May 2005

Viewpoint

Generations of unbridled power

by Dr. Don Harte

This is an open letter to the chiropractic boards, accrediting and testing agencies of every state, province and nation.

As one VSC‑centered chiropractor, I'm presenting you with an ethical challenge. I challenge you to be chiropractors, and to foster the values and ideals of chiropractic. At the very least, I ask you to not impede those DCs doing chiropractic, and to end your widespread war of terror upon the profession, chiropractors and chiropractic patients.

Where do your legal powers, your legitimacy originate? Depending upon your jurisdiction, you may derive your powers from an act of the legislature, from an initiative act of the people, or from some other source. Along the way, these acts may have been modified by other legislative acts, court rulings, "opinions" from attorneys general, views and attitudes of various bureaucrats, etc. Yet, ultimately, your power (at least in democratic nations) is derived from the people, and your ultimate purpose is to foster the public health and welfare through supervision/administration/testing of a strong and vibrant chiropractic profession. Anything else is irrelevant at best, and counter‑productive at worst. Anything else is an infringement of the public's right of choice to seek chiropractic care and of the rights of chiropractors (yes, we are citizens, too!), individually and collectively. Indeed, anything else is fraudulent behavior on your part.

The generations of unbridled power that you have exercised over chiropractors and chiropractic have produced the institutional self‑interest of a privileged, ruling class, which is most often at odds with the best interests of the profession and the health of the public. It has often been said that a board's job ‑‑ as the board sees it (in many jurisdictions) ‑‑ is "to protect the public from chiropractic." While boards occasionally accomplish necessary and useful work, such as the break‑up and prosecution of fake accident rings, it's common knowledge that boards deal mostly with the processing of complaints brought about by patients who owe their chiropractor money (and don't intend to pay), disgruntled employees, and jealous colleagues (who can't make a living and likely wish they'd gotten into medical school) seeking to eliminate what they perceive as competition. Serious pursuit of these types of complaints are not in the public service.

The alliances and political agendas of boards and testing and accrediting agencies are so obvious as to be positively obscene. In my "lost years," in the insurance/personal injury/work comp arena, I saw how the game was loaded in favor of the insurance companies, against both chiropractors and their patients. I remember when some local chiropractor did a full‑out narrative on a person who was under my care for injuries from an auto accident. While this DC had never examined my patient, that wasn't the worst of it. He had never even gotten copies of my notes. The entire narrative, for which he was paid handsomely, was generated entirely from the bills I had submitted to the insurance carrier (the only clinical information used was the diagnostic codes). I reported this doctor for fraud. You know what happened? Nothing! It seems that when one works for the side that the board is allied with, one can do no fraud.

Make no mistake about what chiropractic is. It was discovered and named by DD Palmer, and developed further by his son, BJ Palmer. Its "33 Principles" were laid out by RW Stephenson. For generations, chiropractors have gone to jail for practicing chiropractic. Although you, as a member of a licensing board or an accrediting or testing agency, might try to re‑define chiropractic as what it clearly is not ‑‑ a third‑rate version of physical medicine, part of the bigger world of allopathic lunacy ‑‑ you cannot do it. The late Dr. Joseph Flesia offered as a metaphor in his talks and his tapes (you should get these tapes, by the way, they might change your life), the color "red" defined by a certain range of wavelengths in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. No other part of the spectrum is red. If you build and run a "red" school, all you may teach is within that part of the spectrum. Everything else is irrelevant, or fraudulent. You can rename, or de‑name your schools, you can teach allopathic concepts and fear, you can test on everything but chiropractic, you can persecute chiropractors for practicing chiropractic. However, you can never change what chiropractic is. Red is red. Chiropractic is chiropractic!

