Keywords: woo, alternative medicine, acupuncture

I've commented before about how woo style medicine has weaseled it's way into the mainstream medical mindset.  The Acupuncture study I mentioned yesterday contains a particularly depressing example of this.

From the journal Nature:

Acupuncture is a procedure in which fine needles are inserted into an individual at discrete points and then manipulated, with the intent of relieving pain. Since its development in China around 2,000 B.C., acupuncture has become worldwide in its practice. Although Western medicine has treated acupuncture with considerable skepticism, a broader worldwide population has granted it acceptance. For instance, the World Health Organization endorses acupuncture for at least two dozen conditions and the US National Institutes of Health issued a consensus statement proposing acupuncture as a therapeutic intervention for complementary medicine. Perhaps most tellingly, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service approved acupuncture as a deductible medical expense in 1973.

Is it any wonder that people are so confused about health and the human body when mainstream medical sources... and the IRS (which for some strange reason is "most telling" in this regard), are giving credence to a treatment that is just not backed up by the evidence?