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.
Michael Edson, MS, LAc
Michael Edson is the author of several books, the latest of which is Natural Parkinson's Support: Your Guide to Preventing & Managing Parkinson's (2020). He is a New York-state licensed acupuncturist and the co-founder and President of Natural Eye Care, Inc., established in 1999 to raise practitioner and public awareness of the role natural care can play in eye health and the treatment of eye disease.