Darren New wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> The article doesn't say that sham acupuncture is just as effective.
> 
> Maybe I'm misreading the second sentence, which says
> """
> But the results also suggest that faked procedures, in which needles are
> incorrectly inserted, can be just as effective.
> """
> 

Sorry, I rearranged my post to make it more readable, and ended up with
that line out of context. I was refering to the articles by Linde, which
the LiveScience page seemed to be referencing. In those, they found
that, for tension headaches, actual acupuncture worked marginally but
statistically better than sham acupuncture. For migraines, they both
were more effective than certain drugs.

>> LiveScience isn't a journal, 
> 
> I thought I saw a link there to the actual study, but I see I'm wrong.
> However, google is still your friend.
> 

Yes, it is, that is how I got the other two articles on Cochrane that
found that it was effective for certain things. Google is a nice large
place to look, and with a tonne of studies on acupuncture and the
placebo effect I thought that if there was a single large meta study
proving it was ineffective at just about everything, as Patrick
suggested in the post I first replied to, then I either missed it or was
searching in the wrong terms. All I found were cases where the efficacy
was either proven or disproved for certain symptoms or disorders when
compared to either drugs, placebo drugs, or placebo acupuncture.

I hate linking to Elsevier studies, for reasons that would take a whole
other thread, but:
Acupuncture doesn't work for chronic pain
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304395999003048
Real needles do work better for rotator cuff tendinitis
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304395999001074

That is just two that google scholar pulls up. The nearest to an overall
study, that I can find today, is
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1295163/ and the results
there are . . . odd? Placebos are known to have an effect in roughly
1/3rd of people, so if 60% benefit from either acupuncture or sham
acupuncture, then something else is happening.

> http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/114/5/1242
> 

Acupuncture doesn't cure allergies, alright that I can believe. Neither
does aspirin, or cipro, or valium.

I get the feeling that there are some things acupuncture can be used for
in modern medicine, and others that it shouldn't be used for.

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