A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
David Solin Lee, EdD
Dr. David Solin Lee serves as the academic vice president of Alhambra Medical University. He earned a doctorate in education from UCLA and has served in senior leadership positions at several accredited traditional Asian medicine graduate programs since 1996.