--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@...> wrote: > > On 06/21/2013 01:17 PM, salyavin808 wrote: > > > > http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/acupuncture-doesnt-work/ > > > > > > "What I think David and I convincingly demonstrated is that, according > to the usual standards of medicine, acupuncture does not work." > > So what are the "usual standards of medicine?" The "usual standards" > seem to be fairly political and financially driven. Anything that > threatens the profit motive gets driven away or called "quackery."
By "usual standard" I expect they meant giving you a drug or treatment and expecting it to have a certain predictable effect on at least a particular number of people. > Sorry, I've had acupuncture treatments with no expectations. It > stimulated me but the effect was gone the next day. After a couple more > sessions and mentioning the effect to the acupuncturist, she tried a > different approach which made me sluggish. And I didn't know that was > going to be the effect either. So there couldn't have been a "placebo > effect." Really? That's just the sort of thing I would expect. We are all different, I know people who have been "cured" with it too. But most cures with alternative therapies are simply "reductions to the mean" which is when you have a persistent but cyclical complaint, when the pain is at its worst you seek help but by the time you get treated it is on its way out. The placebo effect is a ritual that puts you in the hands of someone with superior or arcane knowledge and the more technical it appears the better the effect works. Like MVVT or homeopathy. Both work with enough people to make you think there is some "real" thing going on. Sticking a pin into a nerve center is definitely going to have > an effect. I've never had acupuncture but I'm sure they don't hit nerves. I had a cortisone jab in my foot and the doc accidentally stuck it into the bundle of nerves in my heel and that hurts like you wouldn't believe. Nerves are good at transmitting pain, it's one of their jobs. Acupuncture must be a set of points that have no nerves at all for it to be painless and the placebo effect comes from having huge needles sticking out of you - that *must* be doing something? > I have a theory that the "placebo effect" is in and of itself a "placebo > effect." ;-)
