Wasn't I just mentioning the buffoonery of chiropractors the other day? Check this out The Quackometer: McTimoney Chiropractors told to take down their web sites. McTimoney is a UK based chiropractic organization which are now scrambling to remove all claims of magical healing from their websites thanks to Simon Singh.
First Oprah gets called out, now British chiropractors, it's beginning to look like rational thinking might have a place in this crazy mixed up world after all.
4 comments:
You have asked that we disagree with your more, so I figured I start with your chiropractors posts and this comment your various posts on the subject.
I don't think it is sneaky that Doctor of Chiropractor to call themselves a doctor. Do we call dentists and optometrists "sneaky" because the aren't MDs or PhDs? No they are just a different type of doctor.
Also, based on your posts, you information seems to be based on articles from the UK and the US.
Things may be different there and I am more familiar with how things are in Canada. We have two schools in Canada, and they follow an evidence based medicine model (see the wikipedia article for the one in Toronto).
Before reading your posts I had never heard of vitalism, and doesn't seem to be something practice or mentioned by modern chiropractors in Canada. If I went to a chiropractor and he told me he could cure everything of course I would think he is a quack.
If you go to chirpractor he is going to tell you he can help lower back pain. Which is what evidence based science has studies and agreed with.
You ask why not see a physiotherapist and called chiropractors an amateur physiotherapist? Well, if I had lower back pain, I would go to a chiropractor instead. They have more education and are focused on the back. A physiotherapist has less education and are not focused on the back. So wouldn't that make a physiotherapist an amateur chiropractor?
I think you bias is based on the fact that you don't like Gary Goodyear and he just happens to be a chiropractor.
Also see this Wikipedia article for information on Chiroprcator educational requirements in Canada.
I am asking you to be more skeptical about your skeptic article on chiropractors.
link messed in my second post. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic_education#Canada
You are correct in saying that most of what I’ve talked about in terms of chiropractics has dealt with the US and UK where chiropractors are openly engaging in fraudulent healing claims. You also make a good point bringing up the idea that dentists are also considered doctors even though they aren’t PHDs ir MDs. I’m more than willing to concede these points, and move on from there.
Let’s take a look, as you suggest, at chiropractic effectiveness in dealing with lower back-pain and how chiropractic is practiced in Canada.
We can begin by examining the claim that chiropractic is an effective way to relieve lower back-pain. According to a Cochrane Review found here http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab000447.html on the subject of alleviating lower back pain through spinal manipulative techniques (which is practiced by Canadian chiropractors as evidenced in the wikipedia article you referenced):
“There was little or no difference in pain reduction or the ability to perform everyday activities between people with low-back pain who received spinal manipulation and those who received other advocated therapies.
This review of 39 trials found that spinal manipulation was more effective in reducing pain and improving the ability to perform everyday activities than sham (fake) therapy and therapies already known to be unhelpful. However, it was no more or less effective than medication for pain, physical therapy, exercises, back school or the care given by a general practitioner.”
Basically chiropractic demonstrates a higher degree of effectiveness than a placebo when dealing with lower back pain. However when compared to physical therapy it was either the same or less effective. Lower back pain is the only real claim chiropractics have to offer and it seems to stand upon very weak ground. Therefore I would be more apt to put my trust in the hands of a licensed physiotherapist.
To their credit the CMCC (Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College) does profess to teach an evidence based model of medicine instead of the vitalistic theory of subluxation. Subluxation being of course the very theory upon which chiropractic was founded. But if we continue to look at education of chiropractics we see that the “CMCC also offers a 1 year continuing education programme in acupuncture.”
I think we can agree that acupuncture is pure pseudo-medicine as there are currently no scientific studies which has proven it to be more effective than a placebo. Before were out the gates the CMCC is caught making a hypocritical statement about it‘s own statements on the subject of evidence based medicine.
Furthermore I took at trip to the Canada Chiropractic Association to find links to certified practicing chiropractic doctors that they support. One such individual I picked at random is
Dr. Dwight Chapin http://www.highpointclinic.com/whatwedo.php?menu=professionals
who is part of their ACT NOW program and a graduate of CMCC. Chapin has a clinic where he works alongside promoting acupuncturists and naturopaths. Naturopath is nothing more than a word meaning “I wanna be a doctor, but I hate real science.” Among the foolish views promoting by naturopaths are iridology and homeopathy among other ideas which return once again to the discredited theory of vitalism.
While chiropractors may not be acupuncturists or naturopaths, by promoting these ideas within their own clinics they are promoting pseudo-science and attempting the blur the boundaries between medicine and magic. The lend a false sense of creditability to those that should be regarded as nothing more than a tribal witch doctor. Dr. Chapin is just an example picked at random, but he is symptomatic of chiropractors throughout Canada. It is for this reason I find them to be sneaky devious critters which I have extreme difficulty referring to as proper doctors.
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