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Comment by BigZaphod | Hacker News Reader

This is slightly OT, but since the article seems to imply that chiropractic care is quackery, I have to ask: What do people have against chiropractors? Do most of them suck or something? I've only got experience with one family practice (mother/daughter), but my relief has been quite measurable and very significant at times.

Antidote: A few years ago, something strange happened in my back while standing for the morning SCRUM meeting and I could no longer stand without searing, intense pain. I was almost-literally carried into the chiropractic office by a coworker and came out walking and feeling like nothing had happened about 20 minutes later. It's not magical and obviously doesn't cure all ails, but to say it's junk seems to reek of improper study or prejudiced "debunkers."

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since the article seems to imply that chiropractic care is quackery, I have to ask: What do people have against chiropractors?

I don't know anyone who has much against chiropractors PERSONALLY, as persons making a living, but the practice of chiropractic makes factual claims about how many disease conditions can be treated by manipulation of the spine, and those claims are bogus. The state I live in treats chiropractors as one of several kinds of state-licensed healing practitioners, and I think the major health insurance networks here do "evidence-based" evaluation of treatments and reimburse for chiropractic treatment of back pain. But there would be no evidence-based reason to reimburse chiropractic treatment for high blood pressure or arthritis or many other things that a chiropractic training program (there is one in my state) might claim that chiropractic treatment can help. In some cases there are public agencies that pay for people's treatments, and it is important that the payers get right which treatments work for which conditions.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2008-01/thyer.html

http://www.layscience.net/node/566

http://www.chirobase.org/01General/message.html

http://medicareupdate.typepad.com/medicare_update/2009/05/me...

P.S. to the OP: what's causing the stupid horizontal scrolling of the interesting original post you kindly submitted? I had to downsize the font to a degree hard on my eyes to see all the text on screen at the same time.

I have a sister and a step-sister who are both chiropractors. Apparently there are two disjoint schools of thought within chiropractry, at least in Australia.

My sister does the science based stuff that's mostly about the back and very closely related things, while the camp my step-sister belongs to believes that all ills come from and can be cured through the spine - including cancer, etc ...

They went to different universities, one university having the what I call the "science" focus and the other one having what I call the "crazy" focus. My sister chose the science focused university because the crazy focused university scared the hell out of her.

A bit strange that their qualifications are the same on paper.

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