One of the things that always seems to be a problem among chiropractors, especially those that are leaning (not there, but leaning) toward objective chiropractic, is our unwillingness to bash medicine and to get involved in tangential issues like unnecessary surgeries, drugging school children, fluoridation, vaccination and so on. There are so many issues of this nature that one could easily spend all of their time on these alone. There is no doubt that they are important issues and ones that somebody should be addressing. In fact, some have criticized objective straight chiropractors because we have a personal perspective on these issues and, in most cases have addressed them with regard to ourselves and our families, yet we are not willing to share our knowledge and information with practice members and the general public.
Traditional chiropractors share this information and most of it is good stuff, information that people need. The problem is that it is not chiropractic. Consequently, when it is presented by a chiropractor it leads to confusion in the mind of the public. I think everyone could agree there is already enough confusion in chiropractic. It would be ideal therefore if someone other than chiropractors disseminated this information. What is more, when we present this information to people, we may unintentionally decrease the value of the information because we appear to be a group with an axe to grind with organized medicine. We appear to have no objectivity in the matter because most people are aware of the historical conflict with medicine. This leads to the second problem.
When we present anti-medical information, we position ourselves as an alternative to the practice of medicine. As long as chiropractic assumes the role of a medical alternative, it will never gain the acceptance it wants or deserves. People do not want to be forced to make a choice between chiropractic and medicine. Some people need medical care. More importantly, that is not an honest way to present chiropractic. Alternatives have the same objectives. Chiropractic does not have a disease objective.
If this is information that people need then there should be an organization to disseminate that information. The argument could be made that there is such an organization but it is not doing its job very well. That may be true, however there are a lot of groups and organizations not doing their job, that does not mean we have to assume those roles. We have a specific and unique objective. There is enough information about chiropractic to keep us all as busy as we want to be educating people about chiropractic. There are books full of good, straight chiropractic information that people need to hear and understand. I know, I have written some of them. Teach them that information, give them an ADIO world and life viewpoint and maybe they can figure out for themselves what to do about the non-chiropractic issues.v20n4