July 2005

Why should non‑DCs do chiropractic research?

by Dr. Terry A. Rondberg

As most of you know by now, I'm a strong supporter of RCS ‑‑ Research & Clinical Science ‑‑ the private sector research company that has begun a massive global chiropractic research program. The thought that our profession will finally have the kind of reliable scientific evidence that will validate what we do is extremely exciting to me. If there's one program absolutely indispensable to the future of chiropractic, I think it's RCS (and I'm not even taking into account the fact that it's going to help thousands of doctors dramatically increase their practice size and income!).

That why I was a bit dismayed at first when I learned that the RCS International Scientific Advisory Panel was made up primarily of medical doctors, and non‑chiropractic PhD researchers.

Granted, there's one well known and highly respected chiropractic researcher on the panel: Christopher Kent, DC, whose credentials are impeccable. In addition, Dr. Tadashi Matsuhisa ‑‑ who has both his MD and DC degrees ‑‑ serves on the panel. But the rest are not chiropractors and probably have very little understanding of or appreciation for chiropractic.

I was concerned about whether this group of medical doctors and researchers steeped in the medical paradigm could really be an asset to a chiropractic research project. But after talking this situation over with the founders of RCS ‑‑ David A. Jackson, DC; Robert Blanks, PhD; and Matthew McCoy, DC ‑‑ I realized that this was the perfect type of panel to have.

In our society, we've become wary of people with vested interests in a project. For instance, if a pharmaceutical company distributes a press release about how wonderful its latest prescription remedy is, most of us know enough to be suspicious. We look for information from objective, third‑party experts before believing the announcement.

The problem with "vested interests" has reached a critical stage with the medical industry, and the public is finally being made aware of the way in which research has been tainted in recent years. Just this May, in the New England Journal of Medicine, a study revealed that more than half of all US medical schools don't find anything wrong with allowing drug companies and medical device makers to draft articles that appear in medical journals, and a quarter of them would even allow these profiteers to supply the actual results.

This is nothing new. In 2002, Vera Hassner Sharav, founder and president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, gave a presentation on conflicts of interest at the Clinical Investigation Symposium sponsored by the US Army Medical Department. In it, she repeated the saying (accredited to Harold Elliott, a psychiatrist at Wake Forest University) that "Doctors fear drug companies like bookies fear the mob."

To prove her point, she told the story of Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a researcher from the University of Toronto whose study of a drug was funded by the drug's manufacturer, Apotex. When she found that the drug failed to sustain long‑term efficacy, she suggested that patients in the clinical trials be informed of the risk. Apotex terminated the trials and threatened the researcher with legal action if she informed patients ‑‑ or anyone else ‑‑ of her findings.  They quickly made a $13 million contribution to the University of Toronto.

"When Olivieri attempted to publish her findings, Apotex threatened to sue her for breach of confidentiality," Sharav related. "The University failed to defend Olivieri and the principles of research ethics or academic freedom. The University threatened to dismiss her, initiating a biased inquiry and knowingly relied on false accusations by company‑funded investigators."

It's no wonder the public is reluctant to believe stories about health care research if the study has been conducted by those stand to benefit from it.

This is exactly why the RCS International Scientific Advisory Panel is such an asset to chiropractic. If it was comprised largely of doctors of chiropractic, there would be a tendency to think the study would be biased. Having a group of objective scientists ‑‑ including those who would normally be considered critics of chiropractic ‑‑ stand behind the program is an incredibly powerful way to increase the credibility of the entire program.

When volunteers enter an RCS doctor's office, they see a poster showcasing the names and credentials of the entire panel, whose members include:

***  Margaret V. Ames, PhD,  a nationally recognized expert in health promotion as well as disease prevention communication activities who is in charge of analyzing and assessing the cancer research and training programs and research portfolio for a top federal government agency based in Bethesda, Md.

***  Janet C. Blanks, PhD, Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Florida Atlantic University, who served as a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany.

***  Douglas Broadfield, PhD, Assistant Professor,  Department of Anthropology, Florida Atlantic University, whose research interests span such areas as functional morphology and comparative anatomy of human and nonhuman primates and neural anatomy of the mammalian brain.

***  James Fallon, PhD, Professor, Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology, University of California‑Irvine, College of Medicine, and Past President of the UC Irvine Faculty and Chair of the Medical School faculty; and one of three founders of the international Cure Parkinson's Project.

***  Christopher Kent, DC, President, Council on Chiropractic Practice; Past Chair, NGO (Non‑Governmental Organizations) Health Committee; who has been named Researcher of the Year by both the International Chiropractors Association and the World Chiropractic Alliance.

***  Bruce Lipton, PhD, Researcher, Developmental Cell Biology, author "Biology of Belief," who began his scientific career as a cell biologist and became an internationally recognized authority in bridging science and spirit. He has been a guest speaker on dozens of TV and radio shows, as well as a keynote presenter for national conferences.

***  Tadashi Matsuhisa, MD, DC, Member, Japanese Orthopaedic Surgeon Association, Member, Japan Medical Association, whose research articles have been published in scientific journals in the US and Japan and who has given presentations at conferences in Japan since 1991.

***  Isaac Ogwel Opole, MD, PhD, Resident, Department of Internal Medicine, Kansas University Medical Center, who received his MD from the University of Nairobi College of Medicine and whose research interests include MRI‑based neuroanatomical standardization of human brain images.

***  Yoshimi Shibata, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Florida Atlantic University, who received his PhD in bacteriology from Tohoku University, School of Medicine, Japan and is a Fellow of the American Association of Immunologists.

***  Mimi Sutherland, BSN, RN, Long Term Care Insurance Specialist whose specialization is in geriatric case management and long‑term care plan writing, implementation, and assessment.

***  Michael Whitehurst, EdD Professor, Exercise Science and Health Promotion, College of Education, Florida Atlantic University, who has had more than two dozen research papers published in journals such as Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Operative Techniques in Orthopedics and Journal of Sport Rehabilitation.

***  Jang‑Yen Wu, PhD, Professor/Schmidt Sr. Fellow, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Florida Atlantic University, who has had more than 200 papers published in refereed journals, edited three books, and has Fellowships from the Society for Neuroscience, the American and International Society for Neurochemists, and the Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Can you imagine what people will think when they see that list of names on the poster and on the RCS website?  Instantly, the RCS doctor, and the entire chiropractic profession, will take on an enhanced aura of respectability and prestige. Any lingering doubt as to the legitimacy of the RCS research will disappear and in its place will be a new perception of chiropractic as a scientific, evidence‑based profession.

Now, imagine what your patients would think if they saw that poster in your office.  For the sake of chiropractic (and the success of your practice) stop imagining and contact RCS to learn more!

(For more information on RCS or its International Scientific Advisory Panel, call 800‑909‑1354 or 480‑303‑1694, or visit the RCS website at www.rcsprogram.com.)