Having a Standard

At the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, France is the cylinder of platinum and iridium that weighs 1 kilogram.  It is the standard for weight/mass and is 130 years old.  It has just been found out that even though it is made up of precious metals that are corrosion-resistant and kept under three glass domes, each with a separate key, it is losing mass.  The amount of loss is miniscule but it is enough to cause concern after all, it is what we use as a measure for everything else as far as weight/mass is concerned.  So what’s the big deal?  It is only a small amount of loss.  But suppose we just let the weight float, just make it whatever measure it is on that particular day or let it float.  How would you like to buy 3 pounds of chicken at the meat store and find that you only received two and a half pounds that day?  Suppose McDonalds started making quarter-pounders with cheese only 3 oz!  Did you ever see the little stickers on scales and even fuel pumps at the gas station?  The government has a Bureau of Weights and Measures and goes around making sure that the $4/gallon you are paying for gas at the pump is really giving you a gallon of gasoline.

 So when we buy a pound of sugar or a 20 oz soft drink, we are getting our full product.  Imagine what life would be like if everyone made a pound whatever ounces they wanted it to be and called it a pound.  You could not trust anything. 

 In 1792 the United States Congress established that a dollar was 371 ¼ grain of silver or .8485714 troy ounces of silver.  At that time, they established the death penalty for debasing the dollar, which means that if you made $1 coins and put less than .8485714 ounces of silver in it, it was a capital offense. If you shaved a little off a coin, they hanged you. That’s how important it was to have a strict adherence to a standard.  By 1964 the government was making one dollar’s worth of coins that contained only .715 ounces of silver a little more than 1/10 of an ounce less than the government required in 1792.  Apparently that was not enough to be worthy of the death penalty.  After 1964 it got even worse.  There was no silver in our dollars, nothing to back them up.  It was like the butcher charging you for a pound of chicken and giving you whatever weight he wanted or McDonalds selling you a quarter-pounder and the hamburger being anywhere between the size of a dime and the size of a quarter.  If today you go to a coin dealer and buy a dollar’s worth of 1964 dimes or quarters, you have to pay more than 30 bucks for those 4 quarters or 10 dimes and the cost seems to be going up almost daily. Standards are important in everything in life, weights, measures and money everything that is property or involves the exchange of property.  But it is even more than that.  Moses wasn’t given the 10 suggestions on Mount Sinai.  He was given standards which were meant to be observed and obeyed.  In chiropractic we have principles or standards.  They determine what it is we do as chiropractors and what we do not do.  They create the basis for our practice and changing them, ignoring them or making them whatever we want creates chaos.  If every McDonalds made their quarter-pounders the weight they wanted, how long would they stay in business?  And chiropractors wonder why no one seems to take our profession seriously.  Not only don’t you know whether you are getting a gallon of gasoline or a quart in some cases you don’t know whether you’re getting gasoline or a quarter-pounder with cheese from a man who calls himself a chiropractor.

Until we, as a profession, can set some standards for ourselves, we will never reach our rightful place in society.  Whether you order a quarter-pounder with cheese in a Maine or a California McDonalds you know what you are getting.  With chiropractic every state has different laws and different chiropractors practice differently even with the same laws.  We cannot even agree on what to call ourselves. It is a sorry state of affairs that we are in.  A profession with the beautiful philosophy that we have deserves better.