March 2006

Viewpoint

The final battle: Will you join RCS...to change everything?

by Dr. Don Harte

'What is the use for living, if it not be to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal?' ‑‑Sir Winston Churchill

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How do you view the way your community, your nation, the world sees your profession, chiropractic, and you, the chiropractor? "Back‑cracker?" "Quack?" When someone asks what you do for a living and you tell them, are you sick and tired of them bending over and grabbing their backs? The stupid expressions: "Oh, I'm lucky I never needed one of you guys." "Oh, I could have used you last week." "My doctor says not to go to a chiropractor. You might give me a herniated disk/stroke/paralysis/death." "I'd never go to one of you guys." "I tried chiropractic, and it didn't work." "When are you chiropractors going to get approved by the AMA?" "My kid? I'd never let you touch my kid. Besides there's nothing wrong with my kid. She doesn't have a back ache." "Doc, I don't need any exam or X‑rays. Could you just crack my back? My wife couldn't get it this time." "How long do you guys go to school? Six months?"

Are you sick and tired of the abuse and degradation of chiropractic by chiropractors who wouldn't know their pisiform from the lower end of their G.I. tract? From actively scamming insurance companies, to "interdisciplinary practices" (chiropractors fraudulently billing under some sleazy MD's license), to those horrible, tacky yellow page ads with the little guy bent over with stars coming out of his low back, listing the infamous "Nine Danger Signals," to weird ads featuring some new crap that they just bought (and must now make lease payments on) like last year's "cold lasers," and this year's "spinal decompression tables"?

Perhaps the ultimate degradation is represented by chiropractors who join managed care lists, who agree to do only symptomatic‑based "manipulation" for three to five visits, then maybe write some allopathic nonsense report to get approved for maybe three more visits, at some grossly sub‑professional rate of $15 or $20. They can't even do symptomatic, allopathic chiropractic care properly at these low frequencies. While they're contractually agreeing to do substandard care, from even an allopathic standpoint, they're training their patients, and their masters, the managed care firms, that whatever they are doing is chiropractic.

We have all been abused by our boards, at one time or another, for "not crossing a 't'" or "not dotting an 'I,'" but now the game is different. It used to be that it was safer to move to a cash practice, and do no insurance, so you wouldn't and couldn't make any insurance mistakes. Now, running your office the right way, as a cash practice, is becoming more risky. The concept of "fraud" is no longer limited to ripping off insurance companies, the extremes being fake auto accident rings. They ‑‑ the powers that be in our profession, the boards ‑‑ are now redefining fraud as any practice of chiropractic that is not in their image, in other words, any real, or VSC‑based chiropractic.

Have you read Dr. Rondberg's Publisher's Perspective in the 12/05 issue of The Chiropractic Journal? It's entitled, "Are you committing fraud?" Read it again. I read it, but it really didn't sink in, it really didn't hit me, until I heard Dr. Rondberg speak some weeks ago at the RCS (Research and Clinical Science) training I attended in San Diego.

The century‑long balance, the mutual acceptance of allopathic vs. real chiropractic, "mixer" vs. "straight," is over. While the non‑success of chiropractic as a significant part of society has been bad enough, the allopaths within our profession are readying to commit genocide against VSC‑based chiropractors, and destroy chiropractic itself. Some may decide to cash in their chips, and retire early. Some may submit to working within some ghost of chiropractic, content to earn peanuts while putting out grossly substandard care for managed care companies. Others will just wait, while others will vehemently deny that the end is near, like Jews in Germany in the 1930s. Some will choose to fight, to save themselves, to save chiropractic, to save humanity. How?

We have an opportunity to beat the allopathic chiropractors at their own game, and even to match wits with the forces of medicine in a manner that will at least begin to level the playing field. How? Research. No, not some cockamamie project about how some herb or other will reduce headaches, or about a new way to measure range of motion of the shoulder. Chiropractic research. By "their own game," what I mean is that it is the allopathic chiropractors who are wont to refer to what they do as "evidence‑based chiropractic."

Those familiar with the research (certainly all those who subscribe to "On Purpose") know that the evidence of chiropractic benefit in "treating" low back pain is, at best, equivocal, and the evidence for their two other favorite conditions, neck pain and headaches, is almost non‑existent. Yet, they have the nerve to point their antiseptic‑scrubbed fingers at us, like William Meeker, DC, MPH, FICC, director of Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research, who wrote in Dynamic Chiropractic (January, 2005), "It does seem risky to stake our profession's future on a yet‑to‑be thoroughly tested set of neurological hypotheses."

Of course, our traditional medical enemies, have never backed down. Ralph Bellamy, MD, Florida State University Medical School, has said "Their [chiropractors'] whole concept of science is just totally off." Of course, medicine's concept of science has been almost totally sold out to "Big Pharma." The popular press reflects the popular misconceptions: "Chiropractic is a 19th century philosophy wearing the white smock of science" (Wall Street Journal, 3/18/93). Regardless, it is we, the VSC‑based chiropractors, who are the targets. It remains for us to shine in the arena of research.

The researched, scientific background for the five components of Vertebral Subluxation Complex was compiled some years ago by Dr. Joe Flesia as the Renaissance Science Notes, and expanded, periodically on "On Purpose." This is good basic science. But what we need in the modern world is actual clinical research, on a massive level, to document and make known what we already know to be true. We have all seen miracles in our offices. We have heard from Dr. Mathew McCoy, over and over (rightfully so), about the insane disparity of researchers, and research money, between us ‑‑ chiropractic ‑‑ and them ‑‑ the pharmaceutical‑medical‑governmental complex. It's time to listen to the warnings. It's time to act. The opportunity is here.

Research and Clinical Science is our opportunity for the future. Take the training to become approved as a research fellow, and you will be taking part in health care's most extensive, most massive research project, ever (yes, that's including anything that medicine has done)!

You will be trained to sign up volunteers, and transmit data on them to a central clearinghouse. The great masses of anecdotal evidence will no longer be anecdotal. We will be able to prove exactly what chiropractic does for people, all kinds of people, over a period of years. The value of long‑term Wellness care? We will chart it. A group of world class scientists, DCs, MDs, DC‑MDs, and PhDs will assemble the data and publish it in prestigious journals. As a nice bonus, you'll be attracting new practice members to your office through this project, and increase your prestige (and that of chiropractic) in your community.

In my not‑so‑humble opinion, we are at a crossroads. The fact is, after 111 years, chiropractic is, on a societal level, nowhere. The allopathic extremists, our "Enemy Within," will be in a position to destroy us and our profession within two, three years, tops. Chiropractic will be gone forever. OR, join RCS (www.rcsprogram.com) and be part of the greatest mass effort that our profession has ever conceived. You want real paradigm shift? This is it! We will not only easily thwart the destructive efforts of the Enemy Within, we will ‑‑ finally ‑‑ be able to attain chiropractic's rightful place in society. We will see no more people grabbing their low backs. Instead, we'll begin to have lines around the block. Society will shift, as VSC, and the misuse of drugs and surgery, recedes.

The Big Vision of chiropractic is within out grasp!