Daily Archives: January 19, 2011

According to Wikipedia, Chiropractic is a health care discipline and profession that emphasizes diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine, under the hypothesis that these disorders affect general health via the nervous system. It is generally categorized as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a characterization that many chiropractors reject. Although chiropractors have many attributes of primary care providers, chiropractic has more of the attributes of a medical specialty like dentistry or podiatry. The main chiropractic treatment technique involves manual therapy, including manipulation of the spine, other joints, and soft tissues; treatment also includes exercises and health and lifestyle counseling.Traditional chiropractic assumes that a vertebral subluxation or spinal joint dysfunction interferes with the body’s function and its innate intelligence, a vitalistic notion that brings ridicule from mainstream science and medicine.

Throughout its history, chiropractic has been controversial. For most of its existence it has battled with mainstream medicine, sustained by ideas such as subluxation that are not based on solid science. In spite of the general consensus of public health professionals regarding the benefits of vaccination, among chiropractors there are significant disagreements over the subject, which has led to negative impacts on public vaccination and mainstream acceptance of chiropractic.[The American Medical Association called chiropractic an “unscientific cult” and boycotted it until losing an antitrust case in 1987. Chiropractic has had a strong political base and sustained demand for services; in recent decades, it has gained more legitimacy and greater acceptance among medical physicians and health plans in the U.S., and evidence-based medicine has been used to review research studies and generate practice guidelines.