In this programme, Kathy Sykes investigates the 2,000 year-old practice of acupuncture. Kathy begins her journey in China where she sees some incredible demonstrations of acupuncture. The most astonishing is a scene in a Chinese hospital in which doctors perform open heart surgery on a young woman - using a combination of acupuncture and conventional pain relief instead of a general anaesthetic. In China, she discovers, acupuncture is used alongside western medicine and, at times, as a replacement. So, what does western science make of these claims? Kathy meets the key scientists, both in the UK and in the US, who have put them to the test.