see also: Fla.
chiropractic college under fire and
Should we change
chiropractic to please the MDs? by Dr. Terry A. Rondberg
Dr. McCoy
responds to slam on JVSR research
January 2, 2005
Editor
St. Petersburg Times
PO Box 1121
St. Petersburg, FL 33731‑1121
To the Editor,
I have watched the recent
events, name‑calling and insults directed at my profession from FSU
officials and in newspaper editorials for several months now. Having grown
up in the chiropractic profession I am used to medical propaganda and
insults directed at the profession and have even become used to the bigotry
from within the chiropractic profession itself. It is for this reason that I
have refrained from responding to many of the ridiculous and ignorant
statements being spouted.
However, I was thrown
into the briar patch this weekend when I read the Times editorial that
included a statement from FSU's Provost, Lawrence Abele:
"Our first commitment is
to a rigorous scientific educational program, one that would explicitly
reject some current chiropractic activities, such as many of the articles
published in the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research."
The quote was used to
assert that FSU will have "loftier academic standards" and that the FSU
program will be a "rigorous scientific educational program" in contrast to
other chiropractic colleges. Abele's contention is that most chiropractic
programs are run by uneducated, antiscientific quacks while FSU has
apparently cornered the market on "real doctors" and "real educators."
Abele's statement is
curious for so many reasons. Mostly because I doubt he has ever read a
single research article published in the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation
Research (JVSR). He's not a subscriber and he has never purchased an
article. I doubt he has even looked to see who is on the Editorial Board of
the journal he has just impugned. Those board members include the discoverer
of the opiate receptor, a former Harvard anatomist, an Oxford Scholar,
microbiologists, immunologists, engineers, health care attorneys,
chiropractic researchers and clinicians and yes ‑ even esteemed medical
doctors. Dr. Abele owes JVSR, each one of these hard working and
respected individuals as well as the authors whose work has been published
by the journal an apology.
His indignation that
chiropractors would have the nerve to study such things as chiropractic's
effects on infertility and Parkinson's reveals the underlying issue that any
research to come out of a chiropractic program at FSU will no doubt remain
locked securely in the box of neck pain, back pain and headaches where
organized medicine would like to keep us.
It is interesting that
Abele chose to single out JVSR in regards to chiropractic peer
reviewed research and that he conveniently did not mention the Journal of
Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT) which is also a
chiropractic research journal. A cursory search of that journal's contents
revealed numerous articles on the treatment of non‑musculoskeletal disorders
through chiropractic including one article on ‑ of all things ‑‑ Parkinson's
disease!
Could it be that Abele
did not mention JMPT because a chiropractor named Alan Adams who is
FSU's faculty administrator for chiropractic initiatives is associated with
many of the members of the Editorial Board of JMPT and also has a
paper published in it?
As for the unfounded
accusations being hurled around by some of FSU's medical faculty that
chiropractic is dangerous, I need only point to the relative malpractice
costs for the two professions as evidence for which profession poses more of
a public health threat.
The issue of comparing
medical body counts with chiropractic is really akin to shooting fish in a
barrel. Evidence of this threat is found in the medical profession's own
literature. As early as 1994 the Journal of the American Medical
Association published an article by Dr. Lucian Leape of Harvard Medical
School titled: Error in Medicine. In it he states that the number of
injuries from medical error is 180,000 deaths per year and "...the
equivalent of three jumbo jet crashes every 2 days."
According to a report by
Public Citizen, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of
preventable death in the United States ‑‑ ahead of traffic fatalities and
firearm deaths. Of course this is not surprising when, according to another
medical doctor and researcher David Eddy writing in the British Medical
Journal, "...only about 15% of medical interventions are supported by
scientific evidence." Eddy goes further and states: "This is because only 1%
of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound." Abele and his
colleagues ought to clean up their own backyard before chastising the
chiropractic profession.
Beyond the apology owed
JVSR, Abele and the Times owe an apology to all of the dedicated
faculty and administrators who teach in our chiropractic institutions and
the students who attend these schools. While it may be common that
individual medical schools require a Bachelor's degree in order for students
to matriculate, the decision for that requirement is left to the individual
medical schools ‑‑ the same is true for chiropractic schools and the same is
true for the issue of grade point averages.
As for the conduct of
research at chiropractic institutions ‑‑ lets get something straight:
Chiropractic institutions, unlike medical schools such as FSU's, are tuition
driven and are not the beneficiaries of government funding for research and
education like medical schools are. The top 25 medical schools, for example,
will receive over $7 billion dollars from the NIH this year alone to conduct
medical research ‑‑ the chiropractic profession has received less than 20
million dollars in 100 hundred years. To add insult to injury, medical
schools receive federal funding as high as $50,000.00 a year for each
resident they train. Chiropractic schools receive no such funding. Why?
Part of the answer dates
back to 1987 when the AMA was found guilty by Judge Susan Getzendanner of
conspiring to destroy the profession of chiropractic. The judge in the case
issued a permanent injunction against the AMA and its co‑conspirators
because she did not believe they would change their ways. The AMA's plan
included containing chiropractic schools and diverting federal research
money from them.
The paucity of federal
funding directed towards chiropractic research and education are lingering
effects of this conspiracy and the chiropractic profession deserves
accolades for the significant strides it has made in the research and
educational arena given the obstacles thrown in its path.
Sincerely,
Dr. Matthew McCoy
Editor ‑‑ Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research
Director of Research ‑‑ Life University
Marietta, Georgia
