British Columbia (Canada) Chiropractic Org Crack Down on Spurious Claims by Members, How About US?

You will often find that chiropractors claim to be able to treat everything from ADHD and Alzheimers to diabetes, infertility, all the way to Down's syndrome, and they are all over websites, blogs, and social media postings. There is absolutely ZERO evidence chiropractic can treat those afflictions. It seems one professional organization is finally doing something about these unsupported claims... and it's a chiropractic organization.

College of Chiropractors of British Columbia (Canada) has warned all members from making efficacy claims in its latest policy clarification, mandated any claims to be removed ASAP, and the deadline passed three days ago (on 01-NOV-2018).

What is also interesting is BC Chiropractors are NOT allowed to give public opinions about vaccination (for or against) as chiropractors are NOT trained in infectious diseases. Yet it didn't stop some chiropractors, including two BC College of Chiropractors board members, from taking an antivax stance on social media. Both promptly deleted their antivax post after being reminded of the college policy. And one vice-chair has resigned after posting a video claiming a smoothie is more effective than a flu shot at preventing flu.

So where are such regulations or policies in the US?



It's clear that the Canadian chiropractors are far more careful in their allowed claims. But let's face it, chiropractics itself is just... unscientific. I won't go into the history of chiropractic. Suffice to say, it's one guy who claims through massaging the spine he can cure all sorts of things.

It may be surprising for you to learn that there is no "one" school of chiropractic. There are at least FIFTEEN different schools of manipulation of the spine, some may even have some sort of "scanner" (a Neurocalometer and its descendent, the Nervo-scope). They differ on which vertebrae to manipulate, how much, and how hard. Some don't even adjust the vertebrae, but the ligament.   (Meric, H.I.O, Logan, SOT, etc...)

But NONE of them can actually prove they do something objectively.

A government report by DHHS Inspector General shows that about half of the Medicare money paid to chiropractors between 2010 and 2015 were improper. That's 250-300 million EVERY YEAR, not to mention millions in co-pay paid to such practitioners.  This rate is also about 4-5 times HIGHER than improper payments in other parts of Medicare system (where improper payments are just over 10%)

Why do we even keep chiropractors around anyway?  Esp. when they are prone to fraud, has no scientific proof of efficacy, and tends to believe in woo and unscientific things like antivax, that their own organizations had to rein them in?