Chiropractics and junk science

Chiropractics is a well established field of healthcare in the United States. Most insurance plans cover spinal manipulation, and nearly twenty-five percent of the population has been treated by a chiropractor.

The practice is so ubiquitous that it may seem like a scientifically sound form of medical care, but this is far from the truth. The premise upon which chiropractic theory is built has no basis in modern medical science, and various clinical studies have demonstrated it to be ineffective and dangerous.

History provides the first reason to be skeptical of the scientific legitimacy of chiropractics. The theory was initially developed in 1895 by Daniel Palmer, who was a beekeeper and grocery store owner. He had no previous medical education, but explained that the practice of spinal manipulation emerged from his beliefs in magnet therapy and spiritual energy channels.

Palmer believed that spinal joint dysfunction is the cause of all health problems, even traumatic injuries. And while the thought of a chiropractic clinic in an emergency room seems obviously ludicrous, most modern practitioners still subscribe to this philosophy.

Chiropractors are taught to provide spinal adjustments for a wide range of ailments including asthma, cancer, autism and even infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. It is not uncommon for emergency rooms to get patients with acute appendicitis or cardiovascular disease that delayed seeking medical attention at the recommendation of their chiropractor.

In most cases, however, there is no physical harm incurred by the practice of spinal manipulation. The real danger exists in confusing the quackery of chiropractic theory with genuine medical science.

Chiropractics is a philosophical hypothesis that is based on an outdated understanding of human anatomy. Modern x-ray and magnetic resonance imaging technology has been used alongside clinical research to debunk the fantasy of the chiropractic disease theory.

There is no evidence that vertebral misalignments can cause disease, and no medical basis for the concept of “nerve flow” blockage that is taught in chiropractic theory. Furthermore, spinal manipulation has not been shown to produce any change in skeletal position or nerve function.

A few studies exist that demonstrate that spinal manipulation can alleviate some forms of back pain, and chiropractors often use them to insist that their philosophical and spiritual hypotheses have some legitimate scientific basis. However, a large amount of research indicates that this correlation could be due to poorly conducted studies and a simple placebo effect.

In 1998 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that showed that a control group given a pamphlet on back pain did just as well as patients treated by a chiropractor. A more recent study shows that the same success rate could be found when patients were randomly massaged and prodded by a graduate student with no training in chiropractics.

Most chiropractors do not have enough training in human physiology and medical science to realize how obsolete and deluded their profession is. In fact, a recent survey done Yale Medical School found that nearly 70% of chiropractors believe that the popping sound they hear during joint manipulation is made by the bone sliding into its proper place. This is very foolish, since what they are really hearing the noise of gas escaping from synovial joint capsules.

The vast majority of chiropractors also take large x-ray images of each patient to identify parts of the spinal cord that are pinched. This is a flimsy grasp on to real medical technology, since nerve tissue is invisible on x-ray film. It is only the fantasy of medical authority that makes this approach a worthwhile business practice.

Whatever chiropractors do, it isn’t science. No article has ever been published in a peer reviewed science journal that supports the medical claims made by the chiropractic theory of disease, and no empirical argument has been provided against the studies that criticize their practice. The threat of injury when seeing a chiropractor may be small, but it is still too much to risk for just the delusion of real medical science.