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Chiropractor goes down, under

by Phil Plait, Oct 28 2009

A couple of weeks ago, a chiropractor lodged a complaint with the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) against the Australian Skeptics. Why? Because they had reprinted journalist Simon Singh’s article about chiropractic, which said that in the UK they were making bogus claims about how chiropractic can cure all manners of ills such as asthma and colic in babies, when it’s been shown it cannot.

Got that? This chiropractor, Joseph Ierano, complained against them because of someone else’s article! Brilliant.

The good news is that the HCCC just told the Skeptics they have dismissed the complaint. I’d love to report that, amidst howls of laughter, they said that Ierano’s complaint has no merit, his arguments were totally wrong, and not only has chiropractic been shown in many studies to have no efficacy against diseases like colic and asthma, it in fact can be a very dangerous practice.

Instead, however, it was dismissed because the Australian Skeptics group is not a health care provider, and is therefore not in the jurisdiction of the HCCC. So it was a technicality. That’s still good news, since the AS is not in any trouble, but as they say in that link above, they wish this could’ve been used by the HCCC as a larger scale means to investigate and publicly discuss the inefficacy of chiropractic in these cases. Too bad.

There is still a lot of publicity coming from this whole thing, since the British Chiropractic Association sued Simon Singh for libel due to his original article, instead of simply providing evidence that their claims were not bogus (and when they finally did try to support chiropractic, their claims were woefully off-target). The blogosphere erupted with support for Singh, as did a lot of mainstream press soon thereafter. A very cynical eye indeed has been turned to the practice of chiropractic of late. It’s long overdue.

From what I have read — including studies done by doctors as discussed in such books as Trick or Treatment and Bad Science — chiropractic’s only claim for helping is that there is some marginal evidence it can relieve lower back problems, but that’s it. It doesn’t cure toothaches, or anything carried by germs, or really anything else (excluding the placebo effect, which can be provided in any of number of other ways that don’t involve actual physical manipulation). And when the neck is manipulated, chiropractic can have serious side effects.

I am not a health care practitioner, but with what I know now, I would never go to a chiropractor. Some of them may understand the limitations of their practice, but clearly far too many do not. If you have some sort of health issue, go to your board-certified physician and ask them what they think of alternative practices, and ask them to be blunt.

We’re talking about your life here, folks. Don’t hand it over to someone who may not have a clear grasp of what their so-called alternative medicine can — and cannot — do.

14 Responses to “Chiropractor goes down, under”

  1. Cthandhs says:

    A close friend had to have spinal surgery to fix a chiropracter’s work. Beware.

    • Max says:

      Anecdotal evidence.

      • Cthandhs says:

        Strangely, when I’m warning my friends and colleagues away from chiropractic, that works a lot better than explaining the very slightly increased risk of stroke.

      • Max says:

        People find anecdotal evidence convincing. That’s why chiropractors use it. I’m sure they have stories about chiropractors fixing a spine surgeon’s work.

      • Cthandhs says:

        So… chiropractors and woo artists use anecdotal evidence, so I *shouldn’t* tell people about this experience? I am not trying to use it in a debate. I’m posting that my friend had a really bad chiropractic experience on a blog post about how chiropractors suck.

  2. Tim says:

    Regardless of how everyone in here feels about Obamacare I think one thing we can all agree upon is that we need to contact our legislators and let them know that woo woo nonsense like chiropractors need to be excluded from any list of legitimate procedures in the health insurance bill.

  3. Kitapsiz says:

    Mr. Plait,

    In all honesty, I haven’t taken a lot of these entries seriously, thinking to myself, they were rather selective instances. Until I was forced to accept my error, front up, today.

    Bored on the way to University, I turned on the squawk box for some frequency interference against the road noise. Picked up the “Sean Hannity Show” … and lo and behold … WOW and WOO all wrapped up together; he has a board certified doctor on, attempting to defend himself, his education, background, experience against an anti-vaxxer …

    I thought it was mildly entertaining … until it became dramatically apparent that every time the doctor attempted to shut down the anti-vaxxer quacker on his mis/disinformation, the guy just went over the top with more claims … and Hannity played right into him … ???

    ???

    Is there no integrity left … anywhere? Sheesh. Just pure garbage spouted to however many 100k? Million? listeners out there and an actual doctor is made to sound like a dolt because of unsubstantiated BS …

    The position has been changed; these reprobates are more dangerous than a quick glance can tell you. Well done, keep up the effort, it is obviously needed.

