Vega machines are a type of electroacupuncture device used in Vega testing, which proponents claim can diagnose allergies and other illnesses. The forerunner to the Vega test was electroacupuncture according to Voll (EAV) developed by Reinholdt Voll in the 1950s. Helmut Schimmel modified the technique in the 1970s and presented it under the name Vega test.
Several medical associations have advised against their use, including the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the Australian College of Allergy, the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the Allergy Society of South Africa. In 1990 a medical practitioner was censured by the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Committee in New Zealand for using a Vega machine. Another practitioner was censured by the Discipline Committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in 1999 for having "failed to meet the standard of practice" in his use of the Vega machine in diagnosis.
Reviews of the available evidence in the medical literature indicate that electrodermal testing, such as that performed with a Vega machine, is ineffective at diagnosing allergies and recommend that it not be used.
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—Quentin Tarantino, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Roger Avary. Vincent Vega (John Travolta)
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)