I was stunned to read the epithet "Perennial Bad Actor" applied to Dr. Terry Rondberg by publisher Don Petersen in a recent issue of Dynamic Chiropractic.

Websters' defines "perennial bad actor" as a person whose behavior is perpetually defective, unfit, unfavorable, rotten, incorrect, wicked, dangerous, offensive and disgusting.

What exactly has Dr. Rondberg done to earn being called such names by Don Petersen?

Has Terry ever been charged with or convicted of any criminal activity? No. Has Terry ever had action taken against his license by a state chiropractic board? No. Has he ever done anything to hurt chiropractic? No. Does his family hate him? No.

Sadly, this attack is merely another in a long series of attempts to tear down a competitor in chiropractic publishing and politics. Because Mr. Petersen cannot effectively tear down Terry's message, he has resorted again to tearing down the messenger.

Ever since Terry started The Chiropractic Journal, and began championing the rights of subluxation-based chiropractors, Petersen has been out to destroy Terry's credibility and cause people to disbelieve his message -- even when it is obviously accurate.

Perhaps this latest attack came because Terry has recently been extremely effective at generating support for the idea of putting subluxation correction first. In doing so, he's upset a lot of people who want to make chiropractic more "medical." It's probably not mere coincidence that the articles appeared just when the WCA was holding a spectacular Summit in Washington, D.C., and meeting with key legislators.

In his editorial, Don Petersen even accused Terry of betraying conservative chiropractic by announcing that the WCA could live with the word "diagnosis." This is nonsense. It is clear that Terry stands for subluxation analysis/detection (or diagnosis of vertebral subluxation!) and does not believe that chiropractors should be required to perform full-body medical diagnosis (eyes, ears, nose, throat, heart, lungs, abdomen, etc.).

After years of accusing him of being too straight, Peterson is now reduced to trying to make the profession think he's too medical. When you think about it, the allegation is almost comical.

The fact is, for the past 15 years, Dr. Terry Rondberg has been among the strongest and most effective voices in defense of traditional subluxation-based chiropractic. If not for him and others like him, chiropractic would very likely have been perverted into some version of physical therapy or osteopathy.

There are those in the chiropractic profession who would like to move towards medicine just as osteopathy did years ago. Terry is one of the key people who have stopped this from happening.

The time has come for us to grow up and tone down the nasty rhetoric. Our profession still has a long way to go. I read American Medical News every week and have never found a letter to the editor that referred to anyone in such harsh terms as a "perennial bad actor."

I have lobbied the Arizona Legislature for 14 years and have never heard a legislator refer to a colleague in such condemnatory terms. The local newspapers reserved this language for people like Charles Keating who cheated thousands of retirees out of millions of dollars during the savings and loan collapse and fiasco. Terry Rondberg doesn't fit the description.

If we are to take our rightful place in the health care arena, we need to win the respect of those outside the profession. But the seeds of that respect need first to be planted within our all borders. When each member of the chiropractic community treats every other member with basic human respect, then those outside our community will begin to treat us with respect as well.