We Americans seem to enjoy importing things British. In fact, some of our most popular television programming originated in England, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the Weakest Link and The Office.
Let’s hope a recent development in chiropractic doesn’t make it to our shores. Namely, a formal complaint to the General Chiropractic Council regarding the website content of over 500 chiropractors in the United Kingdom.
Apparently, this complaint is the result of an orchestrated campaign against the British Chiropractic Association, its members and the chiropractic profession at large. If you have the time (or stomach) to read the postings of this effort, you can do so at www.zenosblog.com.
What content could possibly prompt a complaint to the regulatory body? Growing hair? Restored hearing? Regrowing a missing limb? No. Any mention of how chiropractic may help asthma, ear infections, allergies, birth trauma, whiplash, bedwetting, colic, fibromyalgia or other visceral or organic health issues that cannot be substantiated by research.
Which begs the question. How much research is needed and by whom must the research be performed?
It’s been my experience that those who want “proof” never get enough of it, or of high enough quality to be satisfied. Even more misguided it the notion that applying a linear, mechanistic intervention to a vitalistic organism is somehow going to yield an accurate representation of all such interventions anyway.
Try explaining that chiropractic is valueless for these various permutations of the effect of subluxations to the parents of children helped by chiropractors. Or pet owners. Or those who tried everything the medical profession had to offer and only got results at the hands of a chiropractor.
Granted, this is one more reason to avoid practicing chiropractic medicine. By that I mean, adjusting patients in an attempt to reduce or ameliorate a particular ache, pain or symptom. True, it requires the willingness to confront what patients believe. Because they think you’re treating their headache or whatever. Instead, a more accurate and intellectually honest approach is to remind patients “…that chiropractic is not a treatment for anything. Instead, chiropractors reduce tension to the nervous system. When nerve interference, usually along the spine, is reduced, it is often unleashes the body’s natural healing and recuperative properties and your symptoms resolve. Shall we get started and find out?”
Comments (3)
Bill,
If more of the profession would give credit and point to the body's ability to heal and how chiropractic is a vehicle to allow that potential to manifest to a greater degree, rather than making it about chiropractic (as Medicine does in their own respective ways), more understanding would come about.
You are more of a Chiropractor than most Chiropractors i know! The big idea is simple... perhaps too simple for our complex society to grasp?
Posted by Bryan Siegel, DC | June 17, 2009 9:39 AM
Posted on June 17, 2009 09:39
As aggravating as attacks on the chiropractic are, the response from the chiropractic profession is far more telling in regards to the obstacles our profession faces.
These attacks in Britain, and delisting from health services in Canada are only the symptoms of what plagues our profession.
What would it be like to have a unified profession that understood all aspects of whatchiropractors bring to their patients? What we had the leadership in each national and state association that put the chiropractic profession first, and did not get intimated by the big bad wolf.
Our profession should be screaming from the rooftops about the benefits of a fully functional nervous system, not removing information from a bully who doesn't agree.
All that asks for is more bullying.
Posted by Graeme Gibson | June 15, 2009 12:59 PM
Posted on June 15, 2009 12:59
Didn't have time to read the whole article. And no real reason to. But it's all the same shit-aki mushrooms they've been saying all along for time immemorial. It's no different here in Ontario where Chiropractors were ousted out of our Provincial Health Care Plan. So what. Let these guys spew. Although, we shouldn't be making extravagant claim neither. Do your work. Do it with integrity. And with the right heart and you will live a fulfilled career, a fulfilled life. And quit wasting so much time reading all this shit-aki mushrooms on the internet. It only pisses you off and distracts your focus. Spend all that extra time with your patient. That's where you will get rewarded.
Posted by Tony Russo | June 10, 2009 8:08 PM
Posted on June 10, 2009 20:08