16 replies to this topic

[maineman]

That pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by the pressure of misplaced vertebrae
upon the nerves which come out of the spinal cord - in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch. This,
plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches
is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover.

-- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, December 8, 1924





(this is a little long, but worth it...maineman)

Chiropractic

This preposterous quackery flourishes lushly in the back reaches of the Republic, and begins to conquer the less
civilized folk of the big cities. As the oldtime family doctor dies out in the country towns, with no competent successor
willing to take over his dismal business, he is followed by some hearty blacksmith or ice-wagon driver, turned into a
chiropractor in six months, often by correspondence. In Los Angeles the Damned there are probably more chiropractors
than actual physicians, and they are far more generally esteemed. Proceeding from the Ambassador Hotel to the heart
of the town, along Wilshire boulevard, one passes scores of their gaudy signs; there are even many chiropractic
"hospitals." The morons who pour in from the prairies and deserts, most of them ailing, patronize these "hospitals"
copiously, and give to the chiropractic pathology the same high respect that they accord to the theology of the town
sorcerers. That pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by the pressure of misplaced
vertebra upon the nerves which come out of the spinal cord-in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch.
This, plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such
pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This, obviously, is
buncombe doubly damned.

Both doctrines were launched upon the world by an old quack named Andrew T. Still, the father of osteopathy. For years
the osteopaths merchanted them and made money at the trade. But as they grew opulent they grew ambitious, ie., they
began to study anatomy and physiology. The result was a gradual abandonment of Papa Still's ideas. The high-toned
osteopath of today is a sort of eclectic. He tries anything that promises to work, from tonsillectomy to the X-rays. With
four years' training behind him, he probably knows more anatomy than the average graduate of the Johns Hopkins
Medical School, or at all events, more osteology. Thus enlightened, he seldom has much to say about pinched nerves in
the back. But as he abandoned the Still revelation it was seized by the chiropractors, led by another quack, one Palmer.
This Palmer grabbed the pinched nerve nonsense and began teaching it to ambitious farm-hands and out-at-elbow
Baptist preachers in a few, easy lessons. Today the backwoods swarm with chiropractors, and in most States they have
been able to exert enough pressure on the rural politicians to get themselves licensed. Any lout with strong hands and
arms is perfectly equipped to become a chiropractor. No education beyond the elements is necessary. The takings are
often high, and so the profession has attracted thousands of recruits-retired baseball players, work-weary plumbers,
truck-drivers, longshoremen, bogus dentists, dubious preachers, cashiered school superintendents. Now and then a
quack of some other school-say homeopathy-plunges into it. Hundreds of promising students come from the intellectual
ranks of hospital orderlies.

Such quackeries suck in the botched, and help them on to bliss eternal. When these botched fall into the hands of
competent medical men they are very likely to be patched up and turned loose upon the world, to beget their kind. But
massaged along the backbone to cure their lues, they quickly pass into the last stages, and so their pathogenic heritage
perishes with them. What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every
interference with that benign process is full of dangers. That the labors of quacks tend to propagate epidemics and so
menace the lives of all of us, as is alleged by their medical opponents-this I doubt. The fact is that most infectious
diseases of any seriousness throw out such alarming symptoms and so quickly that no sane chiropractor is likely to
monkey with them. Seeing his patient breaking out in pustules, or choking, or falling into a stupor, he takes to the woods
at once, and leaves the business to the nearest medical man. His trade is mainly with ambulant patients; they must come
to his studio for treatment. Most of them have lingering diseases; they tour all the neighborhood doctors before they
reach him. His treatment, being nonsensical, is in accord with the divine plan. It is seldom, perhaps, that be actually kills
a patient, but at all events he keeps many a worthy soul from getting well.

