"None of the court's findings constituted a judicial endorsement of chiropractic. All of the parties to the case, including the plaintiffs, and the AMA, agreed that chiropractic treatment of diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease and infectious disease is not proper, and that the historic theory of chiropractic, that there is a single cause and cure of disease was wrong. There was disagreement between the parties as to whether chiropractors should engage in diagnosis. There was evidence that the chiropractic theory of subluxations was unscientific, and evidence that some chiropractors engaged in unscientific practices."
Pete, thanks for those references. Thanks for this quote which comes from the first reference you sited. This is what I was saying all along. FWIW, most of us "good" docs don't belong to the AMA but that's another discussion for another day.
maineman
OK Maineman,
You have managed to skirt some very grave issues regarding your profession that I have noted in prior posts and maintained the offensive on a profession that you apparently have limited exposure to (hearsay
) regardless of what your "chiropractic" friend has shared with you. As one of your famous colleagues was quoted saying in his book "Confessions of a Medical Heretic"
"When I meet a doctor, I generally figure I'm meeting a person who is narrowminded, prejudiced, and fairly incapable of reasoning and deliberation. Few of the doctors I meet prove my prediction wrong."
Robert Mendelsohn M.D.
Taking your opinion on chiropractic is like asking a carpenter his opinion of the electricians work....better yet, how about asking an Elliotician about on balance volume reversals....get my drift? They are both in the market, but they go about it in totally different approaches. No difference here!
Now in order to clarify more so for the readers of this thread than you, I will describe things from the 'electricians" point of view. After all, we heard from the 'carpenter" and we know from the evidence that the carpenter has been trained in a very myopic environment that ostracizes anything that they can't control.
Chiropractic practice in it's true/traditional definition is the correction of spinal subluxation/misalignment. Thus, if that is what you diagnose and treat (as I do) you can never claim that you are treating those (and other) conditions listed above. The problem comes in when patients get better from conditions such as (from my practice) headaches, vertigo, asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, sciatica, seizures, fibromyalgia, herniated disc, etc. So the carpenter yells out "that's a fraud! that can't be! it's not in the literature! He/She is a scam artist! The electrician yells back "Grasshoppa how would you know, you have limited training in carpentry...log cabins to be exact...they don't need electricity..just burn a log and your fine. You see Grasshoppa, you have been bamboozled by your carpentry education. Indeed he/she has....but so has the electrician...that is, apprentice electrician. More on that later.....
So how did they get better? Maineman listen close cause I know darn well you didn't get this in your medical training. As a matter of fact, a good percentage of chiropractors (if I could call them that) don't get this either due to inferior chiropractic colleges. Even if they do get it as a result of graduating from one of the better colleges, they can't witness these kinds of results (seemingly unrelated to the spine symptoms improving/complete reduction) because the greater proportion (I would say 90%) fall into the category of "yankers" and "twisters" to borrow from your earlier post.
So I am saying and implying many things in the above paragraph
1. Maineman's exposure to this chiropractic is surely missing. This partly justifies his opinion. And is proven to me by the fact that I could not in full confidence refer a patient east of Rochester N.Y to any of the so called chiropractors in his area.
2. There are over 140 chiropractic techniques. Most of them fall in the category of yankers and twisters (who BTW I wouldn't allow to so call "Adjust"me if you paid me (as the patient) money! So out of approximately 80,000 chiropractors, what does that leave us insofar as competent ones that can apply a science with an art to correct spinal subluxations/misalignments to get results in at least 80% of their cases? The total somewhere between 300 to 400 chiropractors at the most. That is less than 1/2 % of the chiropractic population. I want to add that a yanker/twister may serendipitously get some of these seemingly unconnected results for their patients....but not likely and if they do get them, they won't last long. And another point to remember, these are the chiropractors that are joining the other side (Kaiser Permanente) and calling it chiropractic
if that is chiropractic, my name is Fred Flintstone.
3. The main point/fact besides proper training that allows these seemingly unrelated symptoms to respond to SPECIFIC SPINAL CORRECTIONS is that....Maineman get the blinders off.....the definition of life as it relates to the human body is the Tri-une of INTELLIGENCE (Brain and brainstem) FORCE (Spinal cord and it's extension/nerve roots going out to all cells and organs in the body) and MATTER (cells, organs, tissues). This very fundamental truth of how we are designed and animated is heresy to the goliath that is medicine today.
My estimation is that with expert Doctor's of Chiropractic (not yankers/twisters) and wholistic M.D's employing methods that honor the intelligence of the body by using methods similar to Calm Cookies and others, these guys (goliath) pumping poisons into peoples bodies would be relegated to where they belong...as a last resort in emergency medicine. Then the benefits of drugs would outweigh the potential disadvantages.
4. The Tri-Une of Life (INTELLIGENCE, FORCE and MATTER) can be appreciated in stark examples like Christopher Reeves. The only difference between a happy and healthy C. Reeves and a quadroplegic one is the severe brainstem lesion caused by his fractured vertebra impacting it when he landed on his head. No difference except in severity when they check a football players arms and legs after he is laid out on the football field after a jarring tackle. The point is when the Tri-Une is interrupted physically, the flow of electrochemical messages (FORCE) from the brain (INTELLIGENCE) to the body (MATTER) gets interrupted and you get the instant result of some sort of pain and disease setting in.
(Get over it Maineman it's true in spite of all the bamboozling edumacation/conditioning you and others have gotten to include the greater part of the incompetent chiropractic population)
You dont have to fracture bones to have an impact on the system. You can create mechanical weakness by tearing loose connective tissue e.g. car or sporting accidents etc.
No intellectually honest Chiropractor would make the claim that there is one cause of disease i.e. the misalignment causes everything. The only claim they can make (that's assuming they have made an appreciable spinal correction....not to be had by yanking/twisting) is that a spine with mechanical integrity will take care of the subluxation/misalignment variable that may effect the nervous system. With that out of the way, you can look to the other variables in life that may cause disease. Cases in point, I have not healed one single patient in over 1,500 cases in my professional career. As a very skilled spinal mechanic (Chiropractor), I have corrected their spines and thus facilitated better communication within the Tri-Une of life. It truly is awe inspiring to watch the body's infinite wisdom take over and start healing in minutes/hours/days. If you don't believe in bigger forces before witnessing people get well, you surely would after. So eventhough the father of medicine (Hipocrates)said approximately 2500 years ago, "In matters of disease, look to the spine first" there is much else that could be wrong with a diseased person.
This idea that the body is capable of self healing and self regulating through what I have called the Tri-Une of life is quite dangerous to the Medical drug pipeline and they will fight it tooth and nail so that they may maintain their co-dependent relationship with the public. As sure as I'm siting here, no sick person ever got that way due to lack of medications....maybe lack of other things like quality air, water, food, sleep, exercise, etc. Prednisone, synthroid, advil, lipitor, and the like have a time and a place when either the patient for whatever reason can't apply fundamental necessities to life or genetics are limiting.
The point is that their is an infinite wisdom,more powerfull than any supercomputer, that runs your body and is capable of healing and making all of it's necessary chemicals provided we do all those good things that most of us know we should do. But of course we usually fall short and the body lets us know with assorted symptoms that we either heed and try to understand or, numb them untill the crisis needs emergency care.
"Crisis is both danger and opportunity"
p.s. other TT folks, your comments/questions are welcome additions to this thread (if it's cool with Mark) so that we could add some non-doctor dialogue.