Two correspondents and a recent restaurant contact mentioned acupuncture in our conversations and this made me recall a lot of stuff. Here’s some of it.

It seems only yesterday, though it was about thirty years ago, that this country astonished the world with the hoop-la it made about being two hundred years old. People living in cities thousands of years old all over the world looked on with some amusement. Most of them noticed that the people who had actually been here longest, for thousands of years, the Indians, didn’t get much of a show. American history apparently began when the Europeans invaded the land. The claims of the Vikings and the Chinese to have been here long before Columbus brought religious persecution, exploitation and white man’s diseases to the continent were largely ignored.

Acupuncture has been a successful therapy in China for twenty times as long as we have been a nation, according to the Caucasian history books. Maybe it’s smart to check out something that has worked for thousands of years, and still does, even if our medicos can’t understand why it works. THAT it works is more important to a patient than WHY it works.

Much of what we know about ancient Chinese medicine comes from a book put together about the year 762 NOT 1762. References to parts of this compilation had been made in Chinese works centuries before.

Its name is Nei Ching, The Yellow Emperor’s book of Internal Medicine. It is available here in a good quality paperback edition.

A single example from it will show its value. It treats the circulation of the blood as a continuous system of closed vessels. This was the understanding in Chinese medicine a thousand years before William Harvey first suggested the idea in Europe.

Only the fact that he was physician to Charles 1, king of England, saved him from complete ostracism by his colleagues for medical heresy. At that time physicians believed that the blood flowed between different groups of organs as a set of ebbs and flows and was not a complete circulatory system of arteries containing blood coming from the heart and veins containing blood coming into the heart. Harvey endured as much criticism as was safe to hurl at him.

Some things don’t change much and the English speaking medical profession’s resistance to new ideas is one of them.

The first part of the Nei Ching deals with the model of the universe used by the practitioner. It is holistic, treating the body and its energy flows as an integrated unit.

Our all too familiar, propaganda based 100 year old AMA model is based on the Ford factory system idea. The body is treated as a collection of bits and pieces working more or less independently of each other. Specialization is the result. And of course, huge fees.

It used to surprise my biology students when I asked them to dig into the basic reasons they had for thinking that a patient with a throat problem didn’t consider going to a brain surgeon or a heart specialist. They realized at once that a brain surgeon wasn’t going to care much that they had a bad cold, or an aching elbow joint. It took longer to realize that it was because they had bought the ‘body as a machine’ concept hook, line and sinker, together with the idea of the specialist as a skilled mechanic able to deal with the defective machine part.

Seekers after health, instead of mere absence of sickness should consider this matter seriously. It may well save your life.

One of the reasons that vitamin therapy met with decades of stubborn opposition from physicians was their ‘body as a set of parts’ concept, and its corollary, one disease, one cure. The drug propaganda that the doctors had swallowed made it clear to them that every disease could be treated as if it was due to a drug deficiency.

All they had to do was prescribe the carefully crafted pharmacological miracle, or remove the offending organ, and the disease would be cured. Replace the spark plugs or have an oil change, so to speak. But vitamins and mineral supplements often removed dozens of apparently different medical problems.

People with an undiagnosed calcium deficiency could have problems manifest in over a hundred ways with different names in the medical books. In other words, a hundred sick people could all have medically different diseases with the same cause. When organically available calcium was administered the problems disappeared. The same thing happened when people started taking vitamin supplements. Drug oriented physicians just couldn’t think that way. One thing can't cure many problems. Therefore it was wrong. And if you wear a white coat you really know.

