Writer at cracked.com tries several methods of woo. All of them fail.

[frogmarch]

7. Yes, tongue color is important

in real medicine too, but my sister examines what she calls the “elemental zones” of the tongue. Tip – fire element zone (heart & small intestine) Sides – wood element zone ( liver, I think) Just behind the tip – metal zone (respiratory illness) Center – earth element zone (stomach, pancreas, spleen). Geesh.

Apparently acupuncture doesn’t pose a high risk, but it’s there. I just Googled for some info to see if the needles are really harmless and found this:

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/do_you_believe_in_magic

Disease

It has also been found that far from curing disease, acupuncture has been a transmission agent for hepatitis C, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and acupuncture mycobacteriosis.[17] In one prospective study of 190,924 acupuncture patients, the rate of "serious adverse events (death, organ trauma or hospital admission)" was found to be 0.024%.[18] In another prospective study of 229,230 patients, the rate of "adverse events requiring specific treatment" was found to be 2.2%.[18]

Dr. Offit writes, "The final argument against acupuncture is the hardest to refute. Acupuncture needles are not without risk. … At least eighty-six people have died from acupuncture."[19][20] Unfortunately, almost no reporting mechanism exists for acupuncture, and so the true harms are hard to estimate.

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Dr. Paul Offit is chief of the infectious diseases division at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.