Battlefield Acupunture
March 19th, 2008 ecoliOrac, from science blogs’s Respectful Insolance, brings to light a disturbing new trend in medicine; Woo invades the military.
Apparently, some German and American medics are (independently) exploring the use acupuncture to deal with pain. Despite the enthusiasm the military seems to have for this new program, they don’t seem to care much about waiting for research to discover if acupuncture is actually does what they say. It seems like this could be a potentially expensive and dangerous display of the placebo effect.
Ask Col. Richard Niemtzow, a radiation oncologist-turned acupuncturist for the Air Force how to deal with phantom pain of amputees and he’ll tell you to put needles into the ear, an organ closely associated with the central nervous system. The needles interfere with pain processing by interrupting and turning “the pathways.”
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