They were trained to tell any patient who inquired about vitamin supplements that it was a good way to have expensive urine. That neat spin was a product of their drug salesman. He at least knew that people taking supplements were less likely to be taking drugs, his livelihood.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that doctors had no knowledge of nutrition, a subject not obligatory in their medical syllabuses, which were originally dictated by Standard Oil and General Motors. What common sense suggested, that junk food produced junk bodies was not a thought available to the experts in white coats for many years. Everyone now knows the adage ‘You are what you eat.’ To doctors, when I began writing health articles here, that was nonsense. It was the drugs you had that mattered, not your diet. For years I used to suggest to people that if the doctor’s receptionist was a hefty lady that they checked if she was in Weight Watchers. The members of that group knew MUCH more about nutrition than the doctors they served.

The second part of the Nei Ching is about ways of restoring imbalances in the energy flows of the body. It was such imbalances that the intuitive Chinese physicians regarded as the basic cause of physical and mental problems.

The method used to restore normal energy flow was acupuncture, the careful and skilful insertion of needles of specific shapes into exact locations in the body, places often far removed from the site of the pain or affliction.

Among the interesting legends about acupuncture are stories about how pragmatic Chinese physicians attached to the armies noticed how some patients were cured of sundry problems when suffering arrow wounds in various places. Experiment verified that a stab in the right area would get rid of some health problems, leaving only the wound to be dealt with. Gradually the daggers became needles. That's a legend but it probably has some basis in historical fact. Millions and millions of Chinese had arrow wounds over the centuries. Observant witnesses may have noticed many things.

The number of Western named diseases treatable with a combination of acupuncture and diet is tremendous, and ranges from appendicitis to hypoglycemia and on through the medical dictionary.

And it works, as thousands of Russian, French, German and other non-AMA members know, not counting the millions of Chinese over four millenia who need no convincing.

President Nixon’s visit to China and the unavoidable publicity about the sickness of one of the entourage really made acupuncture known to many Americans who hadn’t ever heard of it. Including their physicians. And it was even on TV that acupuncture in China was routinely used as an anesthetic without any side effects, in brain operations, open heart surgery and lung operations. The patient was fully conscious, without pain, and able if need be to give the surgeon valuable feed back.

And, unlike many American patients, they didn’t die, after a successful operation, from the side effects of the anesthetic, which often include pneumonia.

Accounts began to flood in from the rest of the world who hadn’t been kept ignorant of medical work in other countries and who already knew a lot about the efficacy of acupuncture.

The FDA here came to the rescue of their medical colleagues here and immediately labeled it an ‘experimental methodology.’ Well, so is cardiac by-pass surgery which has never been evaluated as effective in any long term study, but the money involved makes it immune to criticism.

During an interview, prompted by the Nixon visit disclosures the AMA science editor Frank Chappell said a few words about acupuncture. I’d like you to examine them with care as it will give you a clue about who the AMA really represents, and it isn’t you.

He said, “We don’t understand it and we don’t know anything about it.” So far so good. An honest scientist talking. A few sentences later he said. “Acupuncture ranks with other Oriental folklore but it can’t be called medicine.” So now he’s certain of something he doesn’t know anything about. And then the clincher…He was asked who might be allowed to practice acupuncture in the USA. His reply was, “It would be the practice of medicine, so it would have to be licensed. That is, it would have to be done by licensed physicians.”

There is a blatant example, one among many, of the attitude that makes caring people furious with the AMA. In other words, “We don’t know anything about it except that it isn’t medicine, but anyone practicing it will be practicing medicine without a license and liable to prosecution.” This is a typical AMA legal catch 22 to make any healers who aren’t MD’s into felons.

It takes about six years of hard study in China and France for someone to become proficient at acupuncture, so not many MD’s here are going to do it properly, based as it is on a totally different healing philosophy.

As an example of what we lose by the AMA attitude consider type B encephalitis. Since most physicians in the USA rely on the AMA and their FDA cohorts for their information they didn’t know that as early as 1953 Chinese acupuncturists had a 95% success rate in curing it.

Because of medical/legal/bureaucratic obstruction the cure hadn’t even been available here until a few state legislatures and representatives began to realize that the obstructionists were either ignorant, or merely defending what they took to be an attack on their bank accounts.

