Disappointing advertisement

I was disappointed to see a full-page advertisement for the Ontario Chiropractic Association in the July 2009 edition of Canadian Family Physician. In spite of their attempts over the decades to legitimize themselves, the overwhelming majority of chiropractors do not practise scientifically based health care, and chiropractic care remains more of a faith-based cult than a legitimate alternative to medical care.

Chiropractic treatment was invented by a magnetic healer and grocer, D.D. Palmer, one afternoon in 1895 when he claimed he cured a deaf janitor by adjusting a bone in his neck—never mind that the cranial nerves do not actually pass through the cervical spine and that no chiropractor claims to heal the deaf anymore. From that one case, the entire philosophy of subluxations interfering with “innate energy” as the “one true cause of all disease” was developed. There is no evidence for subluxations, and even chiropractors themselves cannot agree on what they are.

Chiropractors routinely use, advise, and sell a wide variety of other implausible, unproven, and occasionally dangerous healing philosophies, such as homeopathy, acupuncture, and detoxes. Many of them claim they have the ability to treat medical illnesses, such as asthma and diabetes. Many of them advise against vaccination. Their continuing education focuses more on practice-building than on new advances and evidence for chiropractic care.

The best available evidence does suggest that chiropractic care might be helpful for mild to moderate low back pain of musculoskeletal origin, but ironically, only when the chiropractor does spinal manipulative therapy, not chiropractic treatment. Spinal manipulative therapy can also be done by other allied health professionals, such as physiotherapists, massage therapists, osteopaths, and sports medicine and rehabilitation physicians, usually at a far lower cost to the patient.

I refer the editors and readers to www.sciencebasedmedicine.com and www.chirowatch.com for more evidence-based discussion on chiropractic care.

Canadian Family Physician does a disservice to its members and gives an undeserved legitimacy to chiropractic care by taking their money.

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