The osteopaths, I fear, are finding this new competition serious and unpleasant. As I have said, it was their Hippocrates,
the late Dr. Still, who invented all of the thrusts, lunges, yanks, hooks and bounces that the lowly chiropractors now
employ with such vast effect, and for years the osteopaths had a monopoly of them But when they began to grow
scientific and ambitious their course of training was lengthened until it took in all sorts of tricks and dodges borrowed
from the regular doctors, or resurrection men, including the plucking of tonsils, adenoids and appendices, the use of the
stomach-pump, and even some of the legerdemain of psychiatry. They now harry their students furiously and turn them
out ready for anything from growing hair on a bald head to frying a patient with the x-rays. All this new striving, of course,
quickly brought its inevitable penalties. The osteopathic graduate, having sweated so long, was no longer willing to take
a case of delirium tremens for $2, and in consequence he lost patients. Worse, very few aspirants could make the long
grade. The essence of osteopathy itself could be grasped by any lively farm-hand or night watchman in a few weeks, but
the borrowed magic baffled him. Confronted by the phenomenon of gastrulation, or by the curious behavior of heart
muscle, or by any of the current theories of immunity, he commonly took refuge, like his brother of the orthodox faculty,
in a gulp of laboratory alcohol, or fled the premises altogether. Thus he was lost to osteopathic science, and the
chiropractors took him in; nay, they welcomed him. He was their meat. Borrowing that primitive part of osteopathy which
was comprehensible to the meanest understanding, they threw the rest overboard, at the same time denouncing it as a
sorcery invented by the Medical Trust. Thus they gathered in the garage mechanics, ash-men and decayed welter-
weights, and the land began to fill with their graduates. Now there is a chiropractor at every cross-roads.

I repeat that it eases and soothes me to see them so prosperous, for they counteract the evil work of the so-called
science of public hygiene, which now seeks to make imbeciles immortal. If a man, being ill of a pus appendix, resorts to a
shaved and fumigated longshoreman to have it disposed of, and submits willingly to a treatment involving balancing him
on McBurney's spot and playing on his vertebrae as on a concertina, then I am willing, for one, to believe that he is badly
wanted in Heaven. And if that same man, having achieved lawfully a lovely babe, hires a blacksmith to cure its diphtheria
by puffing its neck, then I do not resist the divine will that there shall be one less radio fan later on. In such matters, I am
convinced, the laws of nature are far better guides than the fiats and machinations of medical busybodies. If the latter
gentlemen had their way, death, save at the hands of hangmen, policemen and other such legalized assassins, would be
abolished altogether, and the present differential in favor of the enlightened would disappear. I can't convince myself that
that would work any good to the world. On the contrary, it seems to me that the current coddling of the half-witted should
be stopped before it goes too far -if, indeed, it has not gone too far already. To that end nothing operates more cheaply
and effectively than the prosperity of quacks. Every time a bottle of cancer oil goes through the mails Homo americanus
is improved to that extent. And every time a chiropractor spits on his hands and proceeds to treat a gastric ulcer by
stretching the backbone the same high end is achieved.

But chiropractic, of course, is not perfect. It has superb potentialities, but only too often they are not converted into
concrete cadavers. The hygienists rescue many of its foreordained customers, and, turning them over to agents of the
Medical Trust, maintained at the public expense, get them cured. Moreover, chiropractic itself is not certainly fatal: even
an Iowan with diabetes may survive its embraces. Yet worse, I have a suspicion that it sometimes actually cures. For all I
know (or any orthodox pathologist seems to know) it may be true that certain malaises are caused by the pressure of
vagrom vertebrae upon the spinal nerves. And it may be true that a hearty ex-boilermaker, by a vigorous yanking and
kneading, may be able to relieve that pressure. What is needed is a scientific inquiry into the matter, under rigid test
conditions, by a committee of men learned in the architecture and plumbing of the body, and of a high and incorruptible
sagacity. Let a thousand patients be selected, let a gang of selected chiropractors examine their backbones and deter
mine what is the matter with them, and then let these diagnoses be checked up by the exact methods of scientific
medicine.

