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Evidence exists on both sides to say, what, that placebo is a very real phenomenon which can help the body through pain? What does acupuncture do that, in my previously-stated example, magnets or crystal therapy doesn’t do?

As for EBM, you still concede that any “good doctor” still should (partly) rely on the best available external evidence, to which you have not provided even a single example. Science-Base Medicine still demands those pesky double (or triple) blind, controlled trials in which it is shown that acupuncture is no more useful than placebo.

My first request for examples comes as a response to your claim that “the concept of alternative medicine which in fact has become more accepted over the time and space of several generations”.

There is no marriage between medicine and alternative medicine. Things that work are called “medicine”, things that do not but still make the same claims are called “alternative medicine”. If it worked, it wouldn’t be called alternative medicine. These are why anyone is justified in being particularly skeptical of claims that needles can adjust the flow of some indescribable, undetectable life-energy or whatever it claims to do. All hocus-pocus. According to the webpage of the one who started it all, Col. (Dr.) Richard Niemtzow, pain is routed through the ears, and a thorough ear-poking is an appropriate response to somebody who ran over an IED while on patrol. (Source: http://www.n5ev.com/PDF%20BATTLEFIELD%20ACUP.pdf)

I’m asking which “alternative practices” you plan on using. Homeopathic medicine? Acupuncture? Reiki? Magnet Therapy? Some Quantum Healing spinoff? How do you discern “good” alternative medicine from “LOL not really” alternative medicine?

You don’t see a problem with the DoD proceeding with acupuncture when it is NOT accepted in the medical community as a reliable way to treat pain? I recently got a “plug this device into your car to save 10-30% on gas mileage” pulled from the shelves on my base (and I can only hope that it either has not been ordered by AAFES abroad, or that my complaints severed those supply lines as well). I can There is obviously some sort of implied legitimacy when you find something on a military base. Whether it is a scam device or a medical treatment which provides no actual mechanism aside from the body’s own ability to relieve pain, do you think there should be some sort of credibility measurement for these sorts of things? I mean, surely, the DoD has bought into some pretty absurd garbage (see the Quadro Tracker), but fortunately learns to recognize such hokum (See the Dowsing Rod system ADE 651 bought up by the Iraqi military).

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an interesting article, to which it concluded the following:

“The combined results of two RCTs comparing an earlier surgical procedure for angina — bilateral internal mammary artery ligation (BIMAL) — to a sham surgery clearly show that patients “experienced significant subjective improvement,” with both BIMAL (67% substantial improvement) and the sham procedure (82% substantial improvement). [see Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the “Placebo Effect”, 2002]”

There seems to be a bit of disruption in the medical community that I follow over the NEJM article, but the conclusion should be considered interesting, at least. In one corner, we have acupuncture. In the other, we have sham acupuncture. Who comes out top?

The sham treatment, by some 15%.

Would you prescribe any medication where the placebo version is more effective than what you are prescribing?

Lastly, as for not wearing gloves, I can speak from my personal experience that any time a doctor put anything in my body, they wore gloves and I’m fairly certain you’d have to concede the same. So, while checking for swelling would not require gloves, I made a mistake in assuming that we both understand the relevance involved in a practice where metal needles are stuck into patients.