Nixon, China, appendicitis and acupuncture

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

http://www.school-for-champions.com/history/acupuncture.htm

I have just had re-told to me today the story of an incident involving a member of Nixon's entourage visiting China having his appendix removed under acupuncture.

I think I have been told that this is not a strictly accurate story, but I cannot at the moment cite anywhere that gives an alternative account revealing the bare story to be basically untrue.

Does anyone know more?

[Jeff Corey]

If you search for James Reston,Jr.+acupuncture, you will find that the journalist was operated on for appendicitis while in China with Nixon. He was given acupuncture for pain after the appendectomy and reported relief. He wrote an article about it in the NY Times, and later co-authored The Layman's Guide to Acupuncture.

[Blue Wode]

More info:


Perhaps the best-known rumor about "acupuncture anesthesia" was that The New York Times's noted political analyst James Reston had his appendix removed with acupuncture as the anesthetic. Whatever the reasons for the currency of these ideas, they were, every single one of them, untrue.

-snip-

Chemical anesthesia was used during the operation to remove his appendix. Acupuncture needles were said to have relieved his postoperative pain on the day following surgery, one hour after they were used. It seems more likely, however, that the relief resulted from the spontaneous return of normal intestinal function.

http://www.veterinarywatch.com/Acuref1.htm





Western journalists who accompanied Richard Nixon during his historic rapprochement with the Chinese government were intensively courted by the TCM establishment, as were later delegations of Western doctors (China Report 1983; Skrabanek 1985). These delegations were shown major surgery being performed with acupuncture anesthesia. When columnist James Reston required an emergency appendectomy during Nixon's visit, he was widely, though erroneously, believed to have been given only acupuncture as a pain killer during the surgery. It was not until much later that it was revealed that the Chinese surgical patients observed by foreign delegations had been preselected for high pain tolerance and heavily indoctrinated beforehand.4 It was also disclosed that these demonstration cases were routinely administered surreptitious doses of morphine in an intravenous drip that supposedly contained only hydrating and nourishing fluids (Keng and Tao 1985). In addition, it has since come to light that much of the apparently objective and well-controlled research on TCM emanating from Chinese medical schools during the tumultuous era of the cultural revolution (1966-1976) was falsified at the behest of the hospitals' scientifically unqualified political commissars to ensure that the "research" would support the party line.

http://www.csicop.org/si/9607/china.html

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Thanks for that. It was the csicop reference that I was recalling.

[Blue Wode]

If you search for James Reston,Jr.+acupuncture, you will find that the journalist was operated on for appendicitis while in China with Nixon. He was given acupuncture for pain after the appendectomy and reported relief. He wrote an article about it in the NY Times.


You can find James Reston's NY Times article here:
http://www.tcmstudent.com/2005/02/index.html

[Deetee]

error...

[JJM]

Isadore Rosenfeld, MD, wrote an odd article (or, two) for "Parade" magazine describing a heart operation undertaken with "acupuncture anesthesia." Apparently, it was poppycock: GP Posner and W Sampson Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall/Winter 1999, pp. 15-19. Posner asked Rosenfeld about his account, and Rosenfeld was not very clear about it. In short, it may have been a "show" (a la Phillipine psychic surgeons) or
lots of morphine may have been used.

In his book Pain: the Science of Suffering (Columbia, 2000), Patrick Wall describes a major operation under acupuncture. Unfortunately, the patient came to his senses before the surgeon was done- it was not a pretty sight.

[Blue Wode]

Isadore Rosenfeld, MD, wrote an odd article (or, two) for "Parade" magazine describing a heart operation undertaken with "acupuncture anesthesia." Apparently, it was poppycock: GP Posner and W Sampson Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall/Winter 1999, pp. 15-19.


The Posner and Sampson SRAM article is online here:
http://members.aol.com/garypos/Rosenfeld_sram.html