Report on WFAS 2010 International Acupuncture Conference in the US / 全日本鍼灸学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

The World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Societies (WFAS) 2010 International Acupuncture Conference was held in San Francisco USA on November 6 - 7, 2010. The theme was "Acupuncture Research, Education and Clinical Practice."<BR>At the conference, the Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR), which was one of the organizers of the NIH Consensus Conference 1997, was one of the co-sponsors and also the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) presented as one of the keynote speakers. <BR>In recent years the international standardization of acupuncture related issues are moving to the forefront. WFAS is developing various standardization drafts related to acupuncture, starting with acupuncture needle regulations, which appear to be acting as a working unit of mainly Chinese ideas. WFAS has a plan to settle them as world standards through ISO, etc. However, the process of developing standard drafts does not appear democratic or fair. WFAS is indeed not democratically organized as inaccurate minutes for the executive committee meeting held at the conference contain crucial differences between the English version and the Chinese version.<BR>We need to correspond firmly to WFAS that has a formal relationship with WHO and acts high-handedly, as it leads to obstruction of fair recognition and further development of a variety of acupuncture and moxibustion medicine that has been developed in diversity in each country.