Then let the same chiropractors essay to cure the patients whose maladies have been determined. My guess is that the
chiropractors' errors in diagnosis will run to at least 95% and that their failures in treatment will push 99%. But I am willing
to be convinced.

Where is such a committee to be found? I undertake to nominate it at ten minutes' notice. The land swarms with men
competent in anatomy and pathology, and yet not engaged as doctors. There are thousands of hospitals, with endless
clinical material. I offer to supply the committee with cigars and music during the test. I offer, further, to supply both the
committee and the chiropractors with sound wet goods. I offer, finally, to give a bawdy banquet to the whole Medical
Trust at the conclusion of the proceedings.
-- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, December 1924

[pistol_pete]

That pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by the pressure of misplaced vertebrae
upon the nerves which come out of the spinal cord - in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch. This,
plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches
is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover.

-- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, December 8, 1924





(this is a little long, but worth it...maineman)

Chiropractic

This preposterous quackery flourishes lushly in the back reaches of the Republic, and begins to conquer the less
civilized folk of the big cities. As the oldtime family doctor dies out in the country towns, with no competent successor
willing to take over his dismal business, he is followed by some hearty blacksmith or ice-wagon driver, turned into a
chiropractor in six months, often by correspondence. In Los Angeles the Damned there are probably more chiropractors
than actual physicians, and they are far more generally esteemed. Proceeding from the Ambassador Hotel to the heart
of the town, along Wilshire boulevard, one passes scores of their gaudy signs; there are even many chiropractic
"hospitals." The morons who pour in from the prairies and deserts, most of them ailing, patronize these "hospitals"
copiously, and give to the chiropractic pathology the same high respect that they accord to the theology of the town
sorcerers. That pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by the pressure of misplaced
vertebra upon the nerves which come out of the spinal cord-in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch.
This, plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such
pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This, obviously, is
buncombe doubly damned.

Both doctrines were launched upon the world by an old quack named Andrew T. Still, the father of osteopathy. For years
the osteopaths merchanted them and made money at the trade. But as they grew opulent they grew ambitious, ie., they
began to study anatomy and physiology. The result was a gradual abandonment of Papa Still's ideas. The high-toned
osteopath of today is a sort of eclectic. He tries anything that promises to work, from tonsillectomy to the X-rays. With
four years' training behind him, he probably knows more anatomy than the average graduate of the Johns Hopkins
Medical School, or at all events, more osteology. Thus enlightened, he seldom has much to say about pinched nerves in
the back. But as he abandoned the Still revelation it was seized by the chiropractors, led by another quack, one Palmer.
This Palmer grabbed the pinched nerve nonsense and began teaching it to ambitious farm-hands and out-at-elbow
Baptist preachers in a few, easy lessons. Today the backwoods swarm with chiropractors, and in most States they have
been able to exert enough pressure on the rural politicians to get themselves licensed. Any lout with strong hands and
arms is perfectly equipped to become a chiropractor. No education beyond the elements is necessary. The takings are
often high, and so the profession has attracted thousands of recruits-retired baseball players, work-weary plumbers,
truck-drivers, longshoremen, bogus dentists, dubious preachers, cashiered school superintendents. Now and then a
quack of some other school-say homeopathy-plunges into it. Hundreds of promising students come from the intellectual
ranks of hospital orderlies.

Such quackeries suck in the botched, and help them on to bliss eternal. When these botched fall into the hands of
competent medical men they are very likely to be patched up and turned loose upon the world, to beget their kind. But
massaged along the backbone to cure their lues, they quickly pass into the last stages, and so their pathogenic heritage
perishes with them. What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends the botched to die, and that every
interference with that benign process is full of dangers. That the labors of quacks tend to propagate epidemics and so
menace the lives of all of us, as is alleged by their medical opponents-this I doubt. The fact is that most infectious
diseases of any seriousness throw out such alarming symptoms and so quickly that no sane chiropractor is likely to
monkey with them. Seeing his patient breaking out in pustules, or choking, or falling into a stupor, he takes to the woods
at once, and leaves the business to the nearest medical man. His trade is mainly with ambulant patients; they must come
to his studio for treatment. Most of them have lingering diseases; they tour all the neighborhood doctors before they
reach him. His treatment, being nonsensical, is in accord with the divine plan. It is seldom, perhaps, that be actually kills
a patient, but at all events he keeps many a worthy soul from getting well.

