For those that use Chiros regularly, are you aware of increasing speculation on the dangers of chiropractic adjustments, in particular reference to cervical adjustments?
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/145/3/562
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=chiropractic+paralysis&meta=
No smoke without fire, or another attack by ‘conventional’ medicine on alternative healing?
A 'merican “healer” in allopathic medicine is much more likley to kill you 
Kelly I respectfully disagree. I recommend you tap into quackwatch.com and chirotalk.com. My intent is not to insult anyone in particular, but my personal experience with the profession has not been positive. I’ve never met a chiropractor who limited his/her practice to the conservative treatment of back issues. In addition, I can’t tell you how many times clients have gone to chiropractors for weeks and months on end with no perceptible improvement in their symptoms. However, the chiropractor is more than happy to accept payment for treatment that is clearly not ameliorating the underlying problem. Would love to hear the counterpoint.
bobby i respectfully disagree. Notice I said the words “kill you”. How many deaths have been attributed to malpractice of chiropractors? How many deaths were attirubted to medical doctors negligence, miscalculations, or wrong doing?
Chiropractors are not only limited to the treatment of the spine, despite what many think. This is a huge misconception, they are more than qualified to treat many other ailments.
Chiropractor’s are like any other health professional (including MDs), they don’t make claims that a specific or variety of treatments will cure you. They all start with a standardized protocol of treatment based on the patients sign & symptoms of the problem at hand. Sometimes it can be a speedy recovery and some issues can take much longer and for some unfortunate people, it may never help at all (in terms of curing and ending the ordeal).
Chiropractors, like MDs, Physio’s, etc, is a pay-per-service profession/industry. They don’t get paid on the promise that the problem will be fixed, otherwise, if they were paid only on treatments that cured the problem, they might as well find another job.
Having said that, I would agree that there are many Chiro’s out there, including other health professionals among the likes of MDs, Physio’s, etc, that make claims that they can treat specific problems, when they are no where near being qualified.
The responsibility remains upon the patient (to a degree), to ask for certain things, like a CV, etc, unfortunately, most won’t do that, b/c they put alot of trust in these people, and that is a sad thing.
Learn to read b/w the lines and if you want to test someone’s credibility, always ask “why”.
So what else are they qualified to help with?
They are qualified to do numerous other treatments, such as, peripheral problems (shint splints, plantar faciatis, tennis elbow, headaches, sports injuries - you can get an abundance of that info from this forum, etc etc) to name a few.
They are neuro-musculo-skeletal specialists, so that means they don’t only focus on the spine, like many people, who have not been treated or seen by one, would think.
Kelly I’m sure your not giving chiropractic the level of legitimacy as allopathic medicine. I’m also sure you are correct in that a doctor’s mistake is more likely to kill someone than a chiropractic mistake. After all, doctors do perform surgery, prescribe medications, etc. You know, they really fix things. Of course, not all the time. I’m the recipient of poor orthopoedic treatment myself. Although my orthopod never attempted to deceive me or PERFORM TREATMENT WITHOUT SCIENTIFIC BASIS. Any chiropractic treatment based on vertebral subluxation theory (which defines chiropractic) is fallacious. Not based on science. Several other points:
-The minimum requirement to admission to chiropractic school is THREE YEARS OF UNDERGRADUATE WORK. FOUR CHIROPRACTIC SCHOOLS REQUIRE A BACHELOR’S DEGREE;
-Roughly 1/2 of the applicants to chiropractic school have a bachelor’s degree;
-Those that do have a bachelor’s degree have an average undergraduate GPA of 2.90 vs. a 3.56 for medical school;
-Almost 20% of all licensed chiros are unemployed;
-In 1999, graduates of chiropractic schools accounted for more than 1/2 of all Health Education Assistance Loan defaults.
So please let us not lump chiropractors into the same category as MDs or DOs.
There IS scientific literature out there to back up chiropractic claims of therapeutic treatment to vertebral subluxations and other ailments. The profession and curriculum of SOME chiro colleges, where the best evidence I can provide, is to have you look at the schools curriculum and see the courses that are being studied and you will see that without a doubt it IS scientifically based and not quackery.
Chiropractic medicine, like traditional medicine, will always require more scientific research into its own practices, for example, if we look at type 2 diabetes today, which is only treated by MDs, the traditional medical profession still doesn’t have a clue how to BEST treat this disease. Some will say, take your meds, others due to recent research are now saying to take insulin injections, like in Type I. Scientific research, whether it be with Chiropractic or traditional medicine, is always where “its” at for improvements and corrections (another example of this is Estrogen Replacement Therapy, where MDs once told women who were Osteoporotic to take it, and now that treatment is scrapped b/c there is evidence provided by scientific research to show that it has a strong correlation to cause breast cancer).
In addition, there are more chiro colleges in the US than in Canada, and some of those colleges are not accredited with the American Chiropractic Association for this very reason, which is brings back what I said in my last post, that the responsibility comes down to the patient in figuring out who, what, where, how….
Furthermore, I assume those numbers you provide are from the US, b/c they are not from Canada. The averages in Canada when applying to Chiropractic college are much higher than that, and the majority (over ½ of the applicants) do have undergraduate degrees, mostly in health sciences.
It is not surprising that med schools average GPA’s for applicants is higher, that’s b/c majority of people that decide to get into health based professions will be traditional medicine, thereby increasing the number of applicants and thus requiring a much higher GPA average to get accepted to fill the limited spots they have. For example, McMaster University’s medical program received 3,909 applicants this year alone, whereas The Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College only receives about 500 applicants per year. This is certainly not an intelligence or quality of education issue, in that only the dumber people will make it to chiro b/c they can’t get into medicine; many people don’t want to get into medicine, especially b/c of the way the health care is currently in this country (Canada).
This brings up the next issue with being unemployed as a chiro. I haven’t heard of this number, and so I cannot say you are wrong, but I would be lieing if I said I wasn’t suspicious of it being incorrect. For the main reason that the medical profession has it easier (at least in Canada and currently) to make revenue b/c of the shortage of doctors (particularly family physicians) compared to chiro’s; however, you also have to understand that the medical profession is a government regulated industry, and thus the government dictates what your income will be and thus they are capped, whereas chiro’s are not and have a potential to make far more money than say a GP would, and I DO know some that make more than an MD. I use GP as an example b/c generally a General Chiropractic Physician is compared to a medical GP.
Lastly, I’m not sure if you know this, but Med schools (at least in Canada) only require a minimum of 3 years university at the undergrad level, you don’t need a degree to apply; so this is not breaking news and certainly doesn’t only apply to chiro colleges.
You can lump DC’s along with MDs, otherwise, how can you lump MDs with DOs? I mean, DOs don’t even go to Med school to get their Doctorate.