"My Pediatrician Said I Shouldn’t Take my Child to a Chiropractor, They are Dangerous!"
There are many points of contention to a statement like this. A statement I heard this week from one of my patients. The majority of people, at no fault to them, believe in the recommendations that their medical doctor provides. Medical doctors are at the seat of cultural authority when it comes to health care in our nation.
But just because they are on that pedestal, it doesn’t mean they are immune to errors. MDs who make statements that Chiropractic is harmful, dangerous or downright quackery are ignoring the medical man or women in their own office mirror. The most dangerous health care profession in America is medicine.
Now before you roll your eyes at the “hippie” Chiropractor who seems to have it out for medicine, I didn’t come to this conclusion. Medicine did.
A 2016 study done at John Hopkins University Medical School found that medical intervention is the 3rd leading cause of death in America. This was a study that looked at 8 years of data and determined that over 250,000 deaths per year in the US are due to medical error. The second leading cause of death in America is cancer at 580,000 and the number one cause is heart disease at 611,000 deaths per year.
Using Dr. Barbara Stairfield’s calculation from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the medical error deaths can be broken down as such: 106,000 due to non-error, negative effects of drugs, 80,000 due to infections in hospitals, 45,000 due to other errors in hospitals, 12,000 due to unnecessary surgery and 7,000 from medication errors in hospitals. This is not the only study to come up with such large numbers.
In 2013, John James, Ph.D. published an article in the Journal of Patient Safety. In the article, James examined the prevalence of iatrogenic deaths in America. Iatrogenic means “illness caused by medical examination or treatment.” James concluded that more than 400,000 patients die in hospitals each year due to preventable harm. Harvard School of Medicine professor Dr. Lucian Leape noted in his article series “Error in Medicine” that American medicine kills 3 jumbo jets-worth of patients every 48 hours.
How many child and infant deaths per year are due to Chiropractic? Zero. This data comes not from Chiropractors, but from Ph.D. scientists who reviewed all the available literature. To read the article, please click the link: “Adverse Events Due to Chiropractic and Other Manual Therapies for Infants and Children: A Review of the Literature.”
The deaths that are often falsely associated with the chiropractic adjustment were actually spinal manipulations performed by other healthcare practitioners.
Of the three reported deaths related to spinal manipulation, one was by a physical therapist, one by a craniosacral therapist and one was by an unknown practitioner. Only seven cases of serious injury were associated with Chiropractic. Serious injuries involved paralysis, progressive neurological deficits, severe headache, neck pain, loss of consciousness, fracture and dislocation.
The majority of the injuries involved patients that had preexisting conditions that were missed by the Chiropractor such as spinal cord tumors and genetic bone disorders.
Here is where I implore all Chiropractors to perform a thorough exam and case history. This solidifies the need for pre-adjustment X-rays to be taken in all cases, no matter the age. Always better to know than to not know.
Furthermore, the correlation of Chiropractic and injury is based on the technique used. Of the 7 cases, 5 were reported in a technique approach that applies high-velocity, extension and rotation to the spine. The study didn’t specify the adjustment, but the description is very similar to the Diversified technique.
The Diversified technique is the most popular technique used among general Chiropractors. Because of this fact, a version of this technique is often portrayed in the public square, either by Chiropractors or by the media. I completely understand why a parent would hesitate about having their child adjusted if you do a search on Google or YouTube for “chiropractic adjustment.”
This type of technique lacks specificity and increases the chances of adverse effects. As a Specific Chiropractor, I take satisfaction in knowing that my adjustment will be as safe as possible. Even though I don’t hold the Diversified technique in the highest regard, it is still safer than a long list of medical interventions.
So where does this notion of “Dangerous Chiropractic” come from? It comes from a well-documented smear campaign created by the American Medical Association. This medical animosity towards Chiropractic has been present since Chiropractic’s start. Since its beginning, a large percentage of Chiropractic’s “miracle cases” were those patients deemed “a lost cause” by modern medicine.
