Greentext

Yeah and those would be a lot of the less helpful ritualism described.
It may get a new name when the actual medical use is determined and demonstrated but for now it's still acupuncture.
There's a lot of terrible things that shouldn't happen in real medicine (like pretending different races have different pain tolerances, or over prescription of medicines like opioids or even antibiotics) but we don't blame the technique or medicine in those instances so much as we blame the individual doctors doing that shit and the groups that perpetuate it.

Would I go get acupuncture treatment now?
Maybe if I had certain assurances like clean needle use and the use is limited to areas like joints but even then probably not until I see better evidence of cause and effect for the treatment. I just keep an open mind to avoid what could be inherent biases that would discount the idea in it's entirety instead of trying to understand why there are some successes. Kinda like how I'm not going to go eat a bunch of herbs from traditional Chinese medicine but would be interested in understanding how the components of those herbs affect the body to see if there is something that can be pulled and enhanced to modern medical treatment.