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July 2003, Vol 93, No. 7 | American Journal of Public Health 1037
© 2003 American Public Health Association

LETTER

ACUPUNCTURE: ARCHAIC OR BIOLOGIC?

George A. Ulett, MD, PhD

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to George A. Ulett, MD, PhD, Missouri Institute of Mental Health, University of Missouri-Columbia, 5400 Arsenal St, St. Louis, MO 63139 (e-mail: eichhorn{at}mimh.edu).

The article "Exploring Acupuncture: Ancient Ideas, Modern Techniques" in the October Journal describes stimulation with "lowvoltage electricity, laser beams, and sonar rays."1 This description suggests that replacing needles with modern techniques of stimulation is evidence that acupuncture has become scientific. However, this inference is wrong, for as the article points out acupuncturists believe their treatments bring about health by affecting a mysterious life energy, qi, flowing through hypothetical meridians. Acupuncture theory is generally described in terms of philosophical concepts like yin and yang and a magical 5 elements, which are simply part of superstitious Chinese number magic. Such prescientific metaphysical explanations of traditional Chinese acupuncture have changed but little since their formulation more than 3 000 years ago. During the 1960s, this largely placebo practice found ready acceptance in the United States by New Age practitioners, along with other shaman practices of alternative medicine.

Unfortunately, the Journal article fails to discuss recent scientific research that has made obsolete these prescientific acupuncture rituals and theories. Professor J. S. Han of Beijing Medical University has reviewed his 30 years of scientific research elucidating the neurochemistry and neurophysiology of electroacupuncture.2 He reported that specific frequencies of electrical stimulation induce the gene expression of specific neuropeptides in the central nervous system: a frequency of 2 Hz induces the gene expression of endorphins in the diencephalon, which act upon anxiolytic mu receptors. He found that the frequency of stimulation is of greater importance than the ancient rules for needle placement.

Recent magnetic resonance imaging described by professor Z. H. Cho at the University of California–Irvine gives further support to Han’s findings, showing that evidence-based acupuncture involves hypothalamic homeostatic mechanisms that boost the body’s own healing abilities.3 His work supports findings of the true underlying neurological mechanisms for an evidence-based no-needle form of biological acupuncture that is simple and effective and that, devoid of the burden of complicated metaphysics, can be readily learned in an hour’s time.4

It is a travesty that in this time of scientific evidence-based medicine, acupuncture treatments, based on archaic prescientific thinking and magical rituals, are given to unsuspecting US patients by some 20 000 acupuncturists, posing as primary care doctors. Many of these acupuncturists, to their patient’s peril, have no medical training. They are certified in 40 states, with the main requirement of several hundred hours of Chinese metaphysics. This is indeed a hazard of which public health workers should be aware.

References

1. Fee E, Brown TM, Lazarus J, Theerman P. Exploring acupuncture: ancient ideas, modern techniques. Am J Public Health. 2002;92:1592.[Free Full Text]

2. Han JS. The Neuro-chemical Basis of Pain Control by Acupuncture. Beijing, China: Hu Bei Technical and Science Press; 1998.

3. Cho ZH, Fallon J, Wong EK. Neuro-Acupuncture, Vol I: Basic Neuroscience. Los Angeles: Q-Puncture Inc; 2001.

4. Ulett G, Han SP. The Biology of Acupuncture. St. Louis: Warren H. Green; 2002.




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This Article
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