A patient asks a chiropractor about her abdominal pain during her treatment. His answer gets him in trouble.
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What if she asked her grocer “Could this abdominal pain I’m having be cancer?” and he said “Nah its in your head”. Could she sue him too? Because chiropracters have about as much valid medical judgement as a grocer (or maybe even less)
Except there is not a subset of grocers who profess to be able to cure cancer, whereas these quacks have a substantial subset that do profess to cure everything from hemorrhoids to brain tumors.
It really comes down to reasonable person expectations. If chiropractic as a group has created the public expectation through their propaganda and advertising where the average joe would expect their pronouncement on cancer symptoms to be valid then they have this burden.
In the grocer example, no reasonable person would ever expect a helpful or valid response from a grocer on cancer. I do hope that they can find me some great produce though.
To the Chiro’s: Careful what you wish for.
Chiropractors who are ethical would refer her to her primary care physician.
I realize that in the world of allopathic medicine, there is a large contingent that believes anything not drug-based is quackery. Unfortunately, there is some very convincing scientific evidence for non-drug based therapies in specific areas. Including chiropractic care for certain types of back, neck and shoulder pain. It does work.
With that being said, no one should trust their chiropractor to do any type of diagnosis outside of musculoskeletal manipulations. That is just foolishness, and if the chiropractor presented himself as someone who knew enough to say otherwise, well he deserves to get sued for malpractice!
Pax,
MLO
“there is some very convincing scientific evidence for non-drug based therapies in specific areas. Including chiropractic care for certain types of back, neck and shoulder pain”
that is just nonsense – please link to your “convincing scientific evidence”. On the contrary there are MOUNTAINS of evidence against the efficacy of chiroquacktic (see http://www.quackwatch.com)
chiropractic is pure BS for the uneducated & gullible masses.
one more thing – the rise of chiropractic developed out of deep pockets of auto insurers ie. “whiplash” followed by an endless mill of chiro/phys.therapy/mri/lawsuits etc. even judges & insurers now see it as quackery, as they routinely discount injury claims that are followed by lots of chiro visits.
“there is some very convincing scientific evidence for non-drug based therapies in specific areas.”
Show Me
Show Me
Show Me
There is not. But I am still waiting
A lot of chiropractic is systematic quackery but that being said, the Jury verdict seems appropriate. The jury wasn’t making a judgement on chiropractic per se.
Chiropractors have done a fair job of selling themselves as “physicians” to the ignorant and uneducated and an exception would be if this chiropractors marketing could be shown to lead her to expect more global competence.
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