  4. It almost seems that the chiro movement are pretty much trying to use the systems to shut down their skeptics. Even here they have complained to the regulators (and had a small “victory”)

    http://www.bsa.govt.nz/decisions/2009/2009-058.html

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUlYH8e3NW8

    TOTH to Shaun for the links

  5. Rose Sick says:

    I was injured severely by a chiropractor at the age of 24. He had me coming in 3X a week for headaches. My neck began to feel like I could not hold it up and I stopped going. He told me if I did not come back it would be that way forever. I mistakenly went back and caused a massive whiplash injury to the neck, thoracic area and lower back. I have cervical, thoracic and lumbar radiculopathy and have gone backrupt from the medical bills trying to relieve the pain.
    Since there is no way to pick up soft tissue damage or sensory nerve pain in tests he got away with it and I am completely disabled. I had a motion x-ray when it came out and he had damaged all of the ligaments holding the joint together so I have instability of the spine. There is no treatment for ligament damage in the spine. I hope people read this and understand the more manipulations done the more laxity you will have in the ligaments. Since ligaments have poor blood supply they do not heal and thus the nerve pain for the rest of your life.

  6. Wendy says:

    I have trouble believing that it’s been a whole 3 years since I brought the power of Web 2.0 marketing and social media to the chiropractic profession. After humbly beginning to market on sites like YouTube, and Facebook, my success has grown to countless social media outlets all over the internet. The growth of the Web 2.0 boom could almost be labeled as faster than an online virus expanding for 3 solid years. The internet and communications are continuing to change with every passing second, and this expansion has the ability to expand your chiropractic practice with equal force and intensity. Not only that; the potential for earning multiple forms of income, simultaneously, is amazing.

  7. Wendy says:

    Chiropractic consultants were once able to help humble practices earn more money and market themselves better. Today, this is no longer the case. In fact, every time a chiropractic practice puts down money for one of these groups, they’re completely losing that money. They’ll never see it again. Why is this? Consultants today don’t know a darn thing about Web 2.0 and social media, and the things they do know no longer work.

  8. wendell says:

    What I can say is to be very careful on choosing your chiropractic clinic. Chiropractic treatment can be fatal if the one who is going to perform commit a mistake. Try to find a chiropractic clinic that has experience and been serving for many years.

  9. galbright says:

    These comments are ridiculous. Chiropractic or MD treatment may or may not work for many. You find many MDs or physical therapists who can “adjust” like chiropractors after a weekend seminar and this goes down like bad chiropractic. Amazing how millions will go in for medication or a 4 minute visit with MD and have no complaints that they are not “cured”. Look at the statistics. More folkes die from useless prescriptions or even ibuprofen. Be a wise consumer. If you don’t like what is going on, ask questions and find someone else. Personally, I’d skip the chiropractor, but a lot of people get good results.

  10. Josh says:

    Haha what a bunch of idiots. Yes there are horrible chiropractors out there just like there are horrible MD’s out there. I mean look how many people are dissatisfied with their health care right now. The stroke thing has been brought up as usual! Just bogus like galbright said more people die from ibuprofen than will ever die from a chiropractic adjustment. Trust me im in chiro school right now and I can tell you that we get way more anatomy training than normal family MD practitioners do. Its not even close i think we get about 3x the anatomy that they do, because they have to take pharmacology and we don’t. Like I said there are horrible chiro’s out there I get that, but there are great one’s as well you just have to find the right one. And there is no way you get massive whiplash to the neck, thoracic, and lumbar regions all at once with an adjustment, not any adjustment they teach us anyway. Either that guy was a complete quack or you’re sadly mistaken. Oh and they rate back surgery as 50% successful. That’s how they MD’s rate it! Haha if you saw their criteria for “successful” you wouldn’t even agree with that number. There are surgeons who go in a fuse SI joints because of SI joint instability, LAUGHABLE. That’s only seen with disease you know like ankylosing spondylitis. All in all chiropractic treatment is much safer than the infinite drug reactions, and side effects not to mention cheaper. Once we weed out these jokers that are still hanging around the credibility will catch up to the results. For now I’ll just be happy to know that chiropractic makes a huge difference in the lives of millions of people, just ask Jerry Rice :).