You guys can get mad at me all you want, but you guys are avoiding the real issue which all chiropractors must face. The simple fact is where is the standard of practice in the profession? You have chiropractors out there selling everything from vitamins sublingually can be used to diagnosis neuro-muscular conditionns (AK), massaging someone aura to treat low back pain (NET/BEST), to rehab and manipulation. So where is the standard of practice here? U dont expect to go to the dentist office and he will massage your tooth ache away or going to see a podiatrist and he will give you vitamins to treat your gouty foot, do you? You have very good school like SCUHS and then you have others that jz plain old crazy. I know some program teaching there students to not vaccinate their children. Come on! Yes no Vaccination against polio, chicken pox, hep. B or anything. They blamed on the vaccination company for some case of autism, yet research had shown there is no correlation between two. So until you can set a standard of practice where all chiropractors must follow, then you wont get any other profession to respect and accept chiropractic.
About what u guys said before that medicine used blood letting and leaches to treat medical illness. Yes those are all truth, but using scienctific discoveries, medicine as progress to what u see now and continue to progress. With the genenome project completed and stem cell research on going, medicine is on the ver of curing countless disease while what has chiropractic research shown? And dont tell me that u guys dont use or teach the subluxation complex model anymore, the fact is you do. So please take the time to ask the hard question where is chiropractic going in the next century instead of regurg the same old arguments. Thank you for your participation in this debate.
Sincerely,

Ethan hunter, future MD (one year from graduating)

i love chiros, i used to work in a chiropractic/sports therapy office and i would get free adjustments when i wanted. i'm not sure what exactly people have against them but an adjustment all seems to make me feel pretty good.

i have extreme respect for chiros

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I'm like Internationally-known

Again, the profession is VERY young. Obviously there will be a lot of things that need changing. Standard of practice is something that the individual states determine at this point. And even those are very shady. There is also a standardized entrance examination being developed for Chiro schools. I think it's going to be called the CCAT or something along those lines. When I was in my first trimester at NYCC, we took a "beta" version of the test just so the developers could get an idea of incoming students' strengths and weaknesses. Give it time, and the "whackjob" schools will fade away.


Research in allopathic medicine is heavily funded by the government as well as very wealthy hospitals and organizations (pharm companies). Who funds chiropractic research? Small private schools and a few individuals, with an occasional measly grant from the NIH. On top of which the constant attempts at strangulation by the AMA, and you have yourself a field which is under-researched. What other health care profession/field has ever been so adamantly opposed by the AMA as chiropractic has been? PT, DO, DDS, DPM? None of those were as attacked as DC's have been. PT's are getting their share of attacks from the AMA these days, which just shows you how threatened the "old boys club" of the AMA feels by emergence and efficacy of other healthcare fields. They must have had a fit when the DPT degree was approved. What did they do to counter that? Got congress to cut Medicare PT benefits, with a clause that if an MD examines a patient(read: gets a visit to bill for), he/she can extend the PT treatment.

What about the contempt that MD's feel toward DO's? I can't tell you how many times I've had to listen to my MD friends belittle and bash the DO's that they work with (behind their back). How they're skating to a medical degree, and how they know nothing about real medicine. How their education is so inferior. Sound familiar? Yeah, same garbage is being thrown in our direction. See a pattern? I'd say there's a major inferiority complex brewing there.


I never said that it's not being taught. Unfortunately it still is. But as more and more research is done to prove that it's an outdated theory that holds no water, not only is it taught less, it's less accepted by students who go on to become DC's.


People are quick to flame the profession that not only do they know little about, but also that has only been legally accepted for 50 years. Give it time, and research will show what doctors have been able to see in their offices.


P.S. You still haven't provided me with your source for that 50% drop-out rate. I'll be waiting patiently.

BTW, all those fringe methods of "treatment" that you keep listing are just that, fringe. The majority of practicing DC's out there are using Diversified and other off-shoots of that technique. Yes, there are some docs that choose to only manipulate the first cervical vertebra and then claim that it will cure your psoriasis. Just like I can find you a few dozen or MD's in Brooklyn that claim they can cure arthritis. There's plenty of bullsh_t going on on both sides, MD's just seem to be hellbent on exposing every whackjob chiro that's out there.

