Public opinion is only valuable when it expresses truth. That has been demonstrated in the recent election. The silent majority came to realize (enough of them anyway) thanks to the Constitution and the Electoral College created by it, that the “fundamental change” of the last 8 years was not the truth that this country was founded upon or that they, the silent majority, wanted. Sadly, too many bought into the concepts of the previous administration that: powerful government in the hands of a relatively few is the answer, that socialism is a better political system, that everyone should have a vote, even the criminal and illegal immigrant, and that we should have equality in every aspect of life except the application of the law (the only one we really should apply equally). Apparently, most have yet to understand these as lies.
Chiropractic and Public Opinion
Will we as a profession ever begin to reach enough of the public to impact the world, the country or our individual communities? After over 120 years we have yet to have an impact.
The original “Chiropractic Practice Act”/approach (1951) to chiropractic was intended to regulate the practice of chiropractic so that it defined what we do as chiropractors and restrict us from doing something that would encroach upon/duplicate another licensed practice. This is what the legislature had in mind in 1951. It failed to do that for it included those who incorporated procedures that were part of the practice of drugless physicians whose objective, as other outside-in healing approaches, was to get sick people well, the same as the objective of medicine. Those drugless approaches left over from the previous century and regulated in 1929, began to die out as medicine got more effective at addressing symptoms with less noticeable and harmful side effects, the public got more accustomed to taking drugs, and drugless physicians began to retire (who had been included in the 1951 Act). Chiropractic state boards began broadening their state laws to include, first, common drugless therapeutic procedures, then more drastic procedures unknown in the U.S. during the last century like ultra sound and acupuncture. Chiropractors began to address conditions that were previously untreated because either the law did not allow it or chiropractic was not as effective as medicine. Having “one hand tied behind their back” produced in these chiropractors the desire to incorporate the use of drugs into their practice and the need to find reasons. Calling themselves “physicians’, claiming they could practice in areas where there were no md’s and that chiropractic had always represented a more “conservative approach” to disease were their reasons. The only thing they lacked was the training in differential diagnosis and that could be easily resolved by affecting the curriculum in chiropractic colleges and lastly, removing the obstacle of those who maintained that disease was not the objective of chiropractic but it was and always had been, the expression of intelligence through matter. Are we there yet?
