Category: Chiropractic
Vaccination mandate exemptions: gimme that ol’ time philosophy
Each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia require vaccination against certain diseases as a prerequisite to public and private school attendance, most commonly polio, mumps, measles, diphtheria, rubella, chicken pox, Heamophilus influenza type b, pertussis, tetanus, pneumococcal disease and hepatitis B. Unfortunately, mandatory vaccination for home-schooled children is rare. (1) All states provide medical exemptions to vaccination mandates for...
Pediatrics & “CAM” II: just wrong
In November, the journal Pediatrics published an entire supplement devoted to Pediatric Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Legal, Ethical and Clinical Issues in Decision-Making. The authors purport to have “examined current legal, ethical, and clinical issues that arise when considering CAM use for children and identified where gaps remain in law and policy.” (S150) Their aim is to “illustrate the relevance...
Blind-Spot Mapping, Cortical Function, and Chiropractic Manipulation
Steven Novella recently wrote about so-called “chiropractic neurology” and its most outspoken proponent, Ted Carrick. In 2005 I published an article in The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (Vol 9, No 1, p. 11-15) entitled “Blind-Spot Mapping, Cortical Function, and Chiropractic Manipulation.” It was an analysis of a study Carrick had published. Carrick read a shorter, popularized version of my critique in Skeptical...
Pediatrics & “CAM” I: the wrong solution
Oh no! Not again! The venerable medical journal Pediatrics devotes an entire supplement this month to Pediatric Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Legal, Ethical, and Clinical Issues in Decision-Making. We sense from the very first sentence that we are in familiar territory: Rapid increases the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) raise important legal, ethical, clinical, and policy issues. (S150)...
Chiropractic Neurology
Chiropractic is a diverse collection of beliefs and practices occurring under a broad regulatory label. The differences among various chiropractics are so stark that it is difficult to make general statements about chiropractic practice. At one end of the spectrum, however, are so-called “straight” chiropractors who adhere to the original philosophy of D.D. Palmer – that a vital force they call innate...
Defining what a “physician” is
It takes more than a stethoscope and a white coat to be a physician. A generous dose of reality and a lot of training are also required.
Spinal Fusion: Chiropractic and Subluxation
A spirited exchange about chiropractic arose in response to a recent post proposing “The Cure” for the legalization of implausible and unproven diagnostic methods and treatments. Some comments pointed to the implausibility of the chiropractic “subluxation” and the lack of robust evidence of efficacy/effectiveness for spinal manipulation, as well as the difficulty of understanding what exactly “chiropractic” is, or does, that distinguishes...
The Cure
Legislative Alchemy In Legislative Alchemy I: Naturopathy, II: Chiropractic and III: Acupuncture, we learned how state legislatures transform scientifically implausible and unproven diagnostic methods and treatments into legal health care practices. Examples typical of the sheer nonsense found in both proposed and actual legislation include: Naturopathic health care [is] a system of health care practices for the prevention, diagnosis, evaluation and treatment...
Cranial Osteopathy in Dentistry
Editor’s note: Having just submitted a major grant on Friday and then having had to turn around and head to an NIH study section meeting today in Bethesda, I just didn’t have the time to produce something up to the usual standards of SBM for today. (And, being managing editor, I should know what’s up to the usual standards of SBM; what...
Dummy Medicine, Dummy Doctors, and a Dummy Degree, Part 2.2: Harvard Medical School and the Curious Case of Ted Kaptchuk, OMD (cont. again)
“Strong Medicine”: Ted Kaptchuk and the Powerful Placebo At the beginning of the first edition of The Web that has no Weaver, published in 1983, author Ted Kaptchuk portended his eventual academic interest in the placebo: A story is told in China about a peasant who had worked as a maintenance man in a newly established Western missionary hospital. When he retired...