Sometime back, the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress sent out a letter signed by 10 leaders in the profession in a fundraising effort. In the opening paragraph, they noted that it was believed by some “that if enough chiropractors served enough people for [a] long enough time, this would create a mass awareness of the benefits of chiropractic.” The letter goes on to lament that chiropractors have been serving for more than 110 years and it is not working. This idea goes back to the idiotic new age theory, first presented by Ken Keys under the heading of the 100th monkey that when a critical mass of people developed a specific awareness, the idea or behavior would somehow mystically transfer to everyone. He made up a story of monkeys on an island that washed their potatoes in the ocean before eating them and when the 100th monkey adopted the practice, it was automatically done by every monkey on the island and even jumped to islands far away.
Chiropractors have used this as a basis by which the world will eventually grasp chiropractic. Unfortunately, it has not worked. People have not grasped the benefits of vertebral subluxation correction. The public sees chiropractic as a treatment for musculoskeletal problems. So now we have begun a new organization to continue that public education program. The problem is that to attract enough donors to their effort they have to find the lowest common denominator for chiropractic care and that is musculoskeletal problems. Even if they tried to take it up a notch (in their minds), it would still be a “chiropractic gets sick-people-well” approach. We started out with that approach in chiropractic and degenerated into bad backs and stiff necks. Now some, and only some, want to work back up to that model (providing you consider that model a step up).
So what is the answer? Well I do not believe it will happen by a mass-education effort. It will not occur by some organization taking your money and building a community awareness of chiropractic. It can only happen one spine and one mind at a time. There is no 100th monkey. The world is not going to suddenly come to a realization that they should have their spine checked regularly to enable the innate intelligence to be expressed more fully. It is only going to happen in individual offices, in a practice member here and a practice member there. It is going to take hard work by chiropractors in their offices and in their communities to reach those people. It will take harder work than we have ever done before. We must be committed to that individual effort. The easiest thing to do is write a check to some organization so they can promote your practice among 60,000 others. The difficult thing to do is develop the program and the materials necessary to educate your community. The former has never worked in the history of our profession. It is time to do the latter. V24n2