The osteopaths, I fear, are finding this new competition serious and unpleasant. As I have said, it was their Hippocrates,
the late Dr. Still, who invented all of the thrusts, lunges, yanks, hooks and bounces that the lowly chiropractors now
employ with such vast effect, and for years the osteopaths had a monopoly of them But when they began to grow
scientific and ambitious their course of training was lengthened until it took in all sorts of tricks and dodges borrowed
from the regular doctors, or resurrection men, including the plucking of tonsils, adenoids and appendices, the use of the
stomach-pump, and even some of the legerdemain of psychiatry. They now harry their students furiously and turn them
out ready for anything from growing hair on a bald head to frying a patient with the x-rays. All this new striving, of course,
quickly brought its inevitable penalties. The osteopathic graduate, having sweated so long, was no longer willing to take
a case of delirium tremens for $2, and in consequence he lost patients. Worse, very few aspirants could make the long
grade. The essence of osteopathy itself could be grasped by any lively farm-hand or night watchman in a few weeks, but
the borrowed magic baffled him. Confronted by the phenomenon of gastrulation, or by the curious behavior of heart
muscle, or by any of the current theories of immunity, he commonly took refuge, like his brother of the orthodox faculty,
in a gulp of laboratory alcohol, or fled the premises altogether. Thus he was lost to osteopathic science, and the
chiropractors took him in; nay, they welcomed him. He was their meat. Borrowing that primitive part of osteopathy which
was comprehensible to the meanest understanding, they threw the rest overboard, at the same time denouncing it as a
sorcery invented by the Medical Trust. Thus they gathered in the garage mechanics, ash-men and decayed welter-
weights, and the land began to fill with their graduates. Now there is a chiropractor at every cross-roads.

I repeat that it eases and soothes me to see them so prosperous, for they counteract the evil work of the so-called
science of public hygiene, which now seeks to make imbeciles immortal. If a man, being ill of a pus appendix, resorts to a
shaved and fumigated longshoreman to have it disposed of, and submits willingly to a treatment involving balancing him
on McBurney's spot and playing on his vertebrae as on a concertina, then I am willing, for one, to believe that he is badly
wanted in Heaven. And if that same man, having achieved lawfully a lovely babe, hires a blacksmith to cure its diphtheria
by puffing its neck, then I do not resist the divine will that there shall be one less radio fan later on. In such matters, I am
convinced, the laws of nature are far better guides than the fiats and machinations of medical busybodies. If the latter
gentlemen had their way, death, save at the hands of hangmen, policemen and other such legalized assassins, would be
abolished altogether, and the present differential in favor of the enlightened would disappear. I can't convince myself that
that would work any good to the world. On the contrary, it seems to me that the current coddling of the half-witted should
be stopped before it goes too far -if, indeed, it has not gone too far already. To that end nothing operates more cheaply
and effectively than the prosperity of quacks. Every time a bottle of cancer oil goes through the mails Homo americanus
is improved to that extent. And every time a chiropractor spits on his hands and proceeds to treat a gastric ulcer by
stretching the backbone the same high end is achieved.

