For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, direct, and wrong. -- H.L. Mencken
Most chiropractors who know anything at all about H.L. Mencken realize just how wrong he was. He didn't believe in chiropractic. He failed to realize that chiropractic works, it gets results and that's what counts. Mencken just didn't get the big idea. However, we must never forget that there can be no doubt about chiropractic's effectiveness. Sick people get well, and millions have been getting well in chiropractors offices for nearly a century. It's as simple as that!
Nowadays, more and more chiropractic students are graduating without knowing how to adjust and without that firm belief in chiropractic that guarantees success. They just don't have enough philosophy. Yet, the sacred principles of the chiropractic truth have many advantages that bear repetition. Because we know that chiropractic works, therefore:
- It's just naturally right.
- All the techniques are equally effective.
- Chiropractic works for all populations equally well: children, adults, seniors, males and females, and especially those difficult cases and medical failures.
- Chiropractic can do no harm, only good, for suffering humanity; therefore, practice management is the salvation of this profession.
- Patients must be converted to maintenance care for their own good.
- The more people we adjust, the more good we have done for humanity and the more prosperous the individual doctor will be. A successful doctor has at least 30 new-patient visits a month, and 100 patient visits a day. Success equals volume and volume equals prosperity; therefore, your best doctors are the wealthiest and drive gold cadillacs or Rolls.
- Doctors need their philosophical batteries recharged regularly at motivational seminars so that they won't loose sight of just how well chiropractic really works. Doctors need to learn "the basics" over and over again.
- Mixing means failing; doctors who use supplements and physiotherapeutics don't understand that chiropractic really, really works. They turn to these not-real-chiropractic methods because they just don't get the big idea.
- Unlike capricious medical science, where one day's truth is another day's disaster, chiropractic principles never change. Chiropractic was true in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Chiropractic is far more scientific than medicine, since chiropractic has never been disproven.
- Medical doctors are envious of chiropractic's success and will continue to try to destroy the profession in order to confiscate our methods for themselves.
- Medicine denies the effectiveness of chiropractic in order to create unjustified fear in people about cancer in order to sell more drugs and needless surgery.
Let us not forget one of those cornerstones of chiropractic philosophy and logic. We all know that deductions from true chiropractic principles must necessarily be true, as well; this is a fundamental idea well known to all philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians. Now, if the doctor will just keep in mind that chiropractic works, a number of indisputably true derivatives become readily apparent:
- We don't need research, except to prove scientifically what we always knew was true: it works, it works, it works!
- We need research to prove how and why it works so well.
- Just leave research to the statisticians who will prove what we always knew was true, it works.
- Research on chiropractic for back pain is an enormous waste of time and money, since we know it works.
- Research is the province of pointy-headed ivory tower dwellers who couldn't make it in practice and are trying to get by as teachers in our schools. What we really need is more anecdotes and testimonials.
- We need to get the doubting Thomas' out of our schools; all PhDs and medipractors should be required to take courses in chiropractic philosophy until they believe it works.
- The continuing clamor for scientific validation of the effectiveness of chiropractic is merely another ruse by the organized medical octopus to destroy the true principle of chiropractic: it works where medicine fails.
- The Mercy Guidelines are a farce and sham imposed by pseudochiropractors and medipractors who just don't understand real chiropractic and would just as soon see chiropractic go the way of osteopathy.
- Reading so-called chiropractic science journals is a waste of time and money since they never print anything you can use in the office on Monday morning. Besides, if the doctor learned real chiropractic in college, that's enough, because the principles never change and always work (excepting for the limitation of matter).
- Immunizations are immoral and unnatural; chiropractic principles obey nature's law.
- The seed cannot take root unless the soil is receptive; chiropractic produces healthy cells that cannot be infected. AIDS cannot be contracted unless the immune system is impaired by neurological insult. Throw away your condoms and get your spine adjusted.
- Patients deprived of chiropractic care can never achieve their true potential, can never become all they could become; by attempting to destroy chiropractic, medicine is guilty of depriving people of realizing their maximum potential.
Particularly in this moment of our nation's reconsideration of health care policy, the truth of the chiropractic principle must be forcefully reiterated: it works, it works, it works. Of that, there is no question. Most people would turn to chiropractic if they were only educated to its simple truths, and away from the fear-inducing medical model. Because we know chiropractic works, therefore:
- We need to mount a nationwide publicity campaign to inform people of the great advantages of chiropractic and just how scientific it really is. We need to let the public know that research proves what we always knew was true: it works, it works, it works. Even the British Medical Journal has proven chiropractic. The CCE is recognized by the federal government, which proves that chiropractic education is as good as, if not better than, medical education. What's more, chiropractic really, really works. Even medical doctors admit that there's nothing very scientific about medicine.
- We need an expanded advertising campaign to get children into our offices so as to counteract the medically inspired half-truths and misstatements recently published in the Wall Street Journal. Obviously, the Wall Street Journal doesn't recognize how beneficial chiropractic is for children. We need to let the world know that we have Peter Pan principles, rhinoceros principles, friendben principles, and we're bullish on chiropractic. We should consider a nationwide media-blitz, perhaps using popular magazines like the Readers Digest, to get the chiropractic message to the public.
- The Chiropractic Centennial provides an incredible opportunity for chiropractic; we need advertorials and informercials that will prove once and for all that chiropractic works. We need to raise millions of dollars to get millions of new patients into chiropractors' offices. If there's any money left over, we should also study our history.
- We need to educate the children and their parents to lifelong chiropractic maintenance care; an adjustment a month keeps the medical doctor away, prevents sudden infant death syndrome, and eliminates silent-killer subluxations.
Yes, we are thrusting into the 21st Century, secure in our knowledge of that simple, direct truth given us by universal intelligence and now scientifically proven: Chiropractic works.
Right?
Joseph C. Keating Jr., PhD
Portland, Oregon