So, once again, as in the case of arthritis cures, the attacks on Manner’s Laetrile/Enzyme treatment for cancer, Essiac cancer treatment and vitamin E treatment for heart patients, the people in other countries have had the benefit of medical research years before we do here, if we ever do. And those physicians here who do practice them are persecuted and forced to move to Canada or Mexico.

A British physician, Dr. Felix Mann was present in a hospital I know well when a woman was brought in, suffering as every physician in the group agreed, from acute appendicitis. She was told that an immediate operation was needed. Now this was in Britain where the patient is still considered to have a right to say what is done with their body. She insisted on seeing her own acupuncturist professional first.

He arrived and examined her swiftly. He treated her with needles placed carefully in her knee. Her abdominal swelling went down. The pain and hardness vanished. Her temperature dropped to normal. She walked home.

Dr. Mann was astonished. He realized that he had not seen a miracle but an example of a medical science based on entirely different assumptions from his own.

To his credit, instead of trying to sue the healer, as would have likely happened here at that time, he made a study of acupuncture and then wrote books, available in the English speaking world to show physicians how to benefit from using the simpler techniques of the method.

Some of you may remember the Yes Guide for alternative thinkers. In 1976 when I first wrote about acupuncture it referenced 86 titles by MD’s and practitioners available in the States. Now there are hundreds, but the legal/medical complex is still making it as difficult as possible in some states for an acupuncturist who isn’t an MD to practice.

Research by the Korean biologist Kim Bong Han may have given some clues as to how acupuncture works. He used sensitive staining techniques combined with radioactive tracers, and has found a previously unsuspected body transport system made of superficial and deep capsules in the skin and deeper organs.

The structure of these objects and their connections have apparently been identified. Between the capsules is a uni-directional flow of a liquid rich in nucleic acids and DNA. Inserting a needle into a capsule alters the electric potential and affects the flow of the liquid. That may have something to do with how acupuncture works. Research will continue of course with maybe many false trails. But THAT it works is beyond denial.

The Hotel Dieu in Paris and the Instituition National des Invalides, both world famous medical centers, regularly hold consultations on acupuncture as do other medical facilities in France. At the time of the Nixon visit, when the American medical profession heard of acupuncture for the first time, there were more than a thousand doctors already specialists in acupuncture in French medical schools.

Doctors in Belgium, Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Japan and many other countries have done published and available research into how this proven 4,000 year old system can be incorporated into Western medical practice, as it is in China, where they are blended. But then Americans risk being called unpatriotic if they even speak some foreign languages in which the research is written.

Maybe it’s like the Cold War when the Russian scientists could read all the Western material but anyone who could read the Russian material was immediately suspect as a communist sympathizer. That’s why the Russians got into space first. Americans are so handicapped by any current cultural or political conventions it’s a wonder they manage in the world at all. And we all know about Congressmen whose intellectual level is about labeling French fries as Freedom fries. Their little fourth grade minds considered that insult a great blow to the nation of France, where they aren't even called French fries.

And I would like to mention that when I was studying for a B.Sc. in England in chemistry, every student had to learn enough of a foreign language to understand a report written in that language to get the degree. You could choose German, French or Russian, but a foreign language competence at reading level in at least one other language was needed to get a degree in one of the sciences. There was a foreign language report on the exam paper to be translated and about which to answer questions. And all the Russian students I met in exchanges were taught their science classes in English.Nobody accused them of being capitalists.

All the countries mentioned, and others too, have professional acupuncturists working as holistic health practitioners. This country has the best research facilities in the world, yet for years has done little except name calling and taking legal action against highly trained and qualified practitioners from overseas. Maybe it's because you don't research something that you don't know anything about or dare not admit that it exists.

I belong to the Council of Functional Elders. It has members in ten states. In seven of them, any practicing acupuncturist who is not also medically qualified is a felon, and can be arrested for healing people with techniques that do not have official approval. Every cure would be used as evidence of a crime, not as evidence of the efficiency of the system. This pattern has been followed many times and for other modalities.

