Wikipedia offers a concise definition of acupuncture and summarizes the controversy surrounding the procedures:

"It is a technique of inserting and manipulating fine filiform needles into specific points on the body with the aim of relieving pain and for therapeutic purposes.

"According to traditional Chinese acupuncture theory, these acupuncture points lie along meridians along which qi, the vital energy, flows. There is no physically verifiable anatomical or histological basis for the existence of acupuncture points or meridians."

Felix Mann -- well-respected founder of Medical Acupuncture Society, first president of the British Medical Acupuncture Society and author of the first English-language acupuncture textbook Acupuncture: The Ancient Chinese Art of Healing -- states in one of his subsequent books Reinventing Acupuncture: A New Concept of Ancient Medicine:

"The traditional acupuncture points are no more real than the black spots a drunkard sees in front of his eyes (p 14)."

"The meridians of acupuncture are no more real than the meridians of geography. If someone were to get a spade and tried to dig up the Greenwich meridian, he might end up in a lunatic asylum. Perhaps the same fate should await those doctors who believe in *acupuncture* meridians (p.31)."

Medical Web sites on acupuncture are full of data from reports released by the World Health Organization, American and British national institutes of health, the American Medical Association and other published medical journal research articles. They all assert acupuncture is safe when administered by well-trained practitioners using sterile needles and further research is appropriate.

-- Vennilla Rajaguru

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