Alternative Medicine: The Evidence: Acupuncture

Series that looks at different types of alternative medicine. Kathy Sykes investigates the 2,000 year-old practice of acupuncture. In a Chinese hospital she sees doctors perform open heart surgery on a young woman using acupuncture instead of a general anaesthetic, and finds that acupuncture is often used alongside Western medicine and, at times, as a replacement. She meets scientists in the UK and in the US and discovers that acupuncture can have a powerful effect on chronic pain.