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Nov. 7 - Nov.14, 2004 |
Back in black Spin Doctor
Canadian author Paul Benedetti sounds chiropractic alarm bell
By Nancy MacLeod
Originally Published: 2003-09-07
Chiropractic treatment is a contentious topic undergoing much scrutiny today. Dogged with lawsuits and news reports of people suffering strokes, paralysis and death from the very controversial neck manipulation, the field is not accepted by the medical establishment and struggles to obtain university recognition. This problem haunts chiropractic although it is a self-regulating profession whose practitioners, after four years of study following a mandatory three years of university, are allowed to call themselves doctors.
Chiropractic work is done by manipulating, or adjusting, the neck and spine. According to the Ontario Chiropractic Association's website, chiropractic takes a holistic approach to health focused on the neuromusculoskeletal system, considering the overall wellness of a patient. It states that the nervous system "determines how well you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally." According to the Association, various physical problems are caused by "sublaxations," which are "problem areas (where) the spinal bones are misaligned or have lost their normal range of movement, (irritating or putting) pressure on local nerves which interferes with the communication between your brain and body." Sublaxations, the website goes on, can be caused by the many everyday stresses of daily living, from housework or sleeping on a couch; and in children from play, learning to walk or even the birth process.
Paul Benedetti vigorously disputes these claims and sees little value in chiropractic. In the book Spin Doctors: The Chiropractic Industry Under Examination, he and co-author Wayne MacPhail present a frightening case against it. Going back to its roots over a 100 years ago to its links with spiritualism and techniques like magnetic healing, they contend that chiropractic has no scientific evidence to back it up; that sublaxations have never been proven to exist; and that today it is essentially bilking people by performing unnecessary, and often dangerous, adjustments on people of all ages, including babies and small children. It slams the profession for encouraging work to be done on healthy people, for some practitioners making unsubstantiated claims to cure anything from allergies to earaches, and for its governing bodies being unable, or unwilling to properly police its members. It goes into detail about several high-profile cases in recent years in Canada where people were left paralyzed or dead from cervical spine manipulations, including the case of 20-year-old Laurie Jean Mathiason of Saskatchewan. The 1998 inquest into her death recommended among other things that Ministries of Health in this country undertake immediate studies to determines the risks and benefits of this type of manipulation, and the rate of incidence of strokes associated with it.
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