James W. Healey, DC
How many times have you heard from patients things like, "Why is chiropractic against vaccination?" or "Why is chiropractic anti-medicine?" Questions like these are not difficult to answer, but they may be unnecessary. For example, the answers would include a simple explanation that chiropractic is not against vaccination or anti-medicine, but that vaccination or medicine are simply not part of chiropractic. [BANNER]Remember, even if you choose not to be vaccinated and you have never even been to a medical doctor's office for disease care, that is a personal opinion -- not the opinion of chiropractic. Your belief in these areas come from your overall way of thinking -- probably the same reasons you chose to become a chiropractor -- the health model. You didn't have to become a chiropractor to think the way you do because chiropractic doesn't make decisions for people against vaccination or medicine. As a chiropractor, I'm not anti-vaccination and not anti-medicine. I'm not anti-anything. I'm pro-chiropractic.
So, where do questions like these come from? Surely, not from pro-chiropractic efforts. They come from misinformation and lack of understanding. People have been taught to position chiropractic against medicine, to perceive it as wrong, questionable, or weird, instead of simply different from the more established bastion that medicine has made of itself. Once they begin to investigate and find that chiropractic is not the evil counterpart of medicine and what it actually is, the questions change to more sensible ones. They begin to ask more about health and the ways they can live a healthy life their whole life long. The patients will seek to gather facts and knowledge, not assumptions and propaganda, and make their own logical choices. They will choose chiropractic for sound chiropractic reasons and medicine for sound medical reasons, choosing each on its merits.
This is true about chiropractic political situations as well. I'm a straight chiropractor. I belong to the Garden State Chiropractic Society, the straight chiropractic state organization in New Jersey. I belong to the FSCO and joined the WCA as a straight chiropractor. I am president of SCASA. I support straight chiropractic concerns to the best of my abilities. In summary, I am pro-straight.
Yet, I often hear assertions that straights are anti-mixer, anti-CCE, etc. (just like chiropractic and the uninformed/misinformed patients). The truth remains that these things are simply not part of straight chiropractic and that they do not need to be destroyed or eliminated to advance straight chiropractic. I feel that the problem here is that chiropractors have been taught to position straights against mixers, SCASA against CCE, etc., instead of realizing that they are different enough to exist together, each with their merits and goals. This has led to tremendous wastes of energy and resources for both straights and mixers.
Where this has been tried it has been a tremendous success. I understand that in the states where both straights and mixers can enter practice by appropriate examination and practice as they choose, where both CCE and SCASA are approved and the boards are accepting graduates of colleges accredited by each, where there is acknowledgement of the rights of each other to exist, there is also less friction, less back-biting, less waste, and greater satisfaction for all.
My only regret is that this hasn't spread to all states. When we all become pro-chiropractic, perhaps then it will happen.
James W. Healey, D.C.
President,
Straight Chiropractic Academic Standards Association, Inc. (SCASA)
Princeton, New Jersey
