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Dec.26/04 - Jan.2, 2005 |
View from the profession
Chiropractic responds to overall safety and efficacy questions
By Nancy MacLeod
Originally Published: 2003-09-14
Dr. Stan Gorchynski is Chairman of the Board of the Ontario Chiropractic Association (OCA) and the Secretary/Treasurer of the Canadian Chiropractic Association. He recently spoke by phone to Tandem about the practice of chiropractic, its benefits, scientific validity and risks, and his take on the Paul Benedetti/Wayne MacPhail book Spin Doctors: The Chiropractic Industry Under Examination, a work that raises many issues and cautions about the overall safety and efficacy of chiropractic, as well as contending that the profession is out of control and in need of enforcing stringent guidelines on its practitioners.
Spin Doctors is particularly critical of the so-called "mixed bag" of alternative therapies and remedies which are frequently administered by chiropractors as supplements to the chiropractic adjustment, therapies that often have no scientific proof backing them up. Gorchynski weighs in on this issue. "Let me say to you that of all medical procedures, only 18 percent have scientific validity," he asserts. "Eighty-two, 83 percent of what medicine currently does has no scientific validity. I'm not making this up. The medical research community has put this out; I use their terminology."
"Chiropractors, the main thing they do is the chiropractic adjustment, that has been researched up, down, sideways, back and forth," Gorchynski continues. "That has not only been validated nationally in Canada, it has been validated internationally in the U.S. in Europe and other countries. There has been no study found yet to say it does not work." He points to some studies which he notes have found chiropractic to be more effective for low back pain than other conventional treatments, a point that is hotly debated by chiropractic opponents, each camp having studies to back up their beliefs. Statistics also vary about the rate of incidence of stroke or death associated with neck manipulation. The OCA puts the figure around one in 5.6 million, based on a study it cites from the Canadian Medical Association. Neck adjustment, Gorchynski states, is "very safe."
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