Backward step at the World Health Organisation

30 September 2018

Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Pseudoscience, Qi, Meridians

In a frankly scary move, the WHO are legitimising unproven medical therapies (opens new window) by including them in the new edition of its "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems" - ICD11.

I've spent a good few hours in the last few years trying to tackle acupuncturists who claim that acupuncture has been proven because of an old list of health conditions for which acupuncture can be used - the list was nonsense, and has since been removed by the World Health Organisation, but that doesn't stop people trying to use it as proof.

This new list will detail health problems related to Qi, Meridians, yin and yang and other pseudoscientific ideas, and will doubtless be used for the same purpose - to prove that these concepts are real.