"Acupuncture is a slippery beast. It has been practiced for thousands of years in so many places, there are a multitude of different systems of practice, and they all work, despite the fact that some of them disagree with each other. I feel quite at ease with these contradictions, but western science doesn’t. I’ve read a few studies using randomly selected “sham” acupoints, by which they mean points not included among the hundreds mapped out by the Traditional Chinese Medicine system, which is the theory rewritten to accomadate the political, economic and logistic necessities of providing for the medical needs of China’s population during the 1950s. (Very interesting in light of “rebellious” qi diagnoses…but I digress.) But who’s to say that these “sham” points are not recognized and widely used in a different system less popular with Chairman Mao? Korean hand acupuncture, for example, or Master Tung’s acupuncture?"