It is truly amazing how foreign the idea of “no diagnosis, no alternative to medicine, no treatment of disease” is to certain ones of the profession. In the opinion of the straight chiropractor, it is bad enough that they reject the above ideas but what is worse is that they cannot even comprehend the possibility that anyone else can accept those ideas. It is almost as if we are talking two different languages. The attitude of many mixers is such that I can only conclude:
A. We are not both using the English language.
B. Many mixers have a hearing disorder.
C. Many mixers have brain damage.
Now I realize the above are not very kind things to say, but it’s time we stopped being kind at least on these issues. As the comedian would say “read my lips.” We do not want to diagnose disease. We do not want to treat disease. We do not want chiropractic to be practiced as an alternative to medicine.
I view a conversation between a mixer and a straight as going something like this:
Straight: We do not want to diagnose or treat disease. We want to locate, analyze and correct vertebral subluxations.
Mixer: But if you only locate, analyze and correct subluxations you won’t be able to diagnose or treat diseases.
Straight: But that is the point. We don’t want to diagnose or treat diseases.
Mixer: But then you are going to be relegated to only locating, analyzing, and correcting subluxations.
Straight: Right! That’s all we want to do.
The sad thing is that some of the chiropractors who are of “mixing mentality” are very intelligent men. I read an article by one of them some time back. He was stating the need for chiropractors to be able to diagnose, and how a potential Michigan law would destroy the practice of mixer and straight alike. His argument was that we needed to at least do differential diagnosis in order to effectively “treat the spine.” That it was necessary to recognize and differentiate such medical entities as “a reversed curve, excessive lordosis, kyphosis, spondylolitheses, scoliosis, broken George’s line and pelvic drop.”
The discussion can and probably will go on forever. We do not want to diagnose and treat diseases, even diseases of the spine. It seems that some of our profession, even straights, have the mistaken impression that the spine and every structural disease or condition involving it is our domain. The domain of the spine as an organ belongs to orthopedic medicine. It always has. The domain of the chiropractor is the vertebral subluxation. Diseases or conditions of the spine incidental to or coincidental with the vertebral subluxation are no more the providence of the chiropractor than are diseases of the heart or lungs which may or may not be incidental to or coincidental with the vertebral subluxation (except in the case of conditions of the spine which might contraindicate certain adjusting technics. However, even then differential diagnosis is not needed, but merely recognizing the contraindications and making the patient aware of an unusual finding).
We keep talking, trying to explain our position and our philosophy. They keep listening but not hearing a word we say. There is definitely a communication breakdown in our profession. But the breakdown is not because both sides are not talking (or writing). It is because both sides are not listening (or reading). It is because that which is heard or read by the mixer is filtered through the mixer philosophy. Whatever his manner of practice, he still thinks in a medical-therapeutic frame of reference. How sad it is for our profession and for humanity that we have so many that look but do not see and listen but do not hear. v3n3
