Tens of millions of tax payer pounds continue to be poured into acupuncture prescribed by GPs knowingly, and with questionable ethics, as a TLC based placebo.

Acupuncture is a treatment hinged on patient-practitioner trust and the patient's drive for pain relief, with the needles themselves largely recognised as having no scientifically worthwhile benefit.

Why would over half of the UK's physicians have, at some point in their practice, recommend acupuncture knowing, more worryingly perhaps not knowing, that any benefit will be that of mind over body?

What is Acupuncture?

Acupuncturists claim that within the body a "life force", qi, flows within 12 channels called "meridians". When qi cannot flow we get ill. Similar to blood in the circulatory system.

We know from a young age, blood moves through vessels within us, these can be seen close to the surface of the skin, and blood flow is associated with life. We know in death there is no movement of blood and the body is still.

For an effective placebo effect, there must be trust in the placebo and the person administering it. We instinctively trust those we believe to have more authority on a subject than ourselves, in this case, our GP.

Trusting in the theory behind acupuncture for some could be intuitive, it's a lot like the circulatory system, something we know is real, is easily visualized, and taps principles we understand from childhood on life and death.

This isn't manipulative marketing playing on wellness, acupuncture is over 2,000-years-old, before medical dissections and biochemistry, devised in a time when the human body was understood in simple and superficial terms. With centuries of discoveries, our understanding of the human body has moved on to be far more complex.

Dismissing modern medicine in favor of acupuncture is comparable to lathering one's face with lead as opposed to a drug store foundation: older methods are rarely the superior ones.

For the majority the further back in time X was devised, the more information-poor the environment from which it came and therefore the less it should be trusted.

This also, if you're reading kids, is a perfectly reasonable premise on which to talk back to your parents.

Any Evidence Acupuncture is More Than A Placebo?

The short answer is no. With over 3,000 studies since the 1970s, there is no evidence of the existence of qi, meridian lines or that the specific placement of needles on the body has any significant effect.

However, acupuncture does have a strong enough placebo effect to be psychologically beneficial to patients. To be clear, the placebo effect can help suffers from chronic pain feel better without treating the cause of the pain itself.

Pimped Sugar Pill

Acupuncture is the leveled up sugar pill placebo administered by the NHS in which we trust. Beyond a pill, a sip of water and a placated sense that all will be well, acupuncture is also an elaborate theatrical procedure incorporating tactile mechanisms and a pile-up of confounding variables.

In the 1960s Patrick Wall and Ronald Melzack proposed a "gate control theory of pain". The idea that the spinal cord can reduce or enhance pain messages. Stress and boredom enhance pain whilst relaxation will ease it.

An acupuncturist will dedicate the time to their patient a GP cannot. Done in a soothing environment, touching and inspecting the face and body, studying the patient's breathing, pricking them with needles, all of which will release endorphins, encourage relaxation and give temporary relief without any effect on the root of the pain itself.

From the get-go of the GP's referral, the patient is invested in this performance as a potential escape from their ailment. If we are ill and we are told there is a trial drug which may help us we do not go online and cement hope on the figures of its rates of failure, we hold its success rates as lifelines.

The extended play of acupuncture treatment, in terms of a placebo effect's power, or how convinced the mind can be to affect the body, is a sink hole for self-deluding buffered by the natural pain relief of relaxation and a blood spike in endorphins.

What one can only assume the NHS's reasoning is, should the patient be swept away by the theater, and trust enough in the word of their doctor, their pain will most likely be acutely relieved.

Neurologically speaking though, pornography has an identical effect in both endorphin release and relaxation, is cheaper, and yet, is not NHS prescribed.

Beyond acupuncture's efficiency as a method of prescribed pain relief there exist two questions.

How ethical is a treatment which relies on not disclosing to the patient the truth, abusing patient-practitioner trust, so that there may be a significant placebo effect?

And would the tax-payer prefer the estimated £25m go elsewhere within a stumbling healthcare system? GPs instructed instead perhaps to suggest to patients a regular spa break with an x-rated DVD collection.