Guest guest Posted June 27, 2005 Report Share Posted June 27, 2005 Even though it was out of line and not in sync with the conversation: Laura, you said it perfectly! This is indeed the central problem with any western style research. <<Basically, from what I've seen, the problem with research on acupuncture is that they study sham acupuncture vs. sham acupuncture....they study, 1. " Sham " acupuncture points (no such thing) vs. 2. One prescription for everyone with a given western diagnosis with no differential diagnosis to derive the points from. See what I mean? Sham vs. Sham. So, of course, the results come out as about equal. >> Perhaps we might be better served by studyng patients within defined disease groupings, with specific and comparable symptoms and dividing them into patients who receive acupuncture and patients who don't. (This could be done in conjunction with an MD to find comparable patients willing to fill out the questionaires and NOT get treated and using on'e own patient load) <yikes i'm getting carried away here!> Then simply tract how they all are doing at six month intervals. Since every patient is unique we can not easily compare treatments- but quality of life and reduction of symptoms can be subjectively measured, added to blood work, and any other appropriately useful western diagnostics, we might come up with some interesting results. But you have this part terribly wrong: <<And why doesn't the national acupuncture organizations do more to educate the public about these things? For instance, I'd love to see them publish a rebuttal on MSN about the article. >> If you want an article written, and you have something to say: THEN WRITE THE ARTICLE AND SUMBIT IT! Believe me, the national organizations would love to have EVERYONE'S INPUT AND TALENTS! it always amazes me that people refer to the organizations as some entity - out there. Who exactly does everyone think the national organizations are? They are run and made up of a handful of volunteers that put in an extra 20 to 30 thankless hours a week of volunteer time and end up spending 10 to 15 thousand dollars of their own hard earned money a year to support their travels and work....and what they do is never enough. Do you want to know why? Because you have a few people doing the work of the entire profession. Geez guys, we are a small and growing profession, EVERYONE has to take responsibility for this profession, how it is viewed and how our local media represents us. One takes responsibility by actually paying your membership dues to a national organization each year, but that is just the beginning. If you see an article somewhere and want to respond to it, write your response and submit it. Or send a copy to the AAOM and ask them to endorse it and submit it. But whatever you do, don't just sit there and think, gee somebody should do something about this, cuz there are not enough volunteers to handle everything that must be done. Imagine, if only ten acupuncturists intelligently responded to an article, at least one response might get printed. If we kept that momentum up, every time a research article appeared, journalists would become more interested and perhaps even the nature of the research would begin to change. But, without everyone of us taking the actual responsibility for the education of our patients and the public we could be swallowed by a larger machine and 'scientifically' proven to be irrelevant. If acupuncture is misunderstood and misrepresented it is the fault of each and everyone of us for not speaking up and correcting the misinformation. just my two cents <humbly stepping down from my soap box> robbee ps apologizes for not remaining current and yet opening my mouth, just the same. the data gathering that is being proposed looks like an awesome project! good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 28, 2005 Report Share Posted June 28, 2005 TashiDelay wrote: <snip> > Perhaps we might be better served by studyng patients within defined disease > groupings, with specific and comparable symptoms and dividing them into > patients who receive acupuncture and patients who don't. Hi Robbee! There will be a lot of display options included in the user's database application. The important thing is to get the data into the central server. The programmer guy said he would have something to show me in two weeks. Show *ME*. It may be a few months before we go live with this. Once we start using the application I think it will be a couple of years before we have a serious amount of data in the server. But from then on we will be an intellectual power, *if* we deserve to be. Regards, Pete Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 28, 2005 Report Share Posted June 28, 2005 What are you saying here? That I can't just sit on my tush and expect everyone else to do the work? Bummer. Very good points, and it was definitely naive and reactive of me to suggest otherwise. I actually did think about how I could write up an article for MSN and get it published...but didn't get out of the starting gate with the idea. Maybe this would be a good place for us to try and organize a group of us to try and get responses published out there. It seems to me that many of the members on here have a knack for writing...we should motivate each other to put it to good use. Anyone know anything about the ins and outs of getting articles published? Also, I appreciated that somebody understood my point about Sham vs. Sham acupuncture. Thank you! That's really all that I was writing to say...not to comment on anything else written in previous posts. Laura Chinese Medicine , TashiDelay@a... wrote: > Even though it was out of line and not in sync with the conversation: > Laura, you said it perfectly! This is indeed the central problem with any > western style research. > > <<Basically, from what I've seen, the problem with research on > acupuncture is that they study sham acupuncture vs. sham > acupuncture....they study, 1. " Sham " acupuncture points (no such > thing) vs. 2. One prescription for everyone with a given western > diagnosis with no differential diagnosis to derive the points from. > See what I mean? Sham vs. Sham. So, of course, the results come out > as about equal. >> > > Perhaps we might be better served by studyng patients within defined disease > groupings, with specific and comparable symptoms and dividing them into > patients who receive acupuncture and patients who don't. (This could be done in > conjunction with an MD to find comparable patients willing to fill out the > questionaires and NOT get treated and using on'e own patient load) <yikes i'm > getting carried away here!> Then simply tract how they all are doing at six month > intervals. Since every patient is unique we can not easily compare treatments- > but quality of life and reduction of symptoms can be subjectively measured, > added to blood work, and any other appropriately useful western diagnostics, we > might come up with some interesting results. > > > > But you have this part terribly wrong: > > <<And why doesn't the national acupuncture organizations do more to > educate the public about these things? For instance, I'd love to see > them publish a rebuttal on MSN about the article. >> > > If you want an article written, and you have something to say: THEN WRITE > THE ARTICLE AND SUMBIT IT! Believe me, the national organizations would love to > have EVERYONE'S INPUT AND TALENTS! > > it always amazes me that people refer to the organizations as some entity - > out there. Who exactly does everyone think the national organizations are? > They are run and made up of a handful of volunteers that put in an extra 20 to > 30 thankless hours a week of volunteer time and end up spending 10 to 15 > thousand dollars of their own hard earned money a year to support their travels and > work....and what they do is never enough. Do you want to know why? Because > you have a few people doing the work of the entire profession. Geez guys, we > are a small and growing profession, EVERYONE has to take responsibility for > this profession, how it is viewed and how our local media represents us. One > takes responsibility by actually paying your membership dues to a national > organization each year, but that is just the beginning. If you see an article > somewhere and want to respond to it, write your response and submit it. Or send a > copy to the AAOM and ask them to endorse it and submit it. But whatever you > do, don't just sit there and think, gee somebody should do something about > this, cuz there are not enough volunteers to handle everything that must be done. > Imagine, if only ten acupuncturists intelligently responded to an article, > at least one response might get printed. If we kept that momentum up, every > time a research article appeared, journalists would become more interested and > perhaps even the nature of the research would begin to change. But, without > everyone of us taking the actual responsibility for the education of our > patients and the public we could be swallowed by a larger machine and > 'scientifically' proven to be irrelevant. If acupuncture is misunderstood and > misrepresented it is the fault of each and everyone of us for not speaking up and > correcting the misinformation. > just my two cents > <humbly stepping down from my soap box> > robbee > > ps > apologizes for not remaining current and yet opening my mouth, just the same. > the data gathering that is being proposed looks like an awesome project! > good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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