But chiropractic, of course, is not perfect. It has superb potentialities, but only too often they are not converted into
concrete cadavers. The hygienists rescue many of its foreordained customers, and, turning them over to agents of the
Medical Trust, maintained at the public expense, get them cured. Moreover, chiropractic itself is not certainly fatal: even
an Iowan with diabetes may survive its embraces. Yet worse, I have a suspicion that it sometimes actually cures. For all I
know (or any orthodox pathologist seems to know) it may be true that certain malaises are caused by the pressure of
vagrom vertebrae upon the spinal nerves. And it may be true that a hearty ex-boilermaker, by a vigorous yanking and
kneading, may be able to relieve that pressure. What is needed is a scientific inquiry into the matter, under rigid test
conditions, by a committee of men learned in the architecture and plumbing of the body, and of a high and incorruptible
sagacity. Let a thousand patients be selected, let a gang of selected chiropractors examine their backbones and deter
mine what is the matter with them, and then let these diagnoses be checked up by the exact methods of scientific
medicine.

Then let the same chiropractors essay to cure the patients whose maladies have been determined. My guess is that the
chiropractors' errors in diagnosis will run to at least 95% and that their failures in treatment will push 99%. But I am willing
to be convinced.

Where is such a committee to be found? I undertake to nominate it at ten minutes' notice. The land swarms with men
competent in anatomy and pathology, and yet not engaged as doctors. There are thousands of hospitals, with endless
clinical material. I offer to supply the committee with cigars and music during the test. I offer, further, to supply both the
committee and the chiropractors with sound wet goods. I offer, finally, to give a bawdy banquet to the whole Medical
Trust at the conclusion of the proceedings.
-- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, December 1924

Long and worthless is more like it maineman.....not to mention outdated and obsolete....1924 ?

"What is needed is a scientific inquiry into the matter, under rigid test
conditions, by a committee of men learned in the architecture and plumbing of the body, and of a high and incorruptible
sagacity. Let a thousand patients be selected, let a gang of selected chiropractors examine their backbones and deter
mine what is the matter with them, and then let these diagnoses be checked up by the exact methods of scientific medicine"

The invitation is still open......

PP

[maineman]

Pete, the research was done. Let me know if you would like to read the results or if you have already made up your mind regardless of the results. I have all the scientific references for you to peruse. Chiropractic manipulation has never been shown to be worth anything, other than the immediate benefit of the massage. It has not stood up in any clinical trial. It remains one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the public. And it is often dangerous. Mencken was a smart man.

[pistol_pete]

Pete,

the research was done. Let me know if you would like to read the results or if you have already made up your mind regardless of the results. I have all the scientific references for you to peruse.

Chiropractic manipulation has never been shown to be worth anything, other than the immediate benefit of the massage. It has not stood up in any clinical trial. It remains one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the public. And it is often dangerous.

Mencken was a smart man.

So you are calling me and my patient base a fraud Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Just goes to show a person with a little education can still be very ignorant and prejudiced......not to mention dangerous.

Surprised to see reference to one of the first shock journalists (H L Mencken), coming from a "scientific" man like yourself. Are you aware of the many inflamatory statements that mencken opined? Against African Americans, Jews, Anglo-Saxons etc? That if I were to repeat those here, they would probably get me banned.

Thank you for the offer, but I have all the scientific references in my office and practical/measurable evidence to boot!

And lastly, I want to make you aware that you shouild not throw stones when you live in a glass house.
Here is the science from the glass house......from your own colleagues no less.



Death by Medicine
By Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD
THE FIRST IATROGENIC STUDY

Dr. Lucian L. Leape opened medicine's Pandora's box in his 1994 paper, “Error in Medicine,” which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).(16) He found that Schimmel reported in 1964 that 20% of hospital patients suffered iatrogenic injury, with a 20% fatality rate. In 1981 Steel reported that 36% of hospitalized patients experienced iatrogenesis with a 25% fatality rate, and adverse drug reactions were involved in 50% of the injuries. In 1991, Bedell reported that 64% of acute heart attacks in one hospital were preventable and were mostly due to adverse drug reactions.

