also cited, Lancet study of same, concluding: “The placebo needle is sufficiently credible to be used in investigations of the effects of acupuncture.”

7

“As long as it works, who cares if it’s a placebo effect” is an understandable attitude, but there are problems with relying on placebos/suggestibility.

For treatments shown to equal placebo in efficacy, evidence is typically lacking that these therapies are useful long-term. There’s a big difference between relieving one’s arthritis symptoms for 4 weeks or 4 years.

If a $400 chi unblockage works as well as a sugar pill, the patient is probably better off with the sugar pill.

Placebos also have the potential for harmful results. There are numerous cases of serious side effects with placebos (if you believe you are taking a powerful drug, there can be negative consequences as well as beneficial ones).

Testimonials are worthless in evaluating a therapy, tempting as they are to believe. You never know if the individual reporting a cure had the disease in question in the first place, for starters.

The history of “Eastern Medicine” is full of instances of toxic and downright bizarre drug use (heavy metals, toxic herbs such as aristolochia etc.). If Chinese medicine was all it’s cracked up to be, you have to wonder why Chinese life expectancy has been so low in modern times, compared to Western life expectancy. People who gravitate to cures or diets found in primitive cultures need to ask similar questions. Do you really want to live as long as a Neanderthal? :dubious:

8

All I can add to this are three anecdotal stories.

One is of my wife, who had allergies her whole life, and went to an acupuncturist in her early 30’s. We live in Los Angeles, and when the Santa Anna winds blow, it makes her life miserable (as well as everyone else who lives there), but the rest of the year, she is now allergy and allergy medication free. Hasn’t needed anything for 4-5 years now.

Second is my friend who broke his neck and was paralyzed when he was 20 (about 20 years ago). Western medicine was responsible for his slow but succesful “cure” - -that is, he can walk again, has full use of his limbs, but will always have problems of some sort with detailed finger movement, etc. However he had neck pains that never went away, and he eventually tried acupuncture. The pain went away and has been gone for years. It made a huge difference in his life.

Lastly comes my story. I am a diehard skeptic. I don’t buy into anything without real evidence, at least I try not to. grin For years, I took various forms of Japanese martial arts. My last school focused on Okinawan styles, but also had add’l styles that were taught 1 or 2 days a week. For example, there was a weekly Thai Chi class, another class on Arnis (Thai stick fighting, basically), and another on pressure point fighting. That last one is basically the Chinese acupunture system, but we used it to (ahem) inflict pain rather than cure it.

Some of the points taught in class were just understanding body mechanics. Rubbing on this spot on the arm will make the muscle spasm which means you can do this that or the other. Other techniques relied on the 5 meridiens of energy.

Now this is hard to explain in text, but basically we were working on a move where you grab a person’s fingers and twist their arm in such a way that they’ll move wherever you want them to. In class, you need to do it enough so that the other person feels just a LITTLE pain, to make sure it’s working, then they tap out and you stop. I couldn’t get my partner to tap out, something just wasn’t working.

And then out of the blue, I tried it again and it worked.

The teacher came by to show me what I did, and he demonstrated it on me. The way I moved his arm didn’t do much, but then I accidentally touched his pinky to a spot on his chest. When the teacher did it to me, it felt like my arm was on fire instantly. As soon as my pinky and chest lost contact with each other, the pain was immediately gone.

He explained that two different meridians were in contact and that caused the pain (when you added the chi blockage that the arm lock caused). By itself, the arm lock didn’t do anything. Neither did touching your pinky to your chest. But with both together, it was instant pain.

He also showed me that if my pinky touched a different part of my chest – we’re talking a difference of 1-2 centimeters – there was no pain. No clashing energy flows. But by touchign the right area, it really was like an on-switch of hurt was activated, and the instant the contact was broken the pain vanished.

I had him try this over and over on me, making sure it wasn’t a matter of him moving my arm around, etc. I left that class amazed at what I had experienced.

While I’m not a full fledged believer in any sense – I’m aware of the Chinese gov’t films of patients undergoing surgery while they are awake, the pain “removed” by acupuncture. I am also aware that the films were faked, that the patients were really doped up on opium or heroin – I do find the little I know about acupuncture to be fascinating and somewhat credible for simple pain management. I wouldn’t rely on it for anything else, but it seems to me that there’s SOMETHING working there beyond mere suggestion.

9

I know that move, too. Except when I do it, the subject’s pinky doesn’t need to touch any part of his chest. It’s perfectly well explained by the way the bones and muscles fit together.

The problem with cure annecdotes is that ailments go away on their own, all the time. For instance, I used to be allergic to pollen. Every spring, I’d be miserable. Now, I’ll maybe sniffle once or twice for one week in the spring, and that’s it. And I didn’t even go to an acupuncturist at all (nor to anyone else trying to cure me). Hey, maybe avoiding acupuncture cures pollen allergies! Of course, now I’m allergic to cats, which I didn’t used to be. Ah, well. And frankly, your wife’s situation just sounds like she’s still got her allergies, she just lives (usually) upwind from them now.

10

I used to have allergies, but they are gone too. No accupuncturist needed. Also, my teenage acne seems to have vanished sometime in my twenties.

11

Although it was funded by someone with a dog in the fight (as most studies are), this study seems to be legitimate, and it showed some benefit from acupuncture as a treatment for osteoarthritic pain of the knee.