It was once thought by medicine that if they couldn’t cure the patient, nothing could. Medicine was the “end all be all” to health. So if a patient sought help outside of medicine, the patient was doomed to fall prey to an “unscientific quack, cultist or charlatan.” And this is exactly what they called Chiropractors.
The AMA (American Medical Association) labeled Chiropractors as unethical and unscientific. They also sought to put Chiropractors in jail for “practicing medicine without a license.” I could go down a rabbit hole within this blog on this topic, but to summarize, please realize that medicine doesn’t own ethics or science.
Science and ethics are concepts that must be put inside a philosophical framework to be used. If you have a different philosophical framework, then any concept of science or ethics that falls outside of that framework could be labeled as “unscientific” or “unethical.”
Chiropractic is scientific and ethical, it just uses a different philosophical framework than medicine. We all take objective facts and try to interpret them in a subjective manner. Medicine and Chiropractic are no different. I’ve touch a little on this topic before in another post called “Medicine: Alternative Chiropractic.”
So instead of being intrigued at the possibility of a new approach to healthcare intervention, medicine dug their heels in the ground and sought to dismantle the Chiropractic competition. How do you dismantle the competition? You organize.
In 1963, the AMA created a “Committee on Quackery.” The committee sought a “containment of the chiropractic profession” that “will result in the decline of chiropractic.” They also set up plans to “encourage ethical complaints against doctors of chiropractic, encourage chiropractic disunity, oppose chiropractic inroads in health insurance, and oppose chiropractic inroads into hospitals.” Joseph Sabatier, the chairman of the committee said that “rabid dogs and chiropractors fit into about the same category…. Chiropractors were nice but they killed people.”
Finally in 1987, after many lawsuits by Chiropractors did the U.S. District Courts confirm that the AMA had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The U.S. Court asserted that “the AMA decided to contain and eliminate chiropractic as a profession” and that it was the AMA’s intent “to destroy a competitor.”
Another benchmark to look at in determining the “danger of Chiropractic” is malpractice insurance. All healthcare professionals carrying malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance is a type of professional liability insurance purchased by healthcare professionals.
Coverage is designed to protect health care providers against patients who file suit against them. The suits usually involve some type of complaint that they were harmed by the doctor’s negligent or harmful treatment decisions. Not all health care professionals pay the same premiums.
Premiums are based on a few factors: risks associated with the intervention or procedure, the experience of the doctor, prior claims and the state where you practice. The biggest factor involved in calculating premiums is risk; the dangers that surround a given intervention and the potential for injury sustained by the patient.
As a Chiropractor in the state of Ohio, my malpractice premium this year was $1,341. A Pediatrician in the state of Ohio pays on average $14,000 a year in malpractice insurance. Why the huge difference? The potential for risk to the patient. So if we look at malpractice insurance premiums, a Pediatrician is more dangerous than a Chiropractor.
I’m reminded of the saying that goes: "When you point one finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back to you. So look at yourself three times before judging someone else.” The Pediatrician does procedures that have a higher incident of injury to the patient compared to the Chiropractor. They need to be insured more to pay out to the patient in the event of an adverse reaction or injury. Chiropractors have one of the lowest malpractice insurance premiums in the US. Chiropractic is one of the safest and least-injury prone health interventions available.
Even though we won our day in court, there had been years of misinformation propagated by medicine that created a false identity of Chiropractic. This, in my opinion, is medical hypocrisy at its finest. It is easy to blame others instead of taking stock of your own faults and missteps to distract the public from the available truth.
The original sin of medicine (and all of us) is one cloaked in pride. Facts might be on the side of Chiropractic, but belief systems don’t always line up with the facts.
If you are still concerned about the safety of Chiropractic, all I ask is that you look at the facts and make a decision based on your perspective of the information. Not from medicine’s perspective. Not even from a Chiropractic perspective. But on the perspective that you want the best health choice for you and your family.
That is, after all, our true calling as parents. To keep our children safe, happy and healthy so they can lead full, rich lives without anything holding them back.
For more information on the safety of Pediatric Chiropractic, check out the ICPA website.
- Jarek Esarco, DC, CACCP
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