WHAT KIND OF ACUPUNCTURE RESEARCH SHOULD BE DONE IN THE UNITED STATES? Acupuncture research should be conducted on the effectiveness and results of acupuncture treatment of pain, neurological, psychosomatic, and psychiatric conditions, and functional disorders. Only highly skilled and experienced acupuncturists should be used for research, because those with less skill are likely to give misleadingly poor results. A good research protocol for acupuncture research could compare the results of acupuncture treatments with the results of other treatments or no treatments in a match group of patients. Patients could be examined by medical school faculty members or other physicians not associated with the acupuncture clinic before and after treatments. The Washington Acupuncture Center is willing to give free acupuncture treatments to any group of patients selected by a medical school or other research facility to be compared with a matched control group to be given other treatment or no treatment by that medical facility during the same period for disorders considered amenable to acupuncture therapy. Both groups should be examined by the other medical facility before and after treatment. This type of research study could be done for arthritis, multiple sclerosis or other neurological disorders. The Washington Acupuncture Center's research project with the Microbiology Department of the George Washington University is a good example of such research. However, most medical research is paid for by drug companies or the federal government. Since acupuncture is an obvious threat to the large incomes of drug companies, very little acupuncture research is being done in the United States. American medical scientists are preoccupied with research on drugs and have neglected research on subjects which have no potential value to drug companies. next