ACUPUNCTURE STUDIES: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Abstract

This paper discusses some significant limitations ro clinical trials as a means of assessing acupuncture's scope of practice. Most of the research on acupuncture has incorporated the use of clinical trials ro determine its effectiveness for the treatment of specific conditions. With great variability in the methods, training, experience, and ability of the acupuncturists, it is not surprising that these studies have often produced conflicting results.

These limitations of acupuncture clinical research remain even if the trials themselves are well designed. A biochemical explanation still prevails among physicians roday. Relatively scant attention has been given ro the many clinical observations and physiological studies published outside the mainstream medical journals which have strongly suggested a circulating flow of energy throughout our bodies. Investigation of acupuncture's intimate relationship with energy would be a more potentially rewarding ground for study, and several specific avenues of research are suggested.

A greater awareness of pulse diagnosis and its implications is one sllch area fot fertile study, especially if there can be free and open communication among the different disciplines involved. Only through genuine interdisciplinary communication can the existing wide gaps between Eastern and Western medicine be narrowed.