this is what i found on website
“Qi” is the name Chinese philosophy gives to a scientifically undetectable force or energy that is supposed to permeate all things. Believers in TCM assert that imbalances in the flow of Qi are responsible for disease, fatigue, etc. Acupuncture, Chinese herbs, etc., supposedly restore well-being by rebalancing the flow of this mystical essence. Qigong is a set of mental and physical exercises akin to those of Tai Chi Chuan and Ai-ki-do that also promise spiritual and physical benefits by channeling this mysterious energy. With its mental disciplines and breathing exercises, Qigong has long been practiced as a form of self-hypnosis that claims to promote relaxation and general health, much in the manner of certain yoga exercises. These days, practitioners of this sort of discipline call it “internal Qigong” to distinguish it from so-called “external Qigong,” which has enjoyed a dramatic rise in popularity in China and the West. Devotees of external Qigong claim they can control the Qi force outside their bodies to debilitate their foes, achieve the sorts of psychic feats familiar to Westerners, as well as to diagnose and cure physical ailments. Qigong masters have become rich and powerful in China, filling massive sports arenas for their demonstrations of magic and faith healing. Chinese skeptics who have exposed these Qigong hoaxers were among the hosts of the delegation that included these authors (Lin et al., in press).
Moxibustion employs various herbal materials but instead of being eaten, they are twisted into small cones and set on fire. The cones are placed over hypothetical “meridians” that are supposed to supply “Qi energy” to the afflicted part of the body. There they smolder, much like lit tobacco leaves. Although this is the traditional procedure, in the clinics we observed it had mostly been replaced by one in which a wire-bottomed box containing the smoldering herbs was simply placed over the site of the patient’s complaint.
We should note, as Skrabanek (1985) points out, that TCM has been banned several times in Chinese history as useless, only later to be reinstated by official fiat. Mao’s resurrection of TCM rescinded the 1929 ban instituted by the Kuomintang government, which had opted for scientific medicine over folk practices but did a very poor job of delivering it to the masses.
Western physicians have long been aware that suitably selected patients can undergo major surgery without anesthesia and show astonishingly little evidence of suffering if given hypnotic inductions or any of a host of other, related cognitive/social manipulations (see Melzack and Wall 1982, or Skrabanek 1985). Modern psychological research has shown that pain is partly a sensation and partly an emotional reaction (the “agony component”). Any manipulation of attention, anxiety, or arousal that attenuates the emotional component leaves the purely sensory aspect of pain surprisingly tolerable.
Many mainstays of modern pharmacology have their origins in traditional folk remedies (Lewis and Elvin-Lewis 1977). Traditional Chinese herbalism has already provided scientific medicine with valuable medications such as ephedrine (from the plant Chinese herbalists call “Ma Huang”). Undoubtedly, many other useful medicines remain to be isolated from the huge traditional pharmacopeia.
Unfortunately, as it stands, most traditional herbs have not yet been properly tested for safety or efficacy. Thus, herbalism remains an inseparable mixture of some safe and effective remedies, some inert placebos, and some dangerous substances. It is difficult, if not impossible, in most instances, to tell which concoctions belong in which of these categories. The encouraging news is that, particularly in China, there are increasing numbers of attempts to apply scientific methods to separate the effective herbal medications from the placebos and to isolate the active ingredients in those that actually work.
Firmly in the pseudoscience camp must be placed all traditional remedies made from rhinoceros horns, tiger penises, bear gall bladders and other parts of magnificent, endangered species. Lucrative poaching to harvest these body parts is seriously threatening these animals with extinction. And all this for useless treatments based solely on principles of sympathetic magic; i.e., the ancient belief that “like begets like.” These are symbolically potent parts of powerful beasts, so it is believed that such organs must therefore magically transfer to the people who take them the vitality and fortitude of their donors.
The newly appointed director of the Office of Alternative Medicine, Joe Jacobs, soon ran afoul of the wishes of the alternative medicine community and resigned his post (Marshall 1994). Jacobs exhibited a rare and commedable mixture of willingness to entertain unconventional hypotheses and a hardheaded demand for rigorous tests before accepting them. Alternative practitioners had long contended that the only reason their treatments had not proven their worth scientifically was that the hidebound medical establishment had prevented them from receiving the necessary research funds. When Congress suddenly made grants available through the new institute, most proponents of alternative medicine proved that they didn't know how to conduct proper clinical trials and didn't really want them anyway. When they increased their demands that most of the money be turned over to them, without proper peer review, to continue gathering the scientifically useless testimonials they had always relied upon, Jacobs quit rather than perpetrate a charade. He called their demands “professionally insulting.”
