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News
Acu. | Issue #28 | Autumn 2020
TRIBUTE
Professor Hugh MacPherson: Surfer of many kinds of wave
BAcC Executive Committee meeting, with Yvette Evans-Foster, c 1998
With great sadness, the Northern College of Acupuncture (NCA) have to announce that our co-founder, chair of our Board and trustees, colleague, friend, fellow of the BAcC and hero to many, Professor Hugh MacPherson, died in August after a short illness, aged 72. On learning of Hugh’s declining health, a global network of Hugh’s friends and colleagues came together to make a book of celebration about his life and work, which was presented to him in July. The book reads like a Who’s Who of global acupuncture, and what shines out from its pages is not just the breathtaking span of Hugh’s achievements – enough for several lifetimes – but also the genuine love he inspired in the many people whose lives he touched. So in writing this tribute to Hugh, we thought we couldn’t do better than to give the stage to just a few of those people. We hope this shows even a little of the man whom we’ve been privileged to walk alongside. Hugh’s achievements as an acupuncture researcher, of course, are the main reason that acupuncturists know his name so well. As Professor of
Acupuncture Research at the University of York, he has probably done more than any other single person to put acupuncture on the map of evidencebased medicine, right across the world. Harvard Medical School’s Professor Ted Kaptchuk said of Hugh: ‘He has laid the foundations for the authenticity of our profession in the West. His contributions are staggering… he was an amazing combination of modesty and greatness.’ The irrefutable evidence that acupuncture is more than just placebo – now accepted amongst medical researchers and scientists – owes a great deal to Hugh’s work. And the research achievements continue. For instance, without Hugh’s work with the Society for Acupuncture Research and the Acupuncture Triallists’ Collaboration, it’s hard to imagine how NICE’s 2020 recommendation of acupuncture for chronic pain could have happened. Robert Davis, who led the groundbreaking US research project into acupuncture as an opioid alternative, gave Hugh due credit: ‘I couldn’t have done this research without
