If someone asked you what the most distinctive feature of chiropractic was, you quite correctly would reply the specific chiropractic adjustment. Some might say so because they feel that it's good for just the relief of pain and the mobilization of articular surfaces. Others, like myself, feel that the specific adjustment can and does initiate the somatovisceral reflex for a salutary affect upon the entire body. This, with all its dimensions, is the common ground upon which the profession meets if only for a philosophical moment.
There is another more esoteric ground that is common to members of the chiropractic profession in varying degrees. It is the ground of the "forbidden." Some of the more obvious are found in the United States where the state laws of three West Coast states form a microcosm of a national and international disgrace. They present a classical hodgepodge of dos and don'ts. In California it's a mixture of the influence of mixers and straights, with the state requiring that the chiropractic students be taught all manner of subjects only to be told that they must not practice all of them when they graduate. In Oregon, the DCs can do just about everything they have been qualified to do, while in Washington about the only thing allowed is adjusting and quoting B.J.
With so many strident philosophies and commensurate laws, it's a wonder that chiropractic survives. The super straights are intellectual celibates, therefore there is no procreation of new ideas. Their descendants are the result of continual inbreeding with consequent lunacy. They couldn't care less about things forbidden to them. Fortunately, while noisy, the supers don't represent the majority.
It's the majority, therefore, who are stuck in the never-never land of "you mustn't do."
We are familiar with the traditional don'ts, like treating diabetes -- even though the osteopaths say that spinal manipulation can be important in the management of the disease. They can say these things -- we can't.
But what about cancer? Why can't chiropractors be effective in the treatment of this disease? As long as it hasn't metastasized to bone, why shouldn't the chiropractic physician be allowed to adjust to influence the somatovisceral reflex to support the body's immune system? Why shouldn't he openly counsel cancer patients on the use of dietary and supplemental therapeutics? Instead, we must whisper and tell people that cancer can only be treated by the medical community -- a group that not only doesn't have a cure for the disease but stifles any form of research that might be contrary to AMA protocols.
It might be different if such things as cancer and AIDS were cured, but in spite of all the money pouring into the coffers of the medical treasury, more people get cancer than ever before and AIDS has reached epidemic proportions. Still -- no one must criticize or even suggest that there might be another way for fear of losing his license.
In order to get alternative care, American citizens must often leave their own country, and if parents takes a child for care across the border they can be prosecuted for kidnaping.
For over a year I worked in the Preventive Medical Clinic in North Highlands, California. While the name "preventive" was used, it really was a clinic of last resort. As with chiropractic, most of the patients had already received standard "orthodox" forms of medical care. They weren't "delayed proper medical care." That "proper" care had already been given and had failed. Even so, even though patients came to us in the terminal stages of disease, time and again I would watch people survive or their lives made more comfortable with conservative health care.
Fortunately I was working under the aegis of the clinic director's medical license so I was free to vigorously pursue conservative forms of therapy that might be denied me in the private practice of chiropractic. I could honestly tell the patient what I was doing without evasion and double talk.
During this time I openly treated people with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and gangrene with chiropractic adjustments, nutrition, and homeopathic remedies. You have no idea how effective such a combination of conservative therapies can be until you've been privileged to use them under these conditions.
Recently the "Internal Medicine World Report" reported on the success of some homeopathic remedies on patients who had the AIDS virus, demonstrating once again the viability of conservative health care.
Chiropractic is the largest and strongest of all the alternative health care professions. Instead of wallowing in indecision and self-doubt, it's time we assert ourselves as primary health care providers and state flatly that we have just as much right to treat patients for cancer and AIDS as does medicine. If not the primary focus, then certainly synergistically.
Of course this is fantasy time. None of the "leaders" of our profession have the guts to propose such a concept. They're too busy running around defending the rights of a state to restrict the profession out of existence. After all, we shouldn't get involved in the sovereignty of a state and its right to control the health and destiny of its people. And heaven forbid that we should anger a profession with only a few answers and a carefully constructed and ineffective protocol in disease prevention.
So here I sit in my office, like a good boy, assuring patients that I cannot treat many disease conditions and that their medical practitioner must be constantly consulted. No longer with the protection of a medical license, I can only watch as bigotry and professional cowardice allow sickness to continue to flourish.
RHT
