| Editor's note: The following two letters to the editor are relevant to the publisher's report of findings in this issue. Please read "Science vs. Belief" by Donald M. Petersen Jr. |
"We See It Every Day in Chiropractic"
Dear Editor:
I frequently read about the need for research in our profession to verify that chiropractic does what it says it can do. "Less than scientific" or "pseudo-science" has been used to describe chiropractic inside and outside our profession. There seems to be a problem of packaging and describing our goods because chiropractic care tends to do more positive than can be accounted for. Some want to minimize our professional goals to what can be described and some want to maximize how far we reach. Then I read two articles in an Acres USA publication and realized it's our job, science-backed or not, to save the world.
One article was written by Shane Ellison, MSc, whose career was in drug design and synthesis, explaining the corruption of big pharma. "In the pharmaceutical industry, making money supersedes science. ... Drug approval is a simple matter of 51 percent telling the other 49 percent that a prescription drug is safe and necessary." Mr. Ellison is particularly outraged by direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising and listed several examples. DTC advertising dictates that lowering cholesterol prevents heart disease. Science proves otherwise. DTC advertising dictates that an aspirin a day will keep heart attacks away; that depression is a disease which must be treated with prescription drugs; that ADHD is a disease and that our children must be treated with amphetamines; that infants must be vaccinated to prevent childhood illness; that blood pressure must be controlled via a lifetime of servitude to prescription drugs; that chemotherapy is your first line of defense against deadly cancer; and that type II diabetes must be treated with daily insulin. For each of those examples, science has proven otherwise.
The other article was written by John Newcomer, RN, and gave a profound argument for early pioneers who studied and followed natural laws of nature. Although he spoke of Voisin, Murray, Walters and Albrecht, I was mentally plugging in D.D. Palmer, B.J. Palmer and other greats of our chiropractic profession. Mr. Newcomer wrote, "I have read elsewhere that the problems with Albrecht's observations are they haven't been scientifically duplicated. I am not sure whether I am struck more by the arrogance or the ignorance of that statement. The most intelligent response I can come up with is teenage vernacular - Duh! The work of Voisin and others comes from, in Voisin's words, 'watching my cows eat grass,' literally, close observation of the natural world. I don't expect the lab guys to ever duplicate the natural world. The Bible says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Whom do the lab guys think they are? God?"
That RN wrote what I have wanted to say my entire career. When the same adjustment at T4 will improve a shoulder in one person, improve breathing in another, settle indigestion, lower blood pressure, relieve headaches, or otherwise restore a person to a better level of health, how in the world is that duplicated, much less studied and technically explained, in a lab? Yet we see it every day in chiropractic, and most of us thank Him for the Healing only He can do!
Wiley N. Alexander, DC
Washington, Kansas
"When the Art, Science and Philosophy Meet the Mind, Body and Spirit, Miracles Do Happen"
Dear Editor:
There are many things I would like to discuss about chiropractic. I started in Logan in 1975 and graduated with the great '78 - the finest group, top to bottom, to have ever graduated from a chiropractic college.
I was in church and looking at the people in front of me ... we should all be wealthy, what with the head tilts, thoracic torques, unlevel hips, etc. The church has a large cross that hangs in the front of the sanctuary. As I looked at the cross, then around at the people, I thought I heard a still, small voice say, "Draw a line from shoulder to shoulder (horizontally). Now draw a line from occiput to sacrum (vertically)." The intersection is where the nerves go that innervate the heart; on the cross, this was where Jesus' heart also would have been. We need to adjust and be adjusted in this area to find the heart, because in the heart is where God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit reside.
Thirty years ago, every chiropractic office had a sign that said, "Let go and let God." We also were taught, "above down inside out." When the art, science and philosophy meet the mind, body and spirit, miracles do happen.
Joel B. Hayward, DC
Springdale, Arkansas
