Acupuncture is one of those things which is pretty hard to test with a placebo control, given that it involves sticking needles in various parts of the body. The technique claims to rebalance energy and “Qi” which flows through the body, but studies show that just sticking the pins randomly gives similar results to placing them at the various “energy points” which are supposed to balance the flow of this vital force. However, it does appear that the procedure may have some effect for pain or irritation that goes beyond the placebo effect, and may involve endorphins or stimulating inflation, thus increasing blood flow or by causing nerve stimulation.

But even so, it certainly won’t do anything much beyond those of reducing local pain or stiffness (and even that I’m skeptical of). And it’s certainly no cure for any actual medical condition, like cancer or infectious disease. And it seems to be especially useless (or counter productive) in the case of changing one’s sex. In a case in China, a woman was hospitalized at 29 years old, having carried at least 26 needles in her body since she was just an infant.

In China, especially in rural communities, males are valued greater than females, because by tradition, it is the male who will take care of the family in older age. Thus, with the government’s limitations of children per family, many families were left despirate for a son and afraid that they may not be cared for when old if they have only daughters. So in the case of this woman, they attempted to change her gender by sticking her with needles and pins. Apparently some of them got stuck and/or forgotten. How many she may have been stuck with is anyone’s guess, but not surprisingly they didn’t work. She was lucky to be alive with so many needles, some of which had pierced vital organs or blood vessels. But the problem was unknown until one moved and she noticed blood in her urine. Doctors found that a needle had punctured her bladder and were stunned to find even more throughout her body.

Considering that a sex-change is a very complicated medical procedure for the best medical systems, and that even the best technology cannot really create a fully functional individual of the opposite sex, it’s a wonder that such a concept as using needles to do so could be seriously considered, but this goes to show the dangers of ignorance of the most basic concepts of science. In the absence of understanding of medicine and health, superstitions like this fill the void. One is left wondering how many infants may have been subject to such treatment and not survived.

But perhaps it’s not simply ignorance in the backwoods of rural China, because even in the developed nations of Europe and North America, many still take such ideas as acupuncture very seriously. Though hopefully not for this sort of thing. One can only imagine her partents “Has she grown one yet?” “Let me check… no not yet” “Okay more needles!”

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Paranormal, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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