For most of its first 100 years existence, the chiropractic profession has owned the osseous hand-delivered adjustment. This is no longer the case within the allopathic schools, osteopathic colleges, North American Academy of Manipulation, and the physical therapy schools. Interest in joint manipulation is increasing. The presence of representation of orthodox medicine, osteopathy, and physical therapists at international conferences, (e.g., November 5-6, 1992, First Interdisciplinary World Congress on Low Back Pain and Its Relation to the Sacroiliac Joint), offers a huge warning to the chiropractic profession, since all the manipulative viewpoints are being represented.
The chiropractic profession must provide a higher caliber of diagnostic treatment rationale or get used to being in second place. Harsh words and perhaps a little hard to swallow, it is past the time for the chiropractic profession to ask itself what it considers its role to be in the delivery of health care. If the adjustment is our stronghold, then the ability to find the subluxation must be paramount in the minds of our researchers. Subluxation in this context is not the outdated, bone out of place, antiquated, historical model, but the subluxation complex of the 1990s.
Students of chiropractic must challenge their teachers and colleges if presented with other than 1990 rationale chiropractic approaches to the nation's health care. Doctors of chiropractic must also question their associates if they are holding the profession in the dark ages of finding subluxation on x-rays and pulling on legs.
Doctors and students, chiropractic works and the reasons are in the literature of the 1990s, not the 1890s. Please let go of the old doctrines and outdated philosophy. Adopt the subluxation complex and follow it as it changes with each new discovery and validates the place of chiropractic in the world of health care.
You have to do it!
Keith Innes, DC
Scarborough, Ontario
Canada
Editor's Note:
Dr. Innes will be conducting his next Lumbar and Pelvis seminar on May 22-23, 1993, in Seattle, Washington; and Full Spine seminar, along with Terry Elder, DC, on June 5-6, 1993, in Houston, Texas. You may register by dialing 1(800)359-2289.