A person who is nationally certified in some modalities such as massage, will still have to apply for a license in every state he or she lives in or works in, or risk prosecution. Every state has to have its pound of flesh where alternative therapies are concerned.

Even licensed American physicians who know from experience what an amazing therapy acupuncture is have to be careful not to be enthusiastic about it, in this country. To do so would be vaguely unAmerican no doubt.

I remember that in the August 16th Parade Magazine in 1998 there was a medical column by a Dr. Rosenfeld. He was an MD and some twenty years previously had witnessed open heart surgery in the University of Shanghai Hospital.

The patient was put on the table fully conscious and the surgeon opened her chest. The only anesthetic was a needle in an acupuncture point of the ear lobe attached to an electric pulser. The woman patient was smiling, aware and didn’t even have the 'ever present in America' IV in her arm. Dr. Rosenfeld was there in person with a camera. One of the photographs he took was in the article.

When the 4,000 year old principles of acupuncture were explained to him he made the American reflex and asked for scientific proof. Something he didn't do about American medicine.

The surgeons laughed at him and pointed to the patient. “Why should we spend time, money and resources just to convince Western doctors of something we’ve used successfully for thousands of years. What better proof do you need than that woman lying wide awake on this table with her chest open?” To which I have to answer ‘Amen.’

Dr.Rosenfeld summarized the value of acupuncture at the end of the article. This is what he said, “For some types of pain and nausea, acupuncture may help.” As an American physician he is handicapped severely in what he can say about possibly ‘unAmerican’ treatments.

When I had inflammation of the whole sciatic nerve and was in pain 24/7 I was taken in great pain to an acupuncturist. Bending nearly double, even with the help of a staff I was assisted to a bed where I lay in misery while a number of needles were placed in various parts of my back and legs. The practitioner left and had tea with Shirley. Some time later he returned and removed the needles.

I lay there a little longer and then got up effortlessly, touched my toes and walked without the staff into the room where he and Shirley were still tanking up on Chinese tea while being observed by four Buddhists, heavily disguised as cats.

As far as I’m concerned, from reading and experience, acupuncture works, and anyone who sneers at my story as ‘merely anecdotal’ evidence had better examine the reasons why they believe what they believe. Or maybe more importantly, why they disbelieve what they disbelieve. Dr. Rosenfeld’s experience was also ‘only anecdotal’ to such people even with a photograph and a medical degree .

My own MD doctor had given me what he considered his strongest pain killers to help me. He did his allopathic best and I appreciated it. However I was interested in treating the problem not killing the pain.The pain is the messenger. Killing the messenger tells nothing about what causes the pain, and usually angers whoever or whatever sent the messenger.

When I looked up the molecular formula of the medication and found that one of its many side effects was death, I figured that being a pin cushion was a superior option.

Acupuncture deals with the cause of the problem. Modern medicine deals with the symptoms of the problem. What a difference! One cures, the other conceals the problem and makes things worse down the pike.

In ancient China the doctor was paid only while the patient was well. If they got sick it was the doctor’s job to restore them to health. While that was going on he wasn’t paid. If the patient died the doctor had to put a lantern outside his place of business. The first impression of a doctor’s place was the number of lanterns outside. If he was an old man then allowances could be made for some patients just dying from old age. If he was thirty and had lots of lanterns outside then obviously he wasn’t going to get much business.

How does that compare with the ability of doctors nowadays to avoid accountability by professional silences and legal maneuvering? Don’t ask. And if you have great results from an acupuncturist be careful who you tell about it. Some states, corruption-filled Illinois for a major example, with the AMA HQ in Chicago, are great at persecuting anyone who does healing work, PARTICULARLY if they are successful in curing people given up as hopeless by the MDs. Then they could really be in trouble. Why? As Dr. Clinton would say ''It’s the income stupid!"