After reading about SIOM's new acupuncture degree program in the November issue of Acupuncture Today, I sent them the following comments. Perhaps others may find what I had to say interesting. I have touched on some of the issues concerned in this message in other postings on this blog, such as the importance of making acupuncture affordable for younger and less well to do consumers.

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Dear Sirs,

While I understand the history of why we have jammed together Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture here in this country back in the early 1980s, I believe this has been to the detriment of both specialties. Therefore, I support SIOM's creation of a specifically acupuncture/tuina/Chinese dietary therapy degree program.

In my experience, competent acupuncturists can be trained in far less time and for far less expense than is currently done in U.S. Master of Science in Oriental Medicine programs where students are forced to study both modalities. I am concerned about the debt incurred by such students, not to mention their being "Jacks of all trades and masters of none." In part because of that debt and in part because of failure to develop new economic strategies for the delivery of acupuncture, American acupuncturists charge way too much per treatment for most Americans to be able to afford out-of-pocket at the frequency and number of treatments to get best results. Even once-a-week treatment is too expensive for many Americans to afford. Therefore, at the moment, acupuncture services are the perogative of the upper middle class and wealthy and especially of Baby-boomers who are at the top of their earning potential. This leaves out younger consumers and the lower economic classes. Thus I believe there should be the option of shorter, cheaper acupuncture training with an emphasis in that training on providing cheaper acupuncture treatments (a la the "Working Class Acupuncture" or "Community Acupuncture" model) to a much larger segment of our society. Personally, I think your proposed combination of qigong, tuina, and Chinese dietary therapy with acupuncture training makes good sense. Qigong develops the practitioner's qi. Tuina and acupuncture work extremely well together and are easily integrated in clinic. And it's hard for anyone to be healthy if they persist in eating the wrong foods. Given our nation's current epidemic of obesity, dietary therapy is an especially important part of most patient's overall treatment plan.

However, I am concerned that 2400 hours is too long a training period and will be too expensive. Based on my experience both in the U.S. as a student of "Dr." Eric Tao and in China in a WHO-sponsored 3-month acupuncture training, I believe competent acupuncturists can be trained in 1000 (or less if they already have studied Western anatomy and physiology). Certainly, back in the 80s here in America, we routinely trained acupuncturists in 1,000 hours, and many of those practitioners are senior, esteemed members of our profession today. The other thing I'm concerned about is your proposal to teach several different styles of acupuncture. Personally, I see no need for this since I do not believe any one style of acupuncture gets better clinical outcomes than any other. In my experience, differences in outcomes have little to do with style of needling and more to do with the practitioner's personality, qi, bedside manner, and their belief in what they are doing. If teaching several different styles of acupuncture causes confusion and doubt in new practitioners, then I see this as a negative. If, after having become competent and confident in one style of acupuncture, graduates want to go on to study and incorporate other styles, then they can. But I'm very concerned as an educator that students first do develop confidence in a single style before branching out and becoming more eclectic.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Bob Flaws, L.Ac.