How about go to Sallemae and ask what is the default rate in chiropractors on their student loans? I thought D.D Palmer was treating patient with chiropactic at least more than 50 years ago. I think it's the same time as Andrew Still, D.O, who original theory on subluxation. Gonstead tech is not heavy practice by chiropractors? U sure? How about full spinal X-ray? On the Fringe? I dont know about that. What the AMA trying to do is to make sure there is a standard practice in PT? Specially since there were PT to try to diagnoses diseases instead just go by the diagnosis of the doctors. In term of MD saying bad thing about DO, you should call, and talk to any D.O school. I think they would disagree with u. Yes pharma companies do fund a lot of drugs researchs, but keep in mind without the pharma companies that u mention, you probaly not going to have any third generation Pencillin to take or any other medicine that u use. Oh what about chiropractic doctors that advice their patient not to vaccine their children? Please dont wait for the states to set a standard for your profession, why not take the pro-active appoarch and set one for patients benefits. Thank you for ur participation.

chiros are slowly moving in a positive direction, just like MD's and DO's went through their snake oil phase and grew into a respected science based professions. chiro is going through that now but they need to seriously cut the number of seats at their schools--the sheer volume of competition is what drives the mall screenings and vitamin sales.

the ama is frustrating because they are attacking in the wrong direction. while they fight the scope of practice of pt's and chiros who are highly confined in anatomy and scope on their own..we have PA's and NP's gaining more and more privilidges, anyone seen the minute clinics at CVS and walmart?

i haven't practiced medicine yet only done the business side but i can tell you that even from behind the referral desk there were plenty of patients i would have beeen happy to refer anywhere--auralogist, reflexology, paleo-herbalist, zulu witch doctor...i don't care as long as they didn't keep coming back every 2 weeks...hehe

seriously, i don't think i will have a problem with my patients seeking alternative medicine as a complement i mean if the placebo effect of having a magnet rubbed on your knee by a guy with a fetaher sticking out of various body orifices reduces the need for meds then so be it

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OBGYN PGY II
I see light at the end of the tunnel!!!...wait a minute its just another freakin tunnel!

See, again you try to come off as someone who knows something, and end up looking like a ranting fool.

If you're so convinced that we all default on our loans, why don't you give me some official numbers. While you're at it, look up the MD loan default rates.

I said legally recognized as a profession. Which means regulated by the government and recognized as an official field of healthcare.

Gonstead as a way of listing restricted vertebrae, is still taught. Gonstead as an adjusting technique, not so much. Full spinal xray is something that is also being discouraged in practice and in the schools. You can actually thank the AMA for that wonderful procedure. Until the early 90's, Medicare and some major medical insuarnces REQUIRED all chiropractic patients to be x-rayed. They did not allow treatment until the patient had xrays and the results were sent for review. So the schools were forced to adapt the way they taught future docs. These days, not true anymore.

Really? Is that what the AMA newsletter told you? Because those evil DPT's are telling poor, unsuspecting patients that they have a proximal nerve impingement while their idiot PCP thinks they have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and wants them to get surgery. I'd rather have someone who is actually qualified to treat and diagnose musculoskeltal conditions like a DPT or a DC than a hack internist who wouldn't know his ligament from his tendon.

I don't need to call a school. I have firsthand experience with it. I know both DO's and MD's and they can't stand each other. Most of that animosity comes from MD's holding themselves above all other professions, including DO. So I don't need some sugar-coated press release to tell me otherwise.

That wasn't my point. But then judging from your posts you don't really care what the point is. You just go on with your DC bashing as planned. If you bothered to read my post, you'd see that I was trying to tell you that it's difficult to do research when the funding is 1/1000 of what the other fields of healthcare get. All thanks to the mighty AMA. Job well done.

What about them? They're whackjobs, just like there are whackjobs in allopathic medicine. I've seen my share of idiots with an MD after their name whom I wouldn't allow to treat my pet goldfish.

Like I said, give it time and the profession will come into its own right. It would happen a lot faster, if there were less people like you that seem overly concerned with belittling other professions.

What's your problem with DC's anyway? Did a DC hurt you or someone you know? Do DC's steal your patients? What's with the vendetta? Seems highly irrational to me.

Thank you. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Someone with an open mind.

School enrollment numbers are down for the last 4 years. The reason there are so many incompetent DCs is what they used to call "The Mercedes 80's". You could send in a bill printed on a sheet of toilet paper, totaling to $500/treatment and the insurance company would pay it in full. People made millions. Then then No Fault/Car Accident craze of the 90's. Again, lots of money to be made attracted a lot of people. Now that they're forced to deal with real problems and with real patients, they're not prepared for them at all.

Wow, i can only assume that this is an American site. I don't think anywhere else in the world there are M.D's that are so threatened by the chiropractic community.
Here in Australia, there seems to be a more common thinking process that patients are capable of making decisions based on the sort of treatment that they would most like. Some people prefer a mainstream medical approach and others don't. If the opinions of this forum are anything to go by, then it appears as though MD's in the US feel as though there should only be one approach to health and wellbeing.
After moving locations a few times, i have had the opportunity to have the services of a few different Chiropractors and medical doctors here in aus, and am constantly referred to each other for treatment, as well as other health care providers.
Why do the MD's in the US feel so threatened by Chiropractors when there is never going to be a shortage of funding or opportunities in their profession? Why can't they understand that some people prefer alternative approaches to health and wellbeing?

He's right, I got into Life University in GA and the students told me that most of them share this veiw. I think alternative methods in medicine are good if they are beneficial, but when you have the potenial to kill your children because of your bohemian beliefs, then its time to read some different books. I don't know any babies that looked cute with polio.