Acupuncture Rising: From Acupuncture Anesthesia to Assisted-IVF, Part 2
By Changzhen Gong, PhD
Acupuncture's cultural and historical roots go back to the emergence
of Chinese civilization. For more than 2,000 years, acupuncture needling
has been continuously practiced on the largest population in the world.
As a system of medical treatment, acupuncture's prevalence and
robustness are continuously demonstrated by strong public demand,
growing scientific evidence, and vast institutional support. Over the
last thirty-odd years, students, scholars, researchers and practitioners
of acupuncture and Chinese medicine in the United States have witnessed
a swift rise in popular acceptance of acupuncture therapy, hand-in-hand
with the profession's steady advancement.
Although the increasing momentum of acupuncture acceptance and
awareness in the West is based on a solid foundation of daily work and
practice by tens of thousands of practitioners around the world, the
acupuncture profession has also been shaped by a succession of
historical landmark events. In this article, I attempt to trace the
trajectory of acupuncture's development as a global medicine by focusing
on the following years: 1958, 1971, 1987, 1997, and 2002. These dates
denote significant turning points in terms of forming institutional
establishments, pioneering new fields of research, and expanding the
presence of acupuncture/Chinese medicine throughout the world.
1997: NIH Consensus
Complementary and alternative medicine achieved substantial forward
momentum in the United States during the 1990's. As a modality of
complementary and alternative medicine, acupuncture was especially
prominent, eliciting an increasing number of clinical trials and
mechanism research studies. In November 1997, the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) held a conference on acupuncture. This conference was the
first of its kind concerning a modality of complementary and alternative
medicine. The conference intended to provide health care providers,
patients, and the general public with an accurate assessment of the use
and effectiveness of acupuncture for a variety of conditions.
Participants included a non-federal, non-advocate, 12-member panel
representing the following constituencies: acupuncture, pain medicine,
psychology, psychiatry, physical medicine and rehabilitation, drug
rehabilitation, family practice, internal medicine, health policy,
epidemiology, statistics, physiology, biophysics, and the public. In
addition, 25 experts from these same fields presented data to the panel
and a conference audience of 1,200.
As part of the NIH acupuncture conference, acupuncture-related
literature was researched through Medline. An extensive bibliography of
references was provided to the panel and the conference audience by
experts, with abstracts and relevant citations from the literature.
Scientific evidence was given precedence over clinical anecdotal
experience. The panel responded to predefined questions, developing
their conclusions based on scientific evidence presented both in the
open forum and in the scientific literature. The panel drafted a
statement, which was read aloud in its entirety, then circulated in
written form to the experts and the audience for comment. The panel
resolved conflicting opinions and recommendations, releasing a revised
statement at the end of the conference. The panel finalized its
revisions after the conference. The draft statement was made publicly
available on the World Wide Web immediately following its release at the
conference, and was updated with the panel's final revisions.
The NIH consensus conference on acupuncture reached the following
conclusion: Acupuncture as a therapeutic intervention is widely
practiced in the United States. While there have been many studies of
its potential usefulness, many of these studies provide equivocal
results because of design, sample size, and other factors. The issue is
further complicated by inherent difficulties in the use of appropriate
controls, such as placebos and sham acupuncture groups. However,
promising results have emerged, for example, showing efficacy of
acupuncture in adult postoperative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting
and in postoperative dental pain. There are other situations such as
addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis
elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain,
carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma, in which acupuncture may be useful
as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a
comprehensive management program. Further research is likely to uncover
additional areas where acupuncture interventions will be useful
1.
Following the NIH conference, acupuncture became a hot topic in the
booming field of complementary and alternative medicine. Acupuncture
images appeared repeatedly on the covers of the mainstream news media,
and an article, "Acupuncture Works," was published in
Time magazine on November 7, 1997.
The milestone NIH conference and the increasing prevalence of
acupuncture in the 1990's brought acupuncture to the attention of the
American Medical Association, which advised its members to look at
acupuncture and complementary medicine seriously. To stimulate
scientific and professional inquiry, the AMA suggested designating an
entire issue of the
Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) to acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, moxibustion, and other modalities of complementary medicine
2,3,4.
JAMA complied, dedicating its November 11, 1998 issue to alternative medicine.
This is published in
Acupuncture Today.
