We Get Letters

Angry in France

Dear Editor:

Congratulations on your article, Dr. Hertenstein. I also am angry. You are right; we can't sit quietly and allow a few colleagues to destroy the profession.

Chiropractic is not easy in France, but we do very well helping people. No insurance, no coverage, and the risk of going to jail, but we love chiropractic, so we persevere.

Christian G. Simon, D.C.
Paris, France

This is a letter from a chiropractic patient written to Consumer Reports on Health regarding their article on chiropractic (see the April 10, 1992 issue of "DC").

Consumer Reports on Health
Subscription Department
P.O. Box 56355
Boulder, Co 80322-6355

I am returning your invoice for $24 for a subscription to Consumer Reports on Health. I do not want your magazine.

It is important to me to tell you the reason! The sample issue that you sent us contained a front-page article about chiropractic. This article was so inaccurate, untrue, and slanderous that it makes me wonder what has happened to Consumer Reports as a non-biased consumer-oriented publication.

I am a chiropractic patient. I have experienced it myself and know of hundreds of others who have. I have seen patients who were given up on by the medical community, helped by chiropractic.

My true concern here is that Consumer Reports has someone doing their articles for them, either the AMA or AMA Journal, for instance. It worries me that perhaps the testing and research in other areas is as biased as the health care is.

It is my hope that this letter may get passed along to someone with authority to at least have this issue discussed. Chiropractic is a portal-of-entry health care field. It has been proven in the courts that the AMA illegally slandered and tried to eliminate chiropractic as a health care option.

The issue here is bigger than just chiropractic. What is happening to your reason to exist?

Sandra O'Connor
Northville, Michigan

Dear Editor:

I cannot help but wonder whether the comments by Dr. Richard Tyler have fallen on deaf ears. In the March 27 issue of Dynamic Chiropractic, the area of education which he addressed was to the point and important for the chiropractic profession to realize. It is a deplorable state of affairs when chiropractors place relicensing credits above knowledge. What has happened to the premise that all true healing lies in patient care and not in the doctors' income?

There is no doubt that homeopathy should be embraced by chiropractic doctors. Aligned with chiropractic adjustments, this type of treatment will provide chiropractors with the opportunity to provide "total health care" without the use of drugs.

Chiropractic will then be well on the way to being the largest overall healing profession, and rightly so. Allopathic medicine has rejected homeopathy as being a viable modality in their system, as its philosophy does not reflect the depth of homeopathy. However, the vital force and innate are one and the same. Therefore, both chiropractic and homeopathy share common ground.

Many years ago, when I was in my final year of chiropractic studies, one of our lecturers stated, "Look after your patients and the dollars will look after themselves." This has proven true throughout the years of practice without any insurance payments. We do not need any "in and out" practices. We must recognize when healing is occurring in our patients, no matter what methods create this healing. This is the only method of practice to follow, and it is time that we woke up to the fact that we need to embrace homeopathy into chiropractic practice and claim it as a right for our patients. This, as a procedure of chiropractic education has already been put into motion by the Texas College of Chiropractic.

Douglas Jesse, D.C.
Tasmania, Australia

Dear Editor:

The latest article by Dr. Barge in the March 13 issue of Dynamic Chiropractic has been ingested, digested, eliminated, and printed. It has the stink of evil.

Dr. Barge's overly simplistic view of complex biological processes reveals great insight -- for the 12th century. He ignores the science of genetics and molecular biology, but he covers his backside. He says, "The chiropractor does not need a differential DX to go to work," then he maintains that an overall assessment of the patient's health problems should be considered. This is intellectual dishonesty ad voodoo logic. To wit: 99 percent of auto accidents are by people who eat carrots. Therefore, carrots cause auto accidents.

Continuing along this line: Mrs. Jones, I am going to remove your subluxations. I don't care if you have an early cancer of your breast or colon, I'm not concerned with your nutrition or uncontrollable blood pressure due to pheochromocytoma. No indeed! I'll adjust your subluxations and if you don't recover, well, gee, it's your fault, not mine.

There is another glaring error here as plain as the goatee on BJ's receding chin. He quotes men like Bernie Siegel, "There are no incurable diseases, only incurable people." That remark is taken out of context. Dr. Barge is threading the beads of science to his own design; it can't be done.

If Dr. Barge has ever written an original research paper, please forward it to me. By all means remove subluxations, but be prepared to explain how disturbances of the pelvic spinal complex manifest themselves in the function of body organs. How does sustained tension in the skeletal musculature feed back into autonomic and somatic nerve beds? Do a couple of vertebrae twists and shut off God-innate? Hardly.

Life force exists. It can cure, as in wound healing, and it can kill, as in cardiac fibrillation. But that's all we know. To use an abstract concept to explain clinical phenomena is intellectually naive and is incapable of dealing with problems of the 21st century. Insisting on this philosophic position has done our little profession much harm.

We have a great fundamental biologic truth. It need not be polluted with irrational thought. Truth eventually always takes root.

Jeffrey Brown, B.A., D.C., FACC, PSC
Jeffersonville, Indiana