July 2007

The California horror story

by Dr. Richard H. Tyler, Chairman, California Board of Chiropractic Examiners

While I'm a fan of horror stories, there comes a time when a situation arises in real life that challenges even the creative mind of an Edgar Allen Poe or Steven King.

It all began about ten years ago in a quiet little California Chiropractic Board. At that time, it was decided that what the Board needed was a single individual to act as a consultant. This "consultant" was given great authority to counsel the entire profession of chiropractic as to what would be considered "right" or "wrong." Gone were the regional peer review groups that had handled disciplinary concerns, only to be replaced by an all‑powerful consultant czar.

Unfortunately, medically oriented personnel began to infiltrate the staff and when the consultant position was open for the second time, they quickly hired someone totally unqualified to fill the position.

The new consultant had only practiced the art of chiropractic at the undergraduate level and had spent the rest of her 28‑year professional life reading X‑rays. To make things even more outrageous, the consultant belonged to a fringe anti‑chiropractic group known as the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine (NACM).

This little group of malcontents believe that its members must renounce any claim that structure might even remotely affect function and that almost any form of chiropractic practice must meet with the approbation of a medical practitioner. In other words the profession of chiropractic was to be enfeebled and become little more than a prescription item for some medical overlord.

A little cabal of sorts was formed and a major professional paradigm shift began to take place. Enforcement of the law appeared to be compromised by blatant medically programmed harassment.

With almost ritualistic sadism, people were harassed out of the state and even out of the profession for some of the most fallacious reasons. If legitimate complaints were not forthcoming, then anonymous complainers would conveniently materialize.

Therefore, if the NACM‑friendly group wanted to create the "proper" outcome, it could simply say some anonymous caller made the charge. They held and abused power and the dichotomy grew until there existed the appointed board and the staff board The outlook of a profession independent of medical control became bleak indeed.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California, things began to change.

It soon became apparent to the newly appointed members what was transpiring and the battle was joined. The Executive Officer was removed from her position and it was requested that the deputy attorney general be reassigned to another board. The medical clique was beginning to dissolve.

In disbelief, the aggrieved went running to the media claiming all kinds of illegal mischief. Since two of the members of the Board were old friends of the Governor, the problems quickly became political fodder and the media had a field day.

Derisive poems were written and the Board members were cartooned as a group of muscle‑bound pin heads. Legislative inquiries were made and even though it was established that only procedural mistakes were made and quickly corrected, legislation was still created to destroy chiropractic. The authors of the bills admitted that even if we were innocent of any wrong doing, they would not change a single word of their anti‑chiropractic legislation.

Now here's the horrifying part: virtually no one came to our support.

The California Chiropractic Association (CCA) told me of the great public relations campaign they were going to launch. "Just wait and see." I was promised. Well I waited and the campaign finally began, but not quite in the way I had thought it would. Instead of support, the hand wringing, "don't hurt us please, we'll do anything you say" members of the CCA hierarchy produced a treasonous document that should go down in chiropractic history as one of the biggest sellouts ever recorded.

It's filled with all the platitudes of protecting the public, all the fine things we're qualified to do and how we deserve to have our legislative act left alone. There's only one catch. If the legislature leaves us alone, we'll give them the Board.

The CCA states that it supports the following changes: "Authorize the Legislature to sunset and reconstitute the BCE (Board of Chiropractic Examiners)." and "Require Senate confirmation of the governor's appointments."

In other words, the state Senate could appoint 20 anti‑chiropractic public Board members and only one chiropractor if this was its desire, and the governor could quite possibly have nothing to say about it. We would, in effect, lose control of our own profession.

"But what could we do?" whined one of the CCA officials. The answer is nothing.. If you can't find anything supportive to say about a Board that is trying to maintain a sovereign natural alternative to organized medicine and a medical takeover ‑‑ don't say anything.

The chiropractic profession in California will win. We are free of any blame and we broke no laws and the heinous anti‑chiropractic legislation will either die in committee or on the Governor's desk. In the past, the CCA has hit some homeruns for the profession and that's why I became a member.

This time however, they've struck out. As a result of the stupidity of the CCA's recent antics, I am declining further membership status. My best advice to them is, until you can come up with ideas that won't destroy chiropractic and its ability to serve the public ‑‑ just go away.