Skeptical about Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Okay I am not saying that all of Traditional Chinese Medicine is wrong but a lot of the practices are very suspicious to a skeptical mind. Here is a list of them which raises a lot of red flags.

The concept of Qi.
Firstly, Skeptic is always very puzzled with the concept of Qi. Is it a real force/energy or something made up? If Qi exist, why hasn't any physicist discovered it? I mean if it exist everywhere in our bodies and it could revolutionise the understanding of our universe, the scientist who discovers it would win the nobel prize. But instead why are the world's scientist looking for the Higgs Boson or studying neutrinos instead? The sad truth is that the TCM model of the body is based on an archaic and wrong set of cosmological beliefs. We still see other examples of this mistaken belief when we see people talking about Feng Shui or palm reading.

In contrast we know that cell theory is right because we can see cells under the microscope. It is so easy to prove that even a 7 year old child with a microscope can see it during a science class.

Proving a Treatment works.
In modern medicine, when a new drug enters the market. It has undergone very rigourous testing. The drugs are tested for adverse effects. Put through a double blind test to account for the placebo effect. They are subjected to statistical analysis to test for effectiveness.

In contrast, a lot of traditional chinese medicine doesn't go through such rigourous testing. They only rely on anecdotal 'evidence'. Skeptic wonders how much of these effects are due to the placebo effect. Don't you find it strange that a lot of illness that TCM claims to treat are illness (flu, rashes) that a person can recover from naturally with enough rest and food. In contrast, illness which don't go away naturally (like cancer) are never treated by TCM. One can argue that TCM provides a therapeutic effect. But one could just as well get that effect drinking chicken noodle soup. A common 'remedy' for the cold in the west.

There are a lot of potentially important active ingredients used in TCM. But because of a lack of stringent test, we are unable to separate the proper cures from the sham ones. Furthermore, a lack of test also prevents one from finding out if there are actually any potentially harmful compounds that could harm the body. Just because something is natural doesn't mean it can't harm you. Skeptic can name at least a few naturally occurring compounds that are harmful to the human body.

Lack of proper diagnostic tools.
Because the TCM model of the body is extremely flawed. (Forget about medicine, it violates the accepted ideas of physics). The way a physician detects an illness is limited. Measuring the pulse and looking for symptoms using the five human senses is often the first step a doctor needs to look for illness. But that is where the TCM physician stops. He doesn't have access to blood tests, MRIs.. etc. He can't go beyond asking you simple questions about your symptoms, stool, urine or physically looking at your external symptoms.

TCM can be potentially very useful but Skeptic wishes they apply the scientific method more rigourously to separate the useful from the useless.