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Member
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Paradise
Posts: 855
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Member
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Paradise
Posts: 855
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Smith
Documented by whom? Many things have been published, and while rare, vertebro-basilar stroke is only one of the risks associated with chiropractic.
In short, there are at least two sides (and often more) to any/every issue. Reports published by chiropractors tend to support chiropractic; reports by others tend to be more objective, or biased in other directions.
Even the Mayo Clinic, one of the most conservative sites online, which grants:
still cautions:
IMO, both sides should be examined to get a balanced perspective.
risks of chiropractic includes articles by both chiropractic proponents and opponents. Each patient must ultimately decide for themselves if the risks justify the benefits.
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Haldeman's review was balanced; he is a medical doctor, a neurologist out of UC Irvine, California a medical teaching institution with his first degree prior to that being a doctor of chiropractic (he does not practice this as far as I know). His work is still quoted more than most others regarding manipulative adverse events. There are other researchers, i.e. Dr. David Cassidy out of Canada, Rand Corporation, etc. with most coming to the same general conlcusions; that while no procedure is 100% safe, in comparison to surgery and medications, the risk of adverse event from manipulation is minute.
Then there are extremist, on both sides, with the owner of Quackwatch being a psychologist (think he knows much about manual medicine? I don't know, I'm just say'in) and on the other side, the "straights" who are a group within chiropractic who think all disease can be cured by an "adjustment." Both are whacked, in my humble opinion and neither have performed controlled peer-reviewed papers on the subject, at least to my knowlege! And I am not sure I agree with the statement that a paper from a D.C. is biased while a paper from an M.D. is not. Junk science knows no ideological or academic boundries. The power of a paper lies in it's research design, whether it's a clincial trial, review or meta-analysis, controlled or not, blinded or not, intrinsic and extrinsic biases and so forth. So I think you would agree that a series of well constructed research papers whose results consistently are in agreement are probably more reliable than anyone's web page opinion, no matter who owns it!
As far as chiropractors publishing mostly positive literature about itself, I suppose that's sometimes true but you could say that about any organized body of knowlege (Big Pharm). BTW, one of the major contributors to the Quackwatch site was from a group of chiropractors called NACM (National Association of Chiropractic Medicine), who was harder on it's own profession than just about anyone. Right or wrong, they bashed the living he** out of chiropractic.
So in short, I think we agree.....right?!
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