Acupuncture

Acupuncture, already shown to help ease the nausea patients often suffer after surgery, may actually work better than drugs. A team of researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina studied 75 women undergoing major breast surgery such as breast augmentation, breast reduction or mastectomy. All needed general anesthesia to be rendered unconscious and immobile, which often causes nausea upon awakening. The 75 women were randomly divided into three groups.

In your March 3 article "Getting to the Point," you discuss medical doctors' attitudes about acupuncture. You state that they have generally viewed acupuncture with suspicion, and that some doctors view it as a harmless ritual. I have had hundreds of acupuncture treatments from various practitioners. I have studied traditional Oriental medicine for the last 20 years. Who cares what the doctors think? Most doctors I know are ignorant of Oriental medicine. They can't answer a simple question based on Page 1 of the most elementary text.

B is an active, healthy 71-year-old adult male. Four years ago, he had triple bypass surgery, similar to the procedure David Letterman had recently. His surgery was successful except for a lingering burning and stinging pain along the incision in his left leg where a vein had been removed, sections of which would replace those that had failed in his heart. Over the next few years, creams and lotions failed to ease the pain, which sometimes kept him awake at night.

A member of the Board of California Acupuncture Examining Committee was arrested Friday evening on suspicion of taking at least $800,000 in bribes from applicants for the state acupuncture certification examination, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. Dr. Chae Woo Lew, 53, of Hillsborough, was taken into custody shortly after 6 p.m. at the Los Angeles Airport Hyatt by district attorney's investigators, spokesman Al Albergate said.

The balding man with the black-and-gray beard leaned his head back with his eyes closed, relaxing, as if in a trance. Three needles protruded from each ear and another was stuck into the top of his head. Bruce, a 36-year-old alcoholic and cocaine addict, was undergoing what some doctors say is a promising treatment for drug abusers--acupuncture. In the city-run clinic around Bruce, 30 people relaxed in armchairs after being stuck in each ear with three, four or five half-inch-long stainless steel needles.

In another indication of the growing acceptance of alternative medical approaches, a federal advisory panel Wednesday strongly endorsed the ancient Chinese medical practice of acupuncture for treating certain conditions, including nausea and postoperative dental pain.

A UC Irvine professor and expert in acupuncture's effects on the heart and circulation has been chosen for the Lawrence K. Dodge Endowed Chair in Integrative Biology. Dr. John Longhurst, a professor of medicine and cardiology, was named to the chair created with a $1.2-million gift from Dodge and his wife, Kristine. Dodge was chief executive and founder of American Sterling Corp. of Irvine, a mortgage, insurance and banking firm.

His name, he announced, was Dave-- just Dave. "I may be angry," he said, "but I'm not stupid." In a voice as tight as his fist, he stood before the hearing board and told them, "I'm caught between being ashamed of you people and wanting to kill you." Dave got big applause. At an extraordinary public hearing in Los Angeles on Thursday, members of a task force of the California Acupuncture Examining Committee, which tests and licenses would-be acupuncturists, got their ears burned.

Twice a week, arthritis sufferer Mary P. Oliver lies on an examining table at a University of Maryland clinic here and lets a doctor prick her with needles to administer what may--or may not--be acupuncture. Millions of Americans have tried the ancient Chinese treatment, and experts agree that it helps relieve some symptoms, particularly pain and the nausea that often accompany pregnancy or chemotherapy. But researchers still do not fully understand how it works.

For the last 24 years, Jose's life traced a dizzying loop between jail and a drug habit he could never shake once he hit the streets of his East Los Angeles neighborhood. Downers and hallucinogens turned to PCP and a crippling combination of cocaine and heroin he wryly calls the "Belushi," for comedian John Belushi, who died of an overdose. But Jose has found hope--in a treatment most people associate with aching bones and mysticism rather than the torments of addiction and withdrawal.