“Subluxated” Thinking
Chapter 3 deals with the elusive chiropractic “subluxation.” Magner quotes many definitions of “subluxation” from various chiropractic sources. The more definitions one reads, the funnier they sound. Here’s my favorite, which I believe the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) issued in the 1980s:
Subluxation is an aberrant relationship between two adjacent articular [joint] structures that may have functional or pathological sequelae [consequences].
I don’t know if it’s possible to cram more gobbledygook into one sentence. Magner cites Yale anatomist Edmund S. Crelin’s study of spinal movement in the 1970s, which showed that nerve impingement does not occur in the spine without major dislocation or fracture. I was then a student at Western States Chiropractic College, and I remember the furor that Crelin’s study caused within the chiropractic community. The ACA president said that the study was meaningless because it was done on cadavers. Magner quotes Crelin’s response: “In a living person there is a reflex response by the powerful spinal muscles to fight or resist any forces that would sublux a vertebra to the degree that it and/or spinal nerves could be damaged… Thus, if the impingement on the nerves could not happen in a dead body, it definitely could not happen in a living one.” This response, which makes perfect sense, did not reach me at chiropractic college.
Love Is Blind?
Reading Chapter 5, “Questionable Marketing Tactics,” reminded me of an experience I had several years ago during a continuing-education seminar for license renewal. Ostensibly, the subject was “Chiropractic Pediatrics,” but the seminar actually dealt with how to steer parents into subjecting their children to “adjustments.” The instructor presented a “patient education” video he had made, in which he initiates his young son into chiropractic. He shows the boy a chart of the nervous system, lays him on a table, and gently performs several perfunctory-looking spinal “adjustments.” Then he stands the boy on the table and asks him:
“Do you know why I gave you those chiropractic adjustments, Son?”
“Why, Dad?” the boy inquires.
“Because I love you.”
“I love you, too, Dad.”
Then the chiropractor picks his son up, hugs him, and, eyes closed, starts dancing around the room with him. In the soundtrack, Michael Jackson sings about saving children.
At this point, I was queasy, but the roomful of chiropractors burst into applause. Then the instructor stepped up to the mike and said: “Are parents going to eat this up, or what?” Copies of his video were for sale at the end of the program and, believe me, sales were brisk.
Chapter 6 deals with chiropractic “preventive maintenance’ — treating well, nonsymptomatic persons on a regular basis. I receive two chiropractic newspapers (only because they are sent to me free), and I can tell you that “maintenance care” is very big. Chiropractic is less about solving particular spinal problems with manipulation than about conditioning people to the “adjustment” experience and routinizing them to interconnect “adjustments” and how they feel. In my observation, people who submit to frequent spinal “adjustments” eventually start waking up every morning with the thought “Is my neck in or out?”
Once when I was a practicing chiropractor, a young man visited me who said he’d gone to 28 chiropractors in the previous month, searching for the perfect adjustment. I asked him: “Did any of the chiropractors, upon finding out how many others you had seen previously in such a short time, suggest that what you really needed was not another adjustment, but rather, psychological help to deal with your obsession?” He answered no. Every single one of them had stepped up to the plate and taken another crack at this kid’s neck. I assure you he did not receive an “adjustment” from me.
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