Category: Chiropractic
The DC as PCP? The battle continues
Chiropractors are trying to rebrand themselves as primary care physicians, a topic both Harriet Hall and I have addressed (here and here) on SBM. Toward this end, they are seeking the expansion of their scope of practice, via the magic of legislative alchemy, to include the prescription and administration of drugs. Not drugs that any self-respecting M.D. would use, but drugs nonetheless. That...
SCAMlandia. CAM in Oregon.
I quite like Portlandia. I find it funny and it captures a part of Portland. I recognize large swaths of the city’s culture in the show. Other representations of the city I recognize less. Sunset publishes beautiful photographs of the NW, but when I look at the photos I think, that section of the city never looks that good. It is quite...
Andrew Weil Flirts with Evidence Based Medicine
Andrew Weil, MD, pops up quite frequently on SBM, most recently in this entry by Harriet Hall, so I will not spend much space introducing him. An excellent biography and critique of Dr. Weil was written by Arnold Relman, former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. It is over a decade old, but contemporary to some of the events described...
Chiropractic “Research” on Tourette Syndrome: The Trouble with Case Reports…..
I can think of few conditions with clinical features more ideal for establishing a pattern of abuse at the hands of practitioners of so-called alternative medicine than Tourette syndrome. Tourette syndrome (TS), which first manifests itself in early childhood in the overwhelming majority of patients, is a neurological disorder with infamous motor and vocal manifestations and a troubled past. Historically the condition...
CAM Docket: Functional Endocrinology
One of the signature abilities of CAM practitioners is the creation of new diagnostic methods and treatments which convincingly demonstrate they have only a superficial understanding of human physiology. Here at SBM, posts have addressed such sterling examples of this phenomenon as cranial sacral therapy, applied kinesiology and chiropractic neurology. Now we have a new one on the horizon: functional endocrinology. I...
Following the Guidelines of Science: A Chiropractic Dilemma
Preamble: When my book Bonesetting, Chiropractic, and Cultism [full text] was published in 1963, renouncing chiropractic vertebral subluxation theory and recommending that chiropractic be developed as a subspecialty of medicine in the treatment of mechanical-type back pain, the chiropractic profession refused to acknowledge or review the book. I was labeled “an enemy of chiropractic.” If it had not been for the support...
The War Against Chiropractors
In 2011, chiropractor J.C. Smith published The Medical War Against Chiropractors: The Untold Story from Persecution to Vindication. He promises an exposé comparable to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s exposé of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His thesis is that the AMA waged a shameless attack on competition, motivated only by money. I think the reality is closer to what he quoted from Dr....
Obamacare and CAM III: Great Expectations
In a previous post, we looked at how so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (or “CAM”) might fit into the definition of “essential health benefits,” which must be covered by insurers pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare,” or the “ACA”). In another, we contemplated what it might mean for insurers to “discriminate” against CAM providers, which is prohibited by...
Sports Physicals, Sudden Death, and Chiropractors
Sports physicals could prevent cases of sudden cardiac death in children, but could be improved even more. What won't improve things is letting a chiropractor do it.
Don’t call CAM “cost-effective” unless it’s actually effective
Before deciding CAM is cost-effective, it is important to determine if is just effective. That low bar has not been surmounted.