Despite the setbacks that the objective straight
chiropractic movement has seen in the past few years (loss of
SCASA and straight schools) it is encouraging to see the
numbers of young and not so young chiropractors coming over
to our way of practice. It seems that many young
chiropractors are beginning to think about what they are
doing on a professional level and where their future as a
chiropractor lays. Many are coming to the conclusion just as
we did some 20 years ago that while the objective approach to
chiropractic is not necessarily a sure route to success,
every other approach is definitely a dead end. What are the
other directions and why do they lead us as a profession and
as individual practitioners to oblivion.
1. Becoming medicine. The idea of chiropractors
incorporating the use of drugs for the purpose of treating
diseases is not a new idea for the profession. It has been
suggested before by some very intelligent, insightful
individuals. They understand that if chiropractic is a
treatment for disease, it should not be without all the
armament necessary to be successful. Ironically, this
approach is the only one that offers a future for the
profession’s members apart from the objective approach. It,
of course, means loss of a profession in every way except
perhaps in name, just as osteopathy has lost its identity but
its practitioners still make a living. While this is one of
the only two logical directions for the profession, it is an
unlikely one. A survey, some time back, indicated that one-
third of the profession would like to move in this direction.
However, the other two-thirds would create such a strong
opposition it is not likely to become the desire of the
profession. A chiropractic college recently tested the
waters by suggesting they would add pharmaceuticals to the
professional curriculum. It caused a furor in the profession
that even crossed straight/mixing lines. It is clear, that
despite the majority of the profession’s willingness to treat
disease and to use modalities, they still hold to a
traditional, albeit irrational, concept that chiropractic is
drugless. Even if this profession could agree on using
drugs, it would take years and with the objection by medicine
and the need to revamp our college curriculums, the task
would be virtually impossible.
Those in chiropractic education who mistakenly believe
that adding pharmaceuticals to the curriculum is the only
thing that separates our graduates from M.D.s would learn
that the chiropractic curriculum is woefully inadequate to
turn out physicians. Chiropractic would clearly be lost if
this direction were taken and nobody would be celebrating
chiropractic’s bicentennial.
2. Preventive Care. Here is an approach that many in
chiropractic see as the role of the chiropractor. It poses
some real problems. First, medicine has never relinquished
prevention as part of its practice. Historically, it has
prior rights having addressed prevention as far back as
Jenner and his smallpox vaccination. Second, there has never
been any research or scientific evidence that chiropractic
care can prevent any disease. The jury is still out on many
disease-prevention procedures. No one has begun to
investigate whether chiropractic can prevent specific
diseases. To say that chiropractic is not disease specific
but that it prevents all diseases is as bad as going back to
the claims of 90 years ago that chiropractic could cure all
diseases. None of us want that. Third, to utilize
chiropractic as a prevention of disease would necessitate
that chiropractors have as good an understanding of disease
as if we treated it, if not an even better understanding.
You need to understand what you are preventing, whether you
are successful or not and if not, when to stop preventing and
start treating. Most chiropractors are not, nor do they want
to be, retrained to perform the necessary tasks in the
prevention of disease. In an effort to get around these
problems many chiropractors have substituted a new term for
prevention care.
3. Wellness Care. This is a catch-all term that no one can
truly define, which alone is a good reason for chiropractors
to not get involved with it. Apart from the medical concept
of wellness care (i.e., early detection testing, vaccination,
and disease prevention), there is little to separate it from
orthodox disease treatment and prevention care. Many in our
profession and outside the profession would like to develop a
new model to include proper eating habits, regular exercise,
good mental attitudes, and common-sense hygiene measures
(e.g., not smoking, using alcohol in moderation, avoiding
drugs, wearing seat belts). While these measures may all
legitimately be part of a wellness care program, they
frankly, do not take professional expertise to teach patients
or to monitor patients. They surely do not require a
profession to apply them. All of them can be undertaken by
the patient himself or herself by listening to his/her own
body, probably with better results than if following the
dictates of a doctor. The only aspect of wellness care that
has been suggested as needing professional expertise is
chiropractic care. However, the fact that it takes
professional expertise and application, unlike the others
listed above would exclude it from being under the wellness
care umbrella. Further, unlike the others, correcting
vertebral subluxations is not something done to maintain your
health. When a vertebral subluxation occurs, your nervous
system is compromised and your body can not reach its full
potential. By no stretch of the imagination are you well.
Perhaps you are not as visibly sick as if you have the
symptoms of the flu but you are unhealthy if subluxated.
Maybe, at times, even less healthy than having the flu! The
point is that chiropractic care which has as its objective
the correction of vertebral subluxations to allow the innate
intelligence of the body to better express itself in all
people. It is no more wellness care than it is disease or
prevention care. Chiropractic is like nothing else. So it
is impossible to file it under a general heading.
Chiropractic care (by objective) is a unique approach to
enabling the individual to function at his/her fullest
potential. As such, it does not comfortably fit into any of
the so-called health care approaches (disease, prevention,
wellness). That does not mean that these approaches, under
certain circumstances, do not have value. They do. That is
further reason why chiropractic should not be aligned with
them. Chiropractic has value under all circumstances, for
all people. We as a profession must maintain a separate and
distinct position as to what we do and do not do.
In this centennial year when much of the world will be
looking at us, it is more important than ever that we regain
our perspective. Mixing chiropractic with medicine in either
treatment or prevention of disease is a losing proposition.
Aligning ourselves with so-called wellness care programs
demeans and debases the importance of correcting vertebral
subluxations. Our service is unique, our philosophy is
singular. In order to continue, to thrive and to promote
that service and philosophy, we must stay separate and
distinct. v11n4
