I have no vested interest in any organization related to chiropractic or other organizations that may be adversarial to health matters. My only commitment in writing this article is to fulfill my academic duties to uphold science in my academic public activities.
Chiropractic, one of the several popular so-called complementary and alternative medicines(1), should never be applied to children. It simply isn’t based on credible scientific evidence.
A practitioner filled with messianic fervor founded the chiropractic discipline in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Chiropractic maintains that most, if not all diseases, are due to some kind of misalignment of the vertebrae of the spine. The proposed underlying “subluxations” could be corrected by a special manipulation with a “high velocity, low amplitude thrusts” which reconstitute the flow of a mysterious “universal intelligence”. A significant proportion of orthodox chiropractors still hold this view.
The reality is that such chiropractic “subluxations” of the spine simply do not exist and that spinal manipulations have no bearing on general diseases unrelated to the spine.
The position statement of RMIT on the “vertebral subluxation complex (VSC)”, which is described as “ greater than a simplistic biomechanical concept”, leaves the issue confused.
The function of the nerves that leave the spinal cord to move muscles, and those that arrive to the spinal cord carrying sensory information for skin, joints and muscles, is well established.
Medical sciences are increasingly discovering the causes of disease processes that affect the sensory and motor nerves with resulting paralysis, pain, abnormal or absent sensations.
Why then do so many people still go to chiropractors? Not all pains associated with muscles, ligaments and bones have clear causes and medical doctors are often unable to help patients.
People with uncomfortable and often severely limiting back pains are drawn to any practitioner who claims to be able to ameliorate their discomfort, including chiropractors, osteopaths, and other alternative practitioners. Most people visit chiropractors for lower back pain (3).
Physiotherapy is the only practice based on physical methods that is well integrated and consistent with modern scientific medicine. The improvement of back pain symptoms in some patients undergoing manipulations, such as chiropractic and osteopathy (4) appears to be due to the “placebo effect”.
It is therefore surprising that a webpage on Better Health Channel State of Victoria, with permission of the Victorian Minister for Health, and produced in consultation with, and approved by RMIT University’s School of Health Sciences, still claims that chiropractic is able to assist in a number of disorders including asthma, back injuries, headaches, lower back pain, migraines, period pain, problems with posture, sciatica, slipped disk and tinnitus.
Despite of all this, some chiropractic organizations, for example the American Chiropractic Association, promote chiropractic care of infants and children under the theory that “poor posture and physical injury, including birth trauma, may be common primary causes of illness in children and can have a direct and significant impact not only on spinal mechanics, but on other bodily functions”.
In Australia many chiropractors still claim to be able to intervene successfully in complex diseases in children such as ADHD, autism and other behavioural problems, bed wetting, asthma, immune diseases and infant colic, among others.
A number of letters from experts of different disciplines accompanying a submission to the Minister of Health by Ms Loretta Marron, a long standing campaigner against pseudosciences in health, has called for the closure of a chiropractic clinic aimed at children run by the RMIT.
RMIT is rather vague about what they actually offer for children’s health, claiming that they do not aim to treat “conditions”.
Instead, they claim to look at the “biomechanical situation for an individual and make the appropriate gentle adjustments”.
This, they say, can improve the situations in other parts of the patient’s health but RMIT is not claiming a direct cause. They deny having a shopping list of conditions that they treat, apart from lower back pain, neck pain and headache.
Chiropractors who perform spinal manipulations on children, for conditions they should know cannot be cured by spinal manipulations, either believe the nonsensical principles of chiropractic - and this would amount to mere self-deception - or are deceiving parents of children. By their own admission “chiropractic is a profession, not a therapy” (9).
The existence in Australia of a specialized chiropractic clinic for children should raise serious concerns for the potential harmful effect of dubious practices (10, 11).
The confidence of patients on their health carers should be based on evidence-based practices, transparency and sound scientific principles, not superstition.
3) Lawrence DJ, Meeker WC (2007). Chiropractic and CAM utilization: a descriptive review. Chiropr Osteopat 15: 2. doi:10.1186/1746-1340-15-2 (http://chiroandosteo.com/content/15/1/2).
5) Benedetti F (2009). Placebo effects; understanding the mechanisms in health and disease. Oxford University Press.
8) Singh S and Ernst E (2009). Trick or treatment? Alternative medicine on trial. Gorgi Books.
10) Martyr, P. (2002). Paradise of Quacks; an alternative history of medicine in Australia. Macleay Press.
11) Edwards, H. (1997). A skeptic guide to the new age. Published by Australian Skeptics Inc.