Leape focused on the “Harvard Medical Practice Study” published in 1991, (16a) which found a 4% iatrogenic injury rate for patients, with a 14% fatality rate, in 1984 in New York State. From the 98,609 patients injured and the 14% fatality rate, he estimated that in the entire U.S. 180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic injury.

Why Leape chose to use the much lower figure of 4% injury for his analysis remains in question. Using instead the average of the rates found in the three studies he cites (36%, 20%, and 4%) would have produced a 20% medical error rate. The number of iatrogenic deaths using an average rate of injury and his 14% fatality rate would be 1,189,576.

Leape acknowledged that the literature on medical errors is sparse and represents only the tip of the iceberg, noting that when errors are specifically sought out, reported rates are “distressingly high.” He cited several autopsy studies with rates as high as 35-40% of missed diagnoses causing death. He also noted that an intensive care unit reported an average of 1.7 errors per day per patient, and 29% of those errors were potentially serious or fatal.

Leape calculated the error rate in the intensive care unit study. First, he found that each patient had an average of 178 “activities” (staff/procedure/medical interactions) a day, of which 1.7 were errors, which means a 1% failure rate. This may not seem like much, but Leape cited industry standards showing that in aviation, a 0.1% failure rate would mean two unsafe plane landings per day at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport; in the US Postal Service, a 0.1% failure rate would mean 16,000 pieces of lost mail every hour; and in the banking industry, a 0.1% failure rate would mean 32,000 bank checks deducted from the wrong bank account.

In trying to determine why there are so many medical errors, Leape acknowledged the lack of reporting of medical errors. Medical errors occur in thousands of different locations and are perceived as isolated and unusual events. But the most important reason that the problem of medical errors is unrecognized and growing, according to Leape, is that doctors and nurses are unequipped to deal with human error because of the culture of medical training and practice. Doctors are taught that mistakes are unacceptable. Medical mistakes are therefore viewed as a failure of character and any error equals negligence. No one is taught what to do when medical errors do occur. Leape cites McIntyre and Popper, who said the “infallibility model” of medicine leads to intellectual dishonesty with a need to cover up mistakes rather than admit them. There are no Grand Rounds on medical errors, no sharing of failures among doctors, and no one to support them emotionally when their error harms a patient.

Leape hoped his paper would encourage medical practitioners “to fundamentally change the way they think about errors and why they occur.” It has been almost a decade since this groundbreaking work, but the mistakes continue to soar.

In 1995, a JAMA report noted, "Over a million patients are injured in US hospitals each year, and approximately 280,000 die annually as a result of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic death rate dwarfs the annual automobile accident mortality rate of 45,000 and accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined."(23)

At a 1997 press conference, Leape released a nationwide poll on patient iatrogenesis conducted by the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF), which is sponsored by the American Medical Association (AMA). Leape is a founding member of NPSF. The survey found that more than 100 million Americans have been affected directly or indirectly by a medical mistake. Forty-two percent were affected directly and 84% personally knew of someone who had experienced a medical mistake.(14)

At this press conference, Leape updated his 1994 statistics, noting that as of 1997, medical errors in inpatient hospital settings nationwide could be as high as 3 million and could cost as much as $200 billion . Leape used a 14% fatality rate to determine a medical error death rate of 180,000 in 1994.(16) In 1997, using Leape's base number of 3 million errors, the annual death rate could be as high as 420,000 for hospital inpatients alone




So if you mix "pharmageddon" and botched surgeries you get a minimum of one death every 3 minutes to one death every 30 seconds! take your pick. I'll give you the most conservative estimate.......that still equates to one WTC death toll every 3 to 4 days!! How do you like that? Your profession is a lock for the #3 cause of death in the U.S. behind heart disease and cancer......if you take the liberal interpretation of the study above, you guys are #1.

