Comment and Opinion

Chiropractic Board of Australia

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Chiropractic – quackery to the core (10/12/2012)
One of the greatest confidence tricks in alternative medicine is the way that chiropractors have managed to convince even people who should know better that the profession is some legitimate form of medicine and has thrown off its history. One area in which they have supposedly entered the real world is that they now officially support vaccination, unlike the position in the past which saw chiropractors as the leading form of opposition from any area of alternative medicine with a veneer of respectability.

To understand why chiropractors would oppose vaccination, it is on a simple risk/benefit ratio. As the basic tenet of chiropractic is that all disorders of the human body are caused by restricted flow of vital energy through the spine there can be no place for bacteria or viruses in the etiology of disease. Because vaccination carries some risk but offers no protection against misalignment of the spine there is no benefit, so there can be no justification for doing it. No germs, no need to protect against germs.

Oh, chiropractors will pretend that they support vaccination, but it is lip service only. I've been at a trade show where the professional society for chiropractors was handing out blatantly anti-vaccination material, but when challenged it was all weasel words and "we think parents should have a choice".

You can read the rest of this article here.

Chiropractors are unhappy! Sob, sob! (13/7/2013)
Some of my friends appeared in a television show this week about chiropractic. Chiropractors are not happy, because the show wasn't a complete pander to their delusions of making a meaningful contribution to public health.

I congratulate the ABC Catalyst program for presenting a balanced view of this form of quackery. My opinion about this nonsense is well known, so I will allow the video to stand on its own for now. I will however make special mentions of Dr Mick Vagg's wonderful statement about how we don't turn to magic carpets because planes crash, and how could I resist another distribution of Mr John Cunningham's lovely facepalm.

Chiropractic cleanout? (10/8/2013)
Everyone has been getting very excited over the last week because the government-sanctioned Chiropractic Board of Australia has announced that it is going to have a mighty crack-down on chiropractors who spread lies about vaccination. (I would have avoided the dreadful "crack-down" pun used by all media outlets reporting this, but it comes directly from the CBA. They wrote the material.) Here is the media release from the CBA.

I am far less sanguine about this than many of my friends. My prediction is that chiropractors will carry on as before opposing vaccination, sorry "advising their customers of the potential dangers of vaccines", and not a single chiropractor will be deregistered and pushed out of business by this. Oh, there might be some PR-worthy wrist-slapping but that will be all. The Board really has little influence over what chiropractors say or do, but a little lip service and window-dressing never goes astray.

The professional body of chiropractors (with about 50% of them belonging to it), the Chiropractors' Association of Australia, has already expressed disquiet at the Board's threat and suggested that the responsibility of chiropractors to provide "good" advice to customers overrides any attempt by the Board to pander to people who don't understand the value of a good neck snap.

Two things in the media release are encouraging, however.

The Chiropractic Board of Australia is cracking down on chiropractors who step outside their primary role as healthcare practitioners and provide treatment that puts the public at risk.

That should mean that neck twisting is out because of the well-known and proven danger of cerebral artery damage caused by chiropractors doing sudden and sharp manipulations of the cervical spine. Then there are the people put at risk because they go to a chiropractor instead of a doctor and therefore miss out on correct diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions, but that is a general and valid criticism of all "alternative" medicine.

"However, the Board takes a very strong view of any practitioner who makes unsubstantiated claims about treatment which is not supported within an evidence-based context," he said.

Well, there goes the whole of chiropractic. Take out the stuff that's not based on evidence and there's nothing left. Perhaps we can look forward to a coming Board meeting when they follow the example set by the gay-bashing Exodus International organisation and announce that the whole chiropractic thing is over and they apologise to all the people deceived since DD Palmer invented the scam and his son worked out how to turn it into a business.

Oh, to any chiropractors who object to my use of the word "customers" and would prefer "patients", I say "Dear Mr X, when you are a doctor, not just someone who likes to be called 'Doctor', I will use the word 'patients', but not before".

Chiropractors in the news (28/9/2013)
Chiropractic has been getting its share of publicity lately, and to my great pleasure this attention has been focused on the uselessness and dangers of this particular form of medical charlatanism. In July Australia's premier television science show had a look inside the profession, and this week two expos's have appeared. The first is an article in the Sun Herald newspaper.

This story is disturbing for several reasons, but the title and the first three paragraphs provide a good summary.

1. Chiropractors have no business touching children of any age. (I would be happy if the minimum age for treatment by one of these quacks were to be legislated to be 120 years.) There is nothing that they can provide that can increase the well-being of infants. Adults might get a placebo effect from hearing pops from their backs but babies won't and should not be exposed to the dangers of this unregulated form of sympathetic magic.
2. I have written before about the uselessness of the Chiropractic Board of Australia, which only exists to provide a veneer of respectability to chiropractic so that its practitioners can say "See, we are just like real doctors". In a clear case of negligence and inappropriate treatment leading to severe injury the best they can (or will) do is hide the problem and tell the quack to get advice from another quack. The expression ''expert in the field of paediatric chiropractic" is precisely analogous to ''expert in the field of unicorn metabolism" or ''expert in the field of exorcising ghosts". When the discipline is meaningless expertise means nothing.
3. Real doctors and other medical staff have to jump through many hoops before they are even allowed to go near patients in hospitals, and this even applies to relatives. Nobody is allowed to treat children without undergoing police checks; nobody can treat any patient without the institution's permission and without it being part of a treatment plan (and an emergency creates its own plan); nobody can just walk in, no matter what expertise they have, and start work even if everything they might need to know is on the documentation at the end of the patient's bed. Nobody! Not doctors, not nurses, not specialist doctors, not ambulance paramedics. Nobody. Except chiropractors, who lie that they are just visiting someone.

