Spinal Strategists
Feeling Bad? Got A Cold? Flu? TB? Polio? See Your Chiropractor!
(Page 4 of 4)
Charlie Walker is on hand for most of the legislative battles with the MDs— he calls them “medics”—and he feels that the provision is a “Sword of Damocles” hanging over his profession. Walker is a likeable person who seems really to believe in the powers of chiropractic. He says he holds no brief against the medical profession and he and his family go to medical doctors for some ailments. Walker likes to think of chiropractic as a sort of specialty branch of medicine, akin to neurology or orthopedics. He believes chiropractors could work with MDs, supplementing their care in the area of spinal manipulation. However, no matter how much Walker may believe in the benefits of chiropractic, he can no longer say that a chiropractor can cure, or even treat, a disease.
In this sense, the constitutional battle was a loss for TCA.
Dr. Walker says that legislators are so afraid of TMA, that even when they express private agreement with chiropractic’s positions, and may even go to a chiropractor themselves, they often will not vote with chiropractic for fear of alienating TMA and its political arm, Texpac, which hands out money at election time. Even though he doesn’t feel that the legislature will ever outlaw chiropractic, he thinks the TCA must always fight a defensive action.
Actually, Walker’s lobbying record (and that of another former lobbyist for chiropractic, Waggoner Carr) isn’t bad. TCA has succeeded in getting Workman’s Compensation and Medicaid and Medicare coverage for chiropractic services, although the association lost a fight in the last session to have chiropractic services included as a routine item in health insurance policies.
Instrumental in that defeat were TMA lobbyists Ace Pickens and Sam Stone. (Phil Overton, who heads TMA’s lobbying team, is becoming less and less active.) Pickens, a former state representative from Odessa, is legislature–wise and knows how to talk. Stone is an attorney who has considerable medico-legal experience. Their attitude toward chiropractic can be kindly described as scoffing. The TCA is taken seriously, however, and TMA seldom misses a chance to damage chiropractors in legislative battles, although they claim they are not trying to drive their rivals out of business.
Some legislators think differently. After the constitutional convention fight, Senator Roy Harrington of Port Arthur was quoted as saying, “The medical association said they had heard of no move to get rid of chiropractic, but we all remember moves on the floor to do just that.”
The inclusion of the section in the proposed new Constitution comes close to eliminating chiropractic, as far as its practitioners are concerned. Chiropractors are in the anomalous position of being “doctors” who do not treat disease. Of course, the section can be circumvented by the “straights” in the profession—those who use manipulation exclusively. Since straights think disease stems from subluxations anyway, the fact that they are limited to correcting misalignments of vertebrae is immaterial. But for “mixers,” the law presents a problem. Mixers use other means of therapy such as heat and light treatments and dietary supplements in addition to manipulation, and the recent interpretation of the Chiropractic Act could be construed to prohibit them from using these other methods.
One mixer’s office I visited was superficially not unlike my chiropractor’s. There’s a large neon sign outside with his name on it, and there is a small, rather shabby waiting room. Beyond the reception area is a larger room with three adjusting tables, and in a partitioned section of the large room is the mixer’s private office. Again, the office is amazingly cluttered—this time with books, newspaper clippings, charts, and drawings. Here is another adjusting table, and there is just enough room to squeeze behind the desk.
The mixer is militant about his methods and the new law. He says he’ll go on treating patients as he sees fit as long as he can. He pulls out copies of laws, ethics, textbooks, letters, all about chiropractic. He resents the fact that hospitals will not allow him to see x-rays of patients who came to him after visiting a medical doctor.
He is quite free with his x-rays. He showed me about five sets of his patients’ subluxations along with letters and reports from their charts. While looking at the x-rays, I noticed an unusual table in a nook to my left. It was covered with straps. Underneath the table were some chains, and above it the wall looked like a tack room— there were straps and harnesses and buckles of all kinds. The mixer told me later that the harnesses were used for putting patients in traction on the table and for stretching them when their spines were compressed. The table wasn’t a pleasant sight.
Brochures in the mixer’s office came from the American Chiropractic Association—the International Chiropractors Association is for straights. They included works on heart trouble, abnormal blood pressure, sciatica, the need for Chirocare (national chiropractic health insurance), women in chiropractic, and one lone brochure for a catering service.
In “Heart Trouble,” the authors say: “Chiropractic is the only system which logically seeks and effectively corrects the cause of heart disease. The taking of drugs is ineffective because drugs can only stimulate or inhibit the action of the heart. They cannot and do not correct the cause of the condition. This can only be done by relieving the pressure on those nerve fibers which supply the heart and this only the Chiropractor is capable of doing.”
I left the mixer’s office rather hurriedly.
Are chiropractors really hazardous to your health? Before I actually went to one, I not only believed that they could be dangerous, but that they might be ogres as well—I went to a female because I was afraid to disrobe in front of a male chiropractor, “doctor” or not. I found my chiropractor to be a nice person. She seemed concerned about me, she did not write off my complaints to “nerves” as many medical doctors might have done, and she was willing to spend quite a bit of time with me. Medical doctors could learn a lot from my chiropractor’s bedside manner. They might also find that spending a little more time and being a bit more patient could lower their malpractice in surance rates.
Chiropractors pay substantially lower malpractice insurance premiums than medical doctors. One chiropractor told me that he paid only $16 per year for malpractice insurance while many medical doctors pay $5000 or more each year for similar coverage. Social science buffs attribute much of this cost to the fact that medical care is becoming more expensive, more specialized, and more impersonal; and a patient who feels no personal attachment for his doctor is a lot more likely to sue for injuries, real or imagined, than is one who feels that his doctor has honestly tried to help him and has an interest in him as a person. Unfortunately, the old saw about "take two aspirin and call me tomorrow” is all too true.
Perhaps, but unfortunately, there is no firm scientific evidence that chiropractic has any benefits at all. Until recently, no one, including chiropractors, had ever experimented to see just how much vertebral displacement is necessary before a spinal nerve is impinged upon. In the September–October, 1973, issue of American Scientist, Edmund S. Crelin, MD, reported a study he had conducted at Yale University School of Medicine. He took the vertebral columns from six cadavers within three to six hours after the death of each. Using a drill press and a metal vise, Crelin exerted up to 200 pounds of pressure on the columns in an attempt to find the point at which the vertebrae would begin to impinge upon the nerves running from them. He found that even when the spinal column was bent past the point which the body would allow it to bend in a living person, the nerves running from the spine were not interfered with.
His conclusion: “This experimental study demonstrates conclusively that the subluxation of a vertebra as defined by chiropractic — the exertion of pressure on a spinal nerve which by interfering with the planned expression of Innate Intelligence produces pathology — does not occur.”
Medical authorities are unanimous in their agreement that chiropractic does not work. There are varying opinions on whether or not it is definitely harmful. Some physicians will say privately that it’s okay to visit a chiropractor, while others contend that physical damage is sure to result. It is true that there are many “horror stories” of what chiropractors have done to their patients, but using these as arguments against chiropractors is fruitless because there is certainly no shortage of medical horror stories.
The only basis for argument is scientific evidence, which indicates that chiropractic treatment cannot cure disease. Experimental studies which show that it always hurts are next to nonexistent, consisting mainly of testimony from physicians about patients they have seen who have been hurt by chiropractors.
So the decision as to whether or not to use a chiropractor is left to the in dividual. The practice of chiropractic is legal in Texas and the profession seems to be well-entrenched. Chiropractors will be around for at least a few years longer.
As for me, my neck aches, my back aches, and I’m not going back.
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