Maineman, I''l give you the benefit of the doubt that you are consciously trying to do good with your alternative health care rants. But you are sorely lacking insight. Take the rose colored glasses off regarding your profession....it is a psychological straightjacket. I will be the first to achknowledge professional improprieties in all health care disciplines...including mine! It is no different than the market you are trying to master here at TT with the rest of us, except with one difference. The profit motive here can only hurt ourselves while in healthcare, it can greatly damage the patient

Humble yourself Maineman....maybe you should read the Hippocratic Oath.....remember that? First do no....?

In health
PP

[maineman]

Pete, Not sure what you are trying to say. Your "paper" by Gary Null is inaccurate. (Gary was fired from his job recently for lying about his selling of products....). I am not "ranting". I am sharing clinical evidence. In the medical profession, we police our activity, report our success and failures and open up our research to all. Various practices come and go as the research dictates. Bad therapies are discarded as the clinical evidence evolves. That is the nature of scientific study. Mistakes are made. Mistakes are corrected. The pursuit of better health for all moves forward. In so-called "alternative" care, nothing is studied. Activities are not peer-monitored. When scientific evidence fails to support a therapy the alternative practitioners pooh-pooh the results. Where is the integrity in that? Are you suggesting that we abandon the practice of medicine? Should I stop healing my diabetics? My hypertensive patients? Should I tell the patients with prostate cancer I've healed that I'm sorry? Not sure what your angle is..... Here's a good example of how we approach "alternative" care. Years ago someone came up with the idea that Glucosamine and Chondroitin would be good for joints. Health food stores and Vitamin companies started pushing the stuff. It wasn't cheap. There were anectodatal stories that "it helped my joints" or "my joints seem to feel better". What did "medicine" do? We studied it. We first determined if it was SAFE to ingest. It was. When patients would ask we tell them that as far as we know it was not harmful, but the studies about efficacy were incomplete. A couple of weeks ago the results came in. No better than placebo. Top rate research. (let me know if you want the reference). Now what do well tell patients when they ask? 1. it is safe to take 2. Research shows it is not effective. Now, did you ever hear a chiropractor quote you research that shows chiropractic practice doesn't work? No. Did you ever hear a homeopathic salesman quote you research that it doesn't work? No. Did you ever hear an alternative health worker tell you that so and so "works" and "others" have benefitted? Yes. Where is the integrity in that. In medicine we admit our mistakes, study the process, learn and evolve. And we'll keep doing that. maineman

[bobalou]

they are NOT ALL THE SAME...as I noted.,,there is a plan to go w/ there treatment plan ,,as I noted..I liked two out of 7.in ,25 yrs..some are better then outhers....they did, and do help me....... ,or just be a drugie..any way ,,do what works for you

[pistol_pete]

Pete,

Not sure what you are trying to say. Your "paper" by Gary Null is inaccurate. (Gary was fired from his job recently for lying about his selling of products....).

I am not "ranting". I am sharing clinical evidence.

In the medical profession, we police our activity, report our success and failures and open up our research to all. Various practices come and go as the research dictates. Bad therapies are discarded as the clinical evidence evolves. That is the nature of scientific study. Mistakes are made. Mistakes are corrected. The pursuit of better health for all moves forward.

In so-called "alternative" care, nothing is studied. Activities are not peer-monitored. When scientific evidence fails to support a therapy the alternative practitioners pooh-pooh the results. Where is the integrity in that?

Are you suggesting that we abandon the practice of medicine? Should I stop healing my diabetics? My hypertensive patients? Should I tell the patients with prostate cancer I've healed that I'm sorry? Not sure what your angle is.....

Here's a good example of how we approach "alternative" care. Years ago someone came up with the idea that Glucosamine and Chondroitin would be good for joints. Health food stores and Vitamin companies started pushing the stuff. It wasn't cheap. There were anectodatal stories that "it helped my joints" or "my joints seem to feel better". What did "medicine" do? We studied it. We first determined if it was SAFE to ingest. It was. When patients would ask we tell them that as far as we know it was not harmful, but the studies about efficacy were incomplete.

A couple of weeks ago the results came in. No better than placebo. Top rate research. (let me know if you want the reference).

