The cowering acquiescence of the ACA to medical dominance is clearly seen in the full-page ad of March 22nd in the Wall Street Journal. Such timidity, such cowardice, I have never seen before in my entire lifetime in chiropractic.
Do you see where we are going today, my friends? We are treading "The Path the Calf Made," the path of osteopathy; and the ACA is our standard bearer leading the way into the depths of "osteopathetic" oblivion. Their first major step has been to condone the fault- ridden immunization theory along with an unqualified advocacy of antibiotic therapy. The osteopaths took this route you know, yes, pasaron por aqui (they passed by here).
"The Path the Calf Made" is the title of a poem quoted in D.D. Palmer's 1910 text. It tells the tale of a little calf who wandered into the woods. As it staggered along on unsteady legs, it bumped into a tree, a bush, a stump, and basically produced a crooked path through the woods, finally to reach the other side. It just so happened that a fox came along a short time thereafter and he too wanted to go through the woods. Walking the edge of the forest he came upon the "Path the Calf Made" and took the same tortuous path. Then came a deer, etc., and finally man, and the well-established path became a circuitous road. My friends that is exactly what we are doing today, we are treading the well-established and crooked road into the practice of osteopathy, ah yes, pasaron por aqui.
Now that the ACA, our largest national chiropractic organization has passed a pro-vaccination stance: now that they have accepted the medically fault-ridden "outside in" germ theory of disease in their unequivocal support of antibiotic therapy; now that they condone the use of proprietary pharmaceuticals and nonincisive surgery as common domain for chiropractors; now that you see chiropractors practicing orthopedics, radiology, sports medicine and more. Now is it not evident that we are well into the woods on the same road traveled by the osteopathic profession? The words of esteemed chiropractic philosopher Dr. Virgil V. Strang come to mind:
"... when a doctor of any type abandons the basic frame of reference of his or her discipline, and when that doctor proceeds to administer care which is for the most part borrowed from another discipline in which the doctor is unlettered, that doctor can no longer in good faith claim to be a practitioner of the discipline in which he or she holds a doctor's degree."
The above quote describes exactly where the ACAs hypocritical proclamations are leading us. No longer are we thinking "straight." Remember that we, at one time, had a "straight" path through the woods. Ours was the philosophy that sought cause, not effect; we looked at the host, not the vector; ours was a distinct and separate approach from medicine. Our "inside out" philosophy was totally antithetical to the "outside in" medical "germ theory" of disease and its vaccination dogma. Woe is me, how we have changed. State statutes across the nation clearly indicate that chiropractic was not licensed as a part (or branch) of medicine or osteopathy, but as an exception to the medical practice acts of each state and jurisdiction. All of our early court battles were fought to prove we were not practicing medicine or osteopathy, but a separate and distinct healing art antipodal to most medical concepts. In the words of Dr. Sid Williams:
"We as a profession have been authorized to function upon the basis of our philosophic approach to health and sickness. Our legislative niche has been delegated to us not as a replacement for, or a variety of medicine, but rather as a practice based on a new thought, a new law, and a new method in the care and management of human ills.
Yes we developed a "new method" of health care and we were once very proud of our difference from medicine. But not today; it seems to me that we will do anything for acceptance. Has greed got in our way? Do we only want the warmth of the insurance-fueled fires of third party payment? Have we chosen to fight no longer, but to join the ranks of the "timid souls" as a minor branch of medicine? Is there any hope?
A wise philosopher once said:
"It is the set of the sail, and not the gale, that determines the course we take."
Let's not let the fear of the "gale" (the health care storm and recent medical attacks) set our "sails."
If we can continue to steer through the "gale" long enuf my friends, the germ theory of disease will change so drastically no one will recognize it. Germs will be viewed as what they truly are, parasitical identities of pathology and disease, not causes. Host factors will again be of primary importance with the emphasis placed once more upon cause. Antibiotic therapy will be utilized only when truly necessary and its realm in common infectious problems greatly reduced. Immunization, as we see it today, will be viewed to be as archaic as bleeding is to us now.
Have we the courage to take the ridicule and scorn? Have we the courage to boldly articulate our concepts that are antithetical to the medical dogma of today? Well its clear to me the ACA does not have this courage; they have most certainly caved in to medical pressure as did the osteopaths.
It is time for all chiropractors to read ICA's Policy Handbook. I believe most would be comfortable with this stand. In the words of my good friend, Dr. E.L. (Bud) Crowder:
"Stand for something or fall for anything and be good for nothing."
The osteopaths took this path. Yes, pasaron por aqui.
Enuf said,
Fred H. Barge, DC, PhC
La Crosse, Wisconsin
When I graduated from chiropractic college in 1981 and started practice, I heard it all, and very little was positive. “You are a quack; you do not know what a subluxation is; you couldn’t get into a real health care program, so you chose the one that is slightly above a mail-order degree; you have no proof that chiropractic works; Are you really licensed?”, and so much more.
| Digital Exclusive
A central challenge in creating our identity is that chiropractic is a method of care, not a technique or procedure. This is an important concept for us to promote. Our patients are treated with lifestyle modification, exercise, nutritional supplements, diet and a whole-body approach to accelerate the natural healing process. We are not simply CMT providers.
The results of a global survey released late last year (2023) unveiled some startling findings among medical and nursing students. The “Clinician of the Future: 2023 Education Edition” surveyed 2,212 students, of which 446 were in the United States, from 91 countries.
