My prediction: within 50-100 years, traditional Chinese medicine will be like osteopathy in the United States: impossible to distinguish from mainstream modern medicine, even though it bears a name reflecting its origins in pseudoscience.
It'll be easy enough for them to manage from a perception standpoint. They'll just declare that modern medicine has recognized and assimilated the concepts of traditional Chinese medicine, that "modern" medicine as taught and practiced in the west now reflects traditional Chinese concepts, and that western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine have evolved convergently to the same point because western medicine copied Chinese medicine. It'll be accepted by people who know better as a polite lie.
The original appeal of traditional Chinese medicine to the Chinese government was that it made it possible for them to provide a form of officially recognized health care to the entire population long before they were able to train enough doctors. From the government's point of view, there's no reason for it to outlive that necessity. If they want a flood of chauvinistic pro-TCM propaganda to proclaim Chinese superiority -- maybe they do, maybe they don't -- they can do that while at the same time having schools of TCM teach basically the same thing as western medical schools.
Chinese civilization has had a population of hundreds of thousands of people going back many hundreds of years. It's not the least bit surprising that they've figured out useful stuff about medicine. Even if you believe that the TCM theories are wrong, and it was all trial and error, the default position should be that it's possible to identify useful treatments through trial and error. It's Western chauvinism to believe that useful treatments can only be discovered via Western methods.
Acupuncture is like herbal supplements. There are studies you can point to if you want to defend it, which is handy for people who make money on it.
I know a guy who worked for a veterinary clinic for years and used to bellyache about how the owner was a hippy dippy quack who was promoting alternative treatments like acupuncture and herbalism, and it was fine if people were morons and chose that stuff for themselves, but to use it on animals, yadda yadda yadda.
Then he bought the clinic from her. Less than a year later, he was certified in veterinary acupuncture and was making sure that new vets he hired were down with alternative medicine. "There are studies...." Yeah, you knew about those studies before, when you were calling it an unethical scam. We all know what new information changed your mind, and it wasn't in veterinary journals, it was in the finances of the clinic you just bought. Lost a lot of respect for that guy overnight.
The whole point is that science is the difference. Vaccines work. The business of selling vaccines might be sleazy because of the way they go about it, but the product itself isn't a scam.
“Acupuncture is a form of alternative medicine and a component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in which thin needles are inserted into the body. Acupuncture is a pseudoscience; the theories and practices of TCM are not based on scientific knowledge, and it has been characterized as quackery.”
(Now you either accuse Wikipedia of Western chauvinism or dismiss Wikipedia altogether.)
Notice that Wikipedia talks about acupuncture vs "sham acupuncture".
That's intellectually dishonest IMO. They should just compare acupuncture against placebo pills.
The problem with making that comparison is that if you do, acupuncture beats placebo! So the western scientists who need acupuncture to lose had to come up with a new "placebo". Hence "sham acupuncture".
The problem with "sham acupuncture" is that it is designed to mimic the physical sensation of acupuncture. But if you read the text I linked, it explains that acupuncture works primarily via the nervous system! So "sham acupuncture" is basically the real thing. Total intellectual dishonesty.
Go on Amazon and search for "acupuncture mat". You'll find lots of plastic mats that don't penetrate the skin, but replicate the sensation of penetrative acupuncture, with many many 5-star reviews. I often fall asleep on an acupuncture mat. The sensation in my back muscles is unmistakeable after 15 minutes.
Saying "acupuncture doesn't do anything", for me at least, is like saying "alcohol doesn't do anything". It's just absurd, and I don't need an RCT to classify it as absurd. (I've recommended acupuncture to others; some have an immediate strong response like me, others find it useless. Maybe it's variation in how the nervous system works.)
Anyways, if you read the textbook I recommended, it says many of the same things as Wikipedia. The needle location doesn't matter a ton. The stuff about meridians has no scientific basis. That's why they call it a "Western Medical Acupuncture" text. But acupuncture is still a useful treatment and has proven so in many RCTs.
I believe that dkarl’s point was that what is now called “osteopathy” in the US is functionally the same as modern medicine, since that is what actually works. But they keep the name for its brand recognition. (But even if this is true, there is still every reason to avoid it, since if its practitioners were any good, one would assume they would rather be regular medical practitioners.)
