HEALTH: WHO Endorses Traditional Chinese Medicine. Expect Deaths To Rise.

The World Health Organization, which is supposed to be devoted to improving the health and medical care of people around the globe, will for the first time endorse a belief system called “traditional Chinese medicine.” I’m labeling TCM a belief system because that’s what it is–but the WHO will be endorsing it as a set of medical practices.

The Nature writer, David Cyranoski, presents this news in a classic two-sides-of-the-story format, describing the “endless hours” that TCM proponents spent on such important topics as the “correct location of acupuncture points and less commonly known concepts such as ‘triple energizer meridian’ syndrome.” Later in the article (but much later), he points out that scientists have argued that qi and meridians simply don’t exist.

Cyranoski also falls into the trap of using the phrase “Western medicine” as if it were just an alternative point of view.

This story might be kind of cute if it weren’t going to get people killed.