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The thing is Traditional Chinese Medicine does not fit into the Myth of Progress (TM), which clearly state that everybody before Francis Bacon were retarded cav

The thing is Traditional Chinese Medicine does not fit into the Myth of Progress (TM), which clearly state that everybody before Francis Bacon were retarded caveman/peasants/alchemist/inquisitors/whatever-triggers-repulsion-in-listener. The idea that non-European (a.k.a. non-White) peoples of thousands of years ago were making careful observations of natural phenomena, which lead to relatively accurate predictions and techniques that allowed to increase the chances of preferred outcomes - even if the explanations they came out with were off-base and terribly fantastic for our civilization's sensibilities - is anathema to Modern Science (TM) Dogma. In the particular case of Acupuncture, they first said that you cannot run a proper clinical trial because the technique is invasive and you cannot control against placebo effect. When pointed out that there are invasive techniques, such as surgery, in modern medicine, they claimed that since the mechanism of action of surgery are evident, it'd be unethical to run tests with double blind controls, but since acupuncture mechanism of action is unknown, it's unethical to run any tests at all. Now (I mean, 15 years ago) someone comes up with a plausible, non mystic, mechanism of action, and they claim that since it is impossible to measure the voltage/amperage of a needle stimulus, only properly designed equipment is good to use. This movement has the double advantage to create a new fancy specialty with a fresh occidental name, and allows ignorant GPs to keep calling acupuncture a quack. And in the mean time, we force the new field to rediscover literally centuries of accumulated knowledge from first principles. But it is a small price to pay, so that traditional medicines practitioners are kept outside of the "Evidence Based" umbrella.

xerophtye 12y ago
I am confused as to why you are down voted. You make a fair point that a lot of traditional knowledge in a lot of domains is frowned upon by proponents of modern science. I am not saying that all traditional knowledge is valid (i have seen my fare share of baseless myths), but some of these deserve respect for having such advanced knowledge in such ancient times
- crpatino 12y ago
  Yes, I was not going to comment, but now that you mention it... Downvotes are intended to be cast for people that add nothing to the conversation in course. But many people weaponize them and use them against points of view they feel strongly against. Shame of you... you know who you are! I have formal training as an Technician Acupuncturist, though I can only practice legally under the supervision of a MD with specialization in Human Acupuncture (and being a programmer, that does not make economic sense to me). Since I was at school, I witnessed several times how some GP got offended by this or another pieces of ancient lore and dropped out of the program. The thing is, you could see they were not thinking. They did not question if the thing worked or not. They just heard some random stuff like "Qi of air and Qi of rice transform into True Qi" and snapped like a devote Catholic would if told that "Virgin Mary was not really a virgin". They were also completely unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be glucose, and that both of them get transported by blood vessels to preserve life of tissues across the body. Which from our point of view is a remarkable thing to have been figured out 3 thousand years ago.
  - xerophtye 12y ago
    > They were also completely unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be glucose, and that both of them get transported by blood vessels to preserve life of tissues across the body. Which from our point of view is a remarkable thing to have been figured out 3 thousand years ago. Wow. I have a new-found respect for acupuncture. Its interesting that a lot of ancient knowledge is very similar to modern knowledge, they just have different abstract layers. Herbs are sometimes frowned upon as medicine, because people fail to appreciate that our ancestors managed to identify them as a source of some modern organic drug.

xerophtye 12y ago

I am confused as to why you are down voted. You make a fair point that a lot of traditional knowledge in a lot of domains is frowned upon by proponents of modern science. I am not saying that all traditional knowledge is valid (i have seen my fare share of baseless myths), but some of these deserve respect for having such advanced knowledge in such ancient times

crpatino 12y ago
Yes, I was not going to comment, but now that you mention it... Downvotes are intended to be cast for people that add nothing to the conversation in course. But many people weaponize them and use them against points of view they feel strongly against. Shame of you... you know who you are! I have formal training as an Technician Acupuncturist, though I can only practice legally under the supervision of a MD with specialization in Human Acupuncture (and being a programmer, that does not make economic sense to me). Since I was at school, I witnessed several times how some GP got offended by this or another pieces of ancient lore and dropped out of the program. The thing is, you could see they were not thinking. They did not question if the thing worked or not. They just heard some random stuff like "Qi of air and Qi of rice transform into True Qi" and snapped like a devote Catholic would if told that "Virgin Mary was not really a virgin". They were also completely unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be glucose, and that both of them get transported by blood vessels to preserve life of tissues across the body. Which from our point of view is a remarkable thing to have been figured out 3 thousand years ago.
- xerophtye 12y ago
  > They were also completely unable to imagine that "Qi of air" could be oxigen, and "Qi of rice" could be glucose, and that both of them get transported by blood vessels to preserve life of tissues across the body. Which from our point of view is a remarkable thing to have been figured out 3 thousand years ago. Wow. I have a new-found respect for acupuncture. Its interesting that a lot of ancient knowledge is very similar to modern knowledge, they just have different abstract layers. Herbs are sometimes frowned upon as medicine, because people fail to appreciate that our ancestors managed to identify them as a source of some modern organic drug.