You might think that this last point is something that happens rarely, but my friend Peter (who prefers to be called Reasonable Hank to protect his privacy and shield him from attack) has done a comprehensive analysis of chiropractors' Facebook comments and pages and has found that the practice seems to be widespread. It also seems to be condoned by the Chiropractors' Association of Australia, which is hardly surprising given that members of the various CAA committees admit to this sort of unethical behaviour.

See Reasonable Hank's article here

People have said that the Chiropractic Board of Australia should do something about this, but why would anyone expect it to do more than hand waving and platitudes. It's not there to regulate or control chiropractic, it's there to give the "profession" a professional appearance. Its response to a child with a broken neck shows what it finds acceptable. People have said that the Chiropractors' Association of Australia should do something about this, but why would anyone expect a club for charlatans to try to do anything about its members following its leaders' example.

There is only one way to fix chiropractic, make it safe and force practitioners to behave ethically. That is to close it down completely and consign it to the rubbish bin of history along with blood-letting, cauterising and the four humours. It was invented in 1897 and became obsolete three minutes later. Why is it still here?

And if you think it can't be silly as well as dangerous and useless, here is picture from a chiropractor's Facebook page showing him adjusting a turtle. Please remember that the turtle's shell is part of its spine and the plates in it are totally unmovable.

Chiropractors under threat. As if! (23/3/2019)
Politicians have been horrified after being told that chiropractors do things that we've all known about for years and which lie outside any boundaries of what could be called proper medical practice. Things will be done! Action this day! And the Chiropractic Board of Australia will act immediately to stamp out these dreadful practices.

(Sorry about the picture. The actual newspaper has one of the most impenetrable paywalls
known to exist. You can read the words here.)

Here's a summary:

• There will be a review "intended to weed out rogue operators and outlaw practices found lo be dangerous or medically unsound". If the review does what it says it's going to do that will be the end of chiropractic in Victoria, because there will nothing left after the rogues and dangerous or useless practices are gone.
• "A spokeswoman for the Chiropractic Board of Australia ... confirmed it would be "urgently reviewing this matter" of internal coccyx treatments". Just like it has urgently reviewed every complaint about anything that any chiropractor has done in the past.
• "The chiropractic board also released a policy advising chiropractors not to undertake spinal manipulation on children under two while Safer Care Victoria undertook a review of the practice". Of course. When something is being investigated, stop doing it until the investigation is over and then start doing it again.

And here's a prediction: three years from now chiropractors will still be "adjusting" the spines of babies and young children, still doing dangerous things like sudden neck manipulations, still sticking fingers into places in children where they don't belong and still claiming that the only chiropractors doing any of this are rogues.

Chiropractors crack me up (sorry!) (30/3/2019)
I managed to get a copy of the Chiropractic Board of Australia's advice to chiropractors about fiddling with children's backs, and I was right. Everyone's talking about a ban but the actual words are "The Board advises chiropractors to not use spinal manipulation to treat children under two years of age, pending the recommendations arising from the independent expert review". Note, "advises", not "instructs", and the advice only goes on until the meaningless review is done. if the "recommendations" of that review say "It should not be done" then the CBA will jump on the inherent uncertainty in "should not" and advise caution. If the "recommendations" say "It must not be done" then the CBA will say something ambiguous and get prepared to frequently say "rogue". You can read the self-serving drivel from the CBA by clicking on the picture over there on the right.

The CBA has led to the creation of a new simile – "As useless as a warning from the Chiropractic Board of Australia".

Australia's most trusted current affairs television program decided to take a look at some of the excesses of chiropractic, and I assume that chiropractors aren't happy about the result. Of course, anything that makes chiropractors unhappy makes me happy. You can click on the image to see the program. Note the prevarication from the man from the CBA.

As my friend Mr (he's a surgeon!) John Cunningham was in the piece it's probably time to revisit his famous facepalm when asked about chiropractic in a previous show.

Those whacky chiropractors (24/4/2021)
I was told during the week by a chiropractor that cases of concussion should be immediately treated by chiropractic adjustment to limit any damage. I had a fall a couple of years ago and I spent a night in hospital being regularly checked for signs of concussion. If at any time I had felt the need to consult a chiropractor I would have interpreted that as evidence of deeper brain damage and demanded a scan to see what had gone wrong.

Interestingly, the "rules" covering what chiropractors can say or do would have making such a claim an offence. Action by the Chiropractic Board of Australia (a body recognised by the government as some sort of legitimate medical oversight board) would have been an immediate "Please don't say that", just as they have done when any chiropractor has broken the rules in the past.

If you want a good laugh you can see the Code of Conduct for chiropractors here.

And here's something amazing. Chiropractors like to be addressed as "Doctor" and put "Dr" in front of their names, despite not being actual medical doctors of any kind. The amazing thing is that the title "Chiropractor" is a protected term under the law, meaning that only people with the relevant qualifications can call themselves that, but "Doctor" is not protected and anybody can use the title.