This exemplifies another aspect of sympathetic magic in TCM. Believers in “contact magic,” say that things that are in physical proximity can influence each other by passing a mystical “vital essence,” merely by being in the same vicinity. This is why psychics believe they can tell things about absent owners of objects they are allowed to hold—the owners’ essence supposedly transferred to the object and then into the psychic, by contact.
For instance, no reputable scientist has ever found an anatomical basis in the circulatory, nervous, or lymphatic systems for the “meridians” through which the health-enhancing vital energies posited by TCM are supposed to flow. The energies themselves cannot be detected by conventional scientific instruments. Likewise, doubts have been raised because of the ways in which TCM remedies, such as moxibustion, are administered — it must be claimed that they interact with their target organs by some sort of dubious “vibrations” or “sympathy” because our modern understanding of the body’s integument and membrane properties rules out their absorbtion by and distribution to target organs by any of the conventionally accepted routes. For instance, take this description of a TCM product promoted by an official Chinese government publication: “Yuwang-Brand Superior Weight-Reducing Bathing Liquid is made from medicinal herb extracts mixed with high quality detergent. It cleans the skin and promotes fat metabolism, helping to reduce weight and keep the figure slim” (Hou 1991, p. 33).
Whether this disciple was in fact “pulling his punches” intentionally to make his master look good, or was psychologically deluding himself that he was actually applying massive force when he was not, remains a matter of conjecture. What is known is that strong believers are capable of “ideomotor actions” (or inactions) where they honestly believe their movements (such as with a Ouija board or a dowsing rod) are not being initiated and controlled by their own volition (Vogt and Hyman 1979). Similarly, there is evidence that people can sincerely convince themselves they are exerting muscular effort when in fact they are not. Various hypnotic phenomena are of this sort.
In a similar vein, Barry Beyerstein, when he lived in China several years ago, was told by the staff at his residence that they knew a Qigong master who could leap over buildings. Of course, they said, the skeptical foreigner could have a demonstration. Unfortunately, for some reason, the time was never quite right. When he returned to Canada, Beyerstein organzed a lecture by a famous Qigong master, Ge, who had relocated to Vancouver. Ge promised to demonstrate the power of his Qi by making distilled water taste sweet. Once again, the audience was greatly disappointed when, after a rambling, incoherent lecture, the master announced he was now too tired to do the double-blind, forced-choice test Beyerstein had prepared. Ge’s claim that he could diagnose diseased organs by passing his hands over the surface of a patient’s body and feeling a twinge in the same organ in his own body was met with a question from the floor: “And just how do you detect ovarian cancer?”
It was the conclusion of Barry Beyerstein, after touring several treatment facilities outside the largest Chinese cities six years ago, that the much-publicized “complete integration” of traditional and scientific practitioners was not as happy a marriage as it had been portrayed. Back then, scientifically trained Chinese doctors were more circumspect in expressing their doubts about official encouragements of TCM, but many of them expressed their reservations quietly to the visitor nonetheless. On this more recent visit most scientific critics were bolder, but still cautious.
This belief that if something is “organic” or “natural” it must be milder, safer, and more benign than “manufactured” drugs is a common misconception among most practitioners of herbal medicine. A moment’s reflection will reveal that strychnine, “deadly nightshade” (belladonna), and a variety of mushrooms are among nature’s most dangerous poisons. Many herbal remedies are of questionable safety, let alone efficacy (Tyler 1985).
In a personal communication, Herbert presented the following account of a demonstration of animal acupuncture he had observed in China. The experimenter inserted needles into the animal subject and took a blood sample that showed a rise in endorphin levels. Herbert asked if he could try pinching the skin to see if it would have a similar effect on endorphin levels to that of the needles. It did.
Known in the older literature as “animal hypnosis,” grabbing and rapidly turning over small mammals can produce a stunned immobility, a protective freezing response, in which they appear to be insensitive to painful stimuli.
