Okay. I’m going to start off this entry by relating a story. About 4 years ago, I was having severe back pain. It was probably from acting the fool on stage when I was still in a band. Anyways, so my mom ships me off to a chiropractor. I think I went twice and the pain didn’t really subside. Fortunately, over the next couple of weeks, the pain went away. Because of the ineffectiveness of the treatment, it started me thinking about the validity of the profession. Anyways, I carry on regardless. Then about 2 years later, I get back pain again. True to form, my mom ships me off to the chiropractor. During the consultation, the chiropractor proceeds to tell me that if I regularly go for checkups, it’ll improve my guitar playing. IN MY FINGERS! After that consultation, I swore never to go back to another chiropractor ever again. And the research began…
Did you know that chiropractic is based on pseudoscience? The Skeptic’s Dictionary has a lot to say on the matter so I’ll quote:
The basic idea of classical chiropractic is that “subluxations” are the cause of most medical problems. According to chiropractic, a “subluxation” is a misalignment of the spine that allegedly interferes with nerve signals from the brain. However, there is no scientific evidence for spinal subluxations and none have ever been observed by medical practitioners such as orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, or radiologists. Chiropractors think that by adjusting the misalignments they can thereby restore the nerve signals and cure health problems. This idea was first propounded in 1895 by D.D. Palmer, a grocer from Davenport, Iowa, and a vitalist who considered intelligent energy to be conveying information among various body parts.
Intelligent energy? Are you kidding me? Does the average person know this? If you look at the wikipedia entry, it’s listed under “Alternative Medicine”. Yup, right up there with Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Acupuncture and Magic Pixie Shiatsu Massage. I ‘ve had a friend tell me they’ve followed Ayurveda to the letter, and has made absolutely no difference in there lives. The problem seems to be that everyone seems to rely on anecdotal evidence (Oh the irony). The major problem with that is you can always find someone with a different opinion. Does no one do research anymore? The entry in Skeptic’s Dictionary goes on:
For years chiropractors rarely worked with medical doctors and they were almost never on staff at hospitals. The American Medical Association (AMA) made no bones about its disapproval of chiropractic, which was discredited by their Committee on Quackery. The chiropractors fought back and won a lawsuit against the AMA in 1976 for restraint of trade.
Restraint of trade? What? No jumping to the defense of chiropractors everywhere by providing factual evidence of it’s validity? No shouting of, “Liar liar, pants on fire!” Instead, they go after the AMA from an economic standpoint. They are effectively saying, “you’re getting rid of your competition”, something more akin to Microsoft(Read here for more information). It seems they didn’t want to get tangled in a my expert has a bigger research pool than your research pool debate.
Doesn’t that seem a little suspicious to you?
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