Now what do well tell patients when they ask? 1. it is safe to take 2. Research shows it is not effective.

Now, did you ever hear a chiropractor quote you research that shows chiropractic practice doesn't work? No. Did you ever hear a homeopathic salesman quote you research that it doesn't work? No. Did you ever hear an alternative health worker tell you that so and so "works" and "others" have benefitted? Yes. Where is the integrity in that.

In medicine we admit our mistakes, study the process, learn and evolve. And we'll keep doing that.

maineman

What does Null's selling of supplements have to do with kumquats??

Are you implying that the other four individuals are guilty of something as well? how about the original study by Dr. Leape? are you questioining his integrity as well?


Lucian L. Leape is a health policy analyst whose research has focused on error prevention and appropriateness of care. He is Adjunct Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard, he was Professor of Surgery at Tufts University School of Medicine and Chief of Pediatric Surgery New England Medical Center. He has been a leading advocate of the nonpunitive systems approach to the prevention of medical error and has led several studies of adverse drug events and their underlying systems failures. In addition, he had directed research into overuse and underuse of cardiovascular procedures.
Dr. Leape was a founding Director of the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Error, and the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Session. He led the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s first Breakthrough Collaborative on Prevention of Adverse Drug Events. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Quality of Care in America Committee, which recently released its seminal reports. "To Err is Human" (1999) and "Crossing the Quality Chasm" (2001). Recent awards include: the Distinguished Service Award of the American Pediatric Surgical Association (1997), the Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award (1998), the Donabedian Award from the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association (1999), and honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (2001). Dr. Leape is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Medical School and trained in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at the Boston Children’s Hospital.



Why don't you acknowledge the facts maineman? or do the benefits outweigh the disadvantages for your profession? a few broken and lost eggs on the way to making an omelette? aka 'we "cured' the disease but killed the patient.

I''l be the first to tell you what i think doesn't work in my profession...and their is lot's of it.

Do you really believe you are the healer maineman? I think you better think long and hard on that one before you answer me and more importantly answer to yourself.

Good luck
PP

[SemiBizz]

Why are MD's so paranoid about chiropractors?

Edited by SemiBizz, 27 March 2006 - 11:10 PM.

[maineman]

Pete, No, I do not think I am a "healer". I am an Internal Medicine physician. I am trained to diagnose and treat medical illness. I'm not sure the "alternative" folks get that major point. maineman

[maineman]

"Why are MD's so paranoid about chiropractors?" Semi, I can only speak for myself, not "MDs". I am not paranoid about chiropractors. My best friend, since we were 13 years old (a VERY long time ago) is a chiropractor. We have very spirited debates, as you can imagine. Chiropractic is a fraud. Good chiropractors know this. Today there are 3 types. Traditional chiros subscribe to the full hoax of "subluxation" which states that all illness flows from "subluxed" joints which block "vital" flow to organs. By manipulating these "subluxations" (which do not exist by the way) they claim to cure all disease. This idea was dreamed up by Palmer. Look it up. It is as insane an idea as there ever was. These chiros are scamming the public. Manyincorporate vitamin sales, homeopathic remedies, etc. into thier "practice" and rake in the dollars. The second group knows that a good yank and twist can feel pretty good and can relieve muscle aches and pains. These guys are pretty decent. They claim nothing else. They do not claim to have the "answer to health". They often try to help people with sore necks and backs. Many of them do profit off of car accident victims and do a lot of work for lawyers, but on the whole they'll try to manipulate you and if you feel better, no harm done. The third group are known as "mixers" and they combine the two. This group has many "alternative" practitioners and many scam artists. So, no paranoia here. Just the result of active research. As stated here before we trudge our way through a huge pile of research. If it is worthwhile we incorporate it into our toolbox. If not we discard it. Do your due diligence when it comes to your body. It's the only one you've got. And not due diligence based on hearsay. maineman