We read reports of persecution, written by real chiropractors around the world. Then there are the adventures of the World Federation of Chiropractic, attempting to set up more permanent, global mechanisms for future persecution. Is it not fraud to re‑define chiropractic as something it clearly is not? Is it not fraud to accuse and prosecute for fraud those who are practicing chiropractic, under the banner of some government‑imposed excuse for chiropractic? Chiropractors know you are protecting your own ideological turf, at the expense of the profession and the public's health. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The truth stands on its own. Only falsehoods require the protection of government."

We have seen the near‑fatal attack of the CCE upon Life University. We are witness to the degradation of chiropractic education because of the anti‑chiropractic influence of that agency, and from many of the schools themselves. As a result, a generation of chiropractors have no grounding in philosophy, cannot relate clinical science to the practice of chiropractic, and are deathly afraid of adjusting people. I recently heard of a chiropractor who tells her patients that chiropractic cervical manipulation (her term) can cause strokes. It seems that among the "gifts" some of the schools are bestowing upon the upcoming generation of chiropractors are a pathological lack of self‑esteem and a huge debt load. How many new graduates can adjust well, using a clear and consistent chiropractic system of analysis? How many understand the scientific basis of the VSC? How many can give a decent definition of chiropractic? Is this not a massive, institutional fraud within our profession? Considering what chiropractic is (not what you think it is), is this not, ultimately, a crime against humanity?

The ironic part, what actually caused me to create this diatribe, is that I have found myself actually having to describe chiropractic to my own chiropractic board, in my own defense of offering chiropractic to my community. This is ridiculous!

I implore you to reflect upon BJ Palmer's words: "We chiropractors work with the subtle substance of the soul. We release the imprisoned impulse, the tiny rivulets of force, that emanates from the mind and flows over the nerves to the cells and stirs them into life. We deal with majestic power that transforms common food into living, loving, thinking clay; that robes the earth with beauty and hues, and scents the flowers with the glory of the air.

"In the dim, dark, distant long‑ago, when the sun first bowed to the morning star, this power spoke and there was life; it quickened the slime of the sea and the dust of the earth and drove the cell to union with its fellows and countless living forms. Through eons of time, it finned the fish and winged the bird and fanged the beast. Endlessly, it worked, evolving its form until it produced the crowning glory of them all. With tireless energy, it blows the bubble of each individual life and then, silently, relentlessly, dissolves the form and absorbs the spirit into itself again.

"And yet you ask, 'Can chiropractors cure Appendicitis or the Flu?' Have you more faith in a spoonful of medicine than in the power than animates the living world?"

You, the allopathic elite, who suppress chiropractic and act as its sovereign, have so far been quite successful in your quest for power. But, if you fail to open your hearts and minds to the truth of chiropractic, your reign will come to an end. I offer to you, the current plutocracy of the chiropractic profession, some advice from Commander Richard Marchinko, USN (ret.): "Do not let success go to your head, or it may soon come out of the other end of your anatomy."

Now, to the rest of us, who serve the people by practicing chiropractic, neither our survival nor the survival of the profession is assured by our hiding out. Either we serve, or we don't. We stand up for chiropractic, for our colleagues, for the people we serve, for ourselves, or we don't. The allopathic tyrants debase chiropractic and attempt to terrorize us into submission. They get away with it because they count on us acting as sheep. It's fine being a sheep, until you're led to the slaughterhouse. There's no safety in being a sheep, in attempting to "stay under the radar."

While the allopathic tyrants can distort the law and hide behind their institutions, they cannot survive, they cannot do their evil, in the light of day. If the public knew who we are and who they are, who would win? Join the World Chiropractic Alliance, and get active. Stand for chiropractic, proudly and loudly, in your practice and in your community. Stand with your colleagues when they become the object of allopathic persecution. You can't play it safe, and let the next doctor do it. As Ben Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or we will most assuredly hang separately." We must, as BJ challenged us, "guard our sacred trust."

(Dr. Donald E. Harte is in practice in Corte Madera, CA. He can be reached via e‑mail at dhartedc@aol.com, by FAX at 415‑460‑6230, or phone 415‑460‑6527. His website is www.chirodrharte.com.)