Simon Singh Makes Chiropractors Cry
Simon Singh wrote a short article about Chiropractors in the UK in the Guardian. Beware the Spinal trap was published on April 19, 2008. He was quite critical of this industry. The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) decided to sue him for libel. The Guardian paid for his legal costs and offered the BCA an out of court settlement is Singh would agree to it. Mr. Singh said NO.
“I will contest this action vigorously,” says Singh, who was awarded an MBE in 2003 for services to science. “There is an important issue of freedom of speech at stake. Sadly, I cannot speak about it at this early stage because I have already engaged lawyers.”
This is some of what he said that started all of the trouble…
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.
I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
I have seen it here in the US. There are some Chiropractors that claim to cure everything. Aids, Diabetes, asthma, etc…. I even saw a Chiropractor tell a prospective patient that after a few treatments they would be able to stop taking insulin and would therefore actually save money.
Back to Simon….
When the story first broke some Chiropractors started to take down crazy claims on their web sites and some pulled their entire sites down. Well… Now the shit has hit the fan as we learn in this new story. (You really need to click this link and read the whole thing!)
A staggering one in four chiropractors in Britain are now under investigation for allegedly making misleading claims in advertisements, according to figures from the General Chiropractic Council.
Skeptics all across the UK have turned in over 600 Chiropractors for making claims in print or on web sites that violate past rulings by the “Advertising Standards Authority”. It is a sign of the growing power of skeptics and their ability to bring reality to the masses.
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I had no idea that chiropractors still did the whole vertebral subluxation quackery until a few years back. Had a girlfriend who went to see one here in town after a rollerblading fall. While waiting in the lobby he had a big screen tv running a video selling that snake oil BS… sure enough he pointed out all the magic subluxations on the x-ray and how they were doing all sorts of horrible things to her in life.
From what I understand the field is still split between the total quacks and those who actually do some medically useful things. The total quacks need to lose any sort of official sanction and get tossed out of any coverage from tax funded programs. It boggles the mind that this kind of nonsense is still taken seriously in the western industrialized world. “Faith” is disturbingly infectious. New agey hippy mysticism is no exception.