After everything I've looked into regarding Traditional Chinese Medicine, I never until recently looked at the very foundations of belief and superstition that it was built upon in great detail. Two weeks ago I decided it was time to do just that.

Credit: dockedship, CC 2.0

The post is not by any means exhaustive - It couldn't be, and that's the point. It's unfalsifiable The long and short of it is that the complex web of fantasy tangled around itself in such a way developed over thousands of years, with red herrings and justifications for every dead end and flaw possible, that people can't help but doubt the doubters.

TCM is the master of pseudoscience, masked behind the shadow of culture and political sensitivity, boosted by historical propaganda and the perception of 'exotic' Orientalism.

So although I can't possibly cover everything, I thought it might be interesting to look at actual research that has actually been done by actual scientists trying to find validity to the ideas propagating since ancient times. Recently, Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign has started looming over the shoulder of academia, and is ready to set the strongest example to corrupt publications and researchers the world has seen to date. The CPC know that their money is going wasted on corrupt, biased and overall unreliable researchers, and now China publishes more papers than anywhere else on earth annually, it's time to maybe think about putting some actual quality behind those numbers. One can only hope. So let's see what they're up against, starting today with good ol' Meridian Lines:

Evidence for Meridian Pathways

When I Google the above phrase, I get this:

You might notice that I've actually taken a deep breath and visited these pages, and you also might notice the general theme off these websites:

Dailyhealth, ganlacupuncture, realnatural, buddhistdoor, upliftconnect

When I visit upliftconnect, I get this:

I found one academic-appearing website called 'actcm.edu' - Finally... except, it turns out this means 'American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine'.

I sense an agenda of bias in these results. takes a deep breath

Analysis

G & L Acupuncture states that:

Researchers are finding evidence of structures in the human body that could be analogous to meridians and some have demonstrated the existence of acupoints.

Their source is, interestingly, upliftconnect, who starts off with:

For centuries the ancient wisdom keepers and healers in several traditions had a keen understanding of the energetic body

Nice.

After blabbering on about MRI's and EKG's in the same way modern people spit out the word 'quantum' at every corner, they get to the 'research' from Seoul University which states it has identified a 'Primo-vascular system' which are said to be analogous to meridian pathways - something that a North Korean scientist claimed to have found 50 years ago in the form of ' tubular structures' both within and outside of blood vessels, around organs and under the skin.

This primo-vascular system is said to channel the flow of energy and information via biophotons and DNA.

I think I found 'em! Credit: Shadow Byrd, CC 2.0

I'll let that sink in a second. So let's take their word for it and move on. If you're sceptical, then just read the research yourself. In short, upliftconnect says that the Koreans injected 'special' dye that coloured the meridians (rather specific technology given you didn't previously know they existed). They know this worked because the dye didn't appear at non-meridian points. From my understanding, by using this dye specifically targeted to highlight the meridian pathways that they didn't know existed, they were able to take physical photos of the now tangible body system.

The rest of the article just tells you about Qi and how the body needs balance and so on. When I got to the end of the article, I couldn't help but notice there was only a single 2016 reference directing us to 'Slideshare.net', a website that basically allows you to upload powerpoints. This is 78 slides long. Well, I reverse engineered it and managed to find the actual paper. But we'll get back to that.

First, we need to figure out this 'Primo-Vascular System' that everybody is touting on about. How can it be that with all our modern technology, not a single scientist was able to detect them? The argument seems to be that they were so small, but can a single North Korean scientist half a century ago really trump all our knowledge and powerful electron microscopy?

Pixabay

We'll never know. The scientist in question, Bong-Han Kim, didn't publish any formal research, just some research reports, and nobody was able to replicate the findings. It wasn't long until his laboratory was closed and he mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again. Nobody had managed to find this Primo-vascular system ever since until some South Koreans claimed they had in 2002.

Aside from these, no other researchers in plants, animals or people (also animals) had managed to find them. Enter Dr Kwang-Sup Soh, who I have now seen dotted around every single area of research into meridian pathways. Apparently, there's proof now.

Let's ignore for the moment that the existence of PVS doesn't in any way confirm meridian pathways and shows no mechanism how this could ever be practically applied in medicine. Poking needles into the skin seems like an odd way to accurately target something we only apparently have proof of in 2016.

The paper itself is too boring to go into exhaustively, so I went to the discussion section where Kwang addresses the question of why nobody has ever seen them before. He explains that the meridian pathways have been mistaken for fibrin strings, frequently observed in surgeries and the like. Fibrin strings apparently naturally enshroud these pathways when attacked making them near impossible to observe which is why the harmless dye works so well.

He also points out they're small. He also said they're not that small, depending on what question he was answering. Even so, let's assume that there's nothing to 'debunk' in his paper, which you can take the time to read from the sources below.

What we have then, is a list of citations as follows:

• A 50-year-old scientist from North Korea who mysteriously disappeared when nobody could replicate his results
• A single South Korean scientist from 2016 who has his name on the handful of research showing positive results in this area.

In fact, when I look at a review of the last 50 years of research on the system, there he is again, Dr Kwang heading the credits. No matter how legitimate this singular scientist may appear, it's poor journalism when dozens of sites hitting the first page of google results claim there is 'finally proof' of meridian pathways, gloating about how 'western scientists admitted a mind-body connection', and so forth.

The existence of PVS is entirely unproven because it is yet to be replicated. Bong-Han Kim certainly didn't use modern dye microscopy to view some hidden vascular system, so it remains to be seen. As 'sciencebasedmedicine.org' points out, even if it were real, it 'wouldn’t begin to prove that acupuncture works.'

And this is totally true. There is no connection between PVS and meridian pathways other than them both being described as some kind of tubes in living things. But meridian pathways are supposed to be very well established and located tubes, tubes that are on diagrams (See first image) and taught to TCM practitioners to pinpoint with needles and massages and herbs and fire.

How can one extrapolate billions of tubules wrapped around organs and all to mean such historical claims are 'finally proven'?

Easy. By slipping a paycheck under the table.

References:
_{Slideshare presentation | G&L Acupuncture | Science Based Medicine | Bonghan Circulatory System as an Extension of Acupuncture Meridians | 50 Years of Bong-Han Theory and 10 Years of Primo Vascular System | Some more BS health site claiming the same nonsense}