Healthcare Media Watch: Acupuncture and the “Unscientific” Argument

By Charles Ignacio Roman

Since Senator Tom Harkin et al. have convened the Summit on Healthcare, acupuncture and the other modalities under its research umbrella have been attacked as unscientific. Some voices have argued that the NCCAM (The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) should be shut down, even though it does not overtly represent CAM but rather tests assertions of CAM value. The ongoing insistence that the case for acupuncture has not been made in evidence-based science is not only false, but it ignores the hypocritical contemporary state of allopathic care and its own lack of convincing evidence. Moreover, the stakes for each are very different. Acupuncture at worst may only be a “harmless medicine” working only for some people. However, the ingestion of pharmaceuticals may damage the body in unanticipated ways because long-term studies of its effects don’t exist for recently approved drugs.

According to the AAAOM’s recent report, “AOM in America,” acupuncture has negligible adverse effects and may be used alongside allopathic approaches without fear of contra-indications. It may serve as a bona fide “complement” to any allopathic treatment regimen. This is not the case with pharmaceuticals—when recent history is filled with drugs such as Vioxx that have been recalled after a certain percentage of people have adverse reactions, including death. Vioxx also, according to The Consumer Justice Group, doubles the risk of heart attack.

Without long-term studies, it becomes very difficult to know precisely how any given pharmaceutical will affect the human body—especially in the long term. While the science that goes into drug development and testing is laudable, it is equally clear that the public plays a guinea-pig role vis-à-vis long-term affects of common drugs. Where does the “Ask your doctor” caveat fit when the doctors themselves are prescribing drugs that have such adverse effects they have to be recalled? Those doctors are using the tools in good faith that they think will work for our health, but it is also clear that the public thus becomes inadvertently engaged in a reluctant experiment. We are not the benefactors of drugs that harm us but instead are injured by unnatural substances presumably manufactured on our behalf. So while critics of less invasive alternative therapies such as acupuncture look to undermine public support for approaches they consider unscientific, they would do well to examine their own practices and calculate the risks and costs involved in these pharmaceutical experiments undertaken on the public.

Getting the right healthcare solutions at a reasonable price to those who need them seems like it should be a national priority for any government, anywhere. We have the most successful economy in the history of mankind; is it not a disgrace to thus be unable to provide basic guarantees of safety and efficacy for our citizens? To quote Ortega y Gasset, “The legitimacy of a society is a function of the whole life of a people.” I consider “legitimacy” to imply that we are only as wealthy a society as the poorest among us. Getting inexpensive healthcare solutions to people earlier, before we need expensive remedies and invasive treatments, makes both humanitarian and budgetary sense. I remain hopeful that under the Obama administration we can provide intelligent planning for healthcare reform that serves the most crucial pillar of our infrastructure: Americans themselves.

Charles Ignacio Roman became fascinated with Chinese medicine during his extensive travel in Asia, where he witnessed TCM offer relief without Western pharmacological intervention. Roman studied writing at the University of California and contributes perspective pieces on the evolution of health-care practices and policy in the U.S. He may be reached at charlesignacioroman@gmail.com