By Randy Southerland
Dr. Lisa Wynkoop is giving 3-month-old Maluhia San Luis her regular chiropractic
checkup. Her 3-year-old brother Koa, flanked by mom and dad, looks on intently
as the Virginia Beach, Va. chiropractor holds the happy baby up by her feet
to check for posture and head tilts.
For the Luis family, it’s standard procedure, as everyone gets checked
and adjusted. This day, however, they have an audience. Elizabeth Simpson, a
reporter from a local daily, The Virginian Pilot, is watching and scribbling
notes while a photographer busily snaps away. Those images of chiropractic in
action will be spread across approximately two full pages, describing a new
health care trend. Here, parents are bringing their children—even the newborn—in
to get adjusted as a means of preventing common childhood illnesses by promoting
a properly functioning immune system.
Tobias, the children’s father, tells the reporter, “I look at traditional
medicine as reactive, something you use in a crisis situation. To me, complementary
medicine is taking a more preventive approach. It’s what I do so I don’t
have to go to the doctor.”
It’s a good day for the public perception of this healing art. A few days
later thousands in the populous Hampton Roads area will read about parents who
put their children in the hands of a chiropractor as part of a routine wellness
program.
“Most of the feedback I got was just shock that we adjusted kids,”
recalled Wynkoop, who also noted that 43 percent of her patients are under the
age of 10. “For so long the profession has been content in being accepted
as the ‘back pain and headache docs.’”
The
story may give many a new perspective on chiropractic, but it also reflects
a continuing problem in the way that the profession is presented in both the
mass media and popular culture.
Never has chiropractic been so well accepted or received so much attention,
nor has there been so much confusion about what chiropractors actually do. For
many it’s the time-honored approach of being the best cure for back pains
and headaches. Others in the profession say that perspective is just plain wrong.
“Most of the public hasn’t heard the true story of chiropractic and
they have no clue,” says Dr. Wynkoop. “They ask why would we want
to bring in our kids? I had a few phone calls from strangers who were very supportive.
They weren’t saying you’re a kook or a quack. They were saying ‘wow,
we didn’t have a clue and thank you for doing this.’”
Other members of the profession say these differing views are creating confusion
in the public, and particularly in the media. Dr. Jerome McAndrews, public spokesman
for the American Chiropractic Association and a veteran of the war to gain public
recognition for the profession, says he often receives calls from reporters
asking to explain the difference between ‘straights and mixers.’
“Of the different identities that chiropractic groups have, it’s very
difficult for a layperson to sort out,” he says.
EMBRACING CHIROPRACTIC
Observers in the profession say chiropractic has a new level of credibility
in the media that goes far beyond its old image of “back cracker,”
whose patients all came out wearing cervical collars on the way to the attorney’s
office. 
“The general media is embracing chiropractic more,” says Jonathan
Lance, public relations manager at Life Chiropractic College West. “Some
publications that didn’t want to talk to our expert sources have certainly
changed their minds.”
Lance says local publications in the San Francisco Bay area are much more likely
to talk to DCs on a wide range of subjects, including carpal tunnel syndrome,
pregnancy issues such as diet and exercise, and sports health care.
In the past it was common to hear athletes, like baseball great Barry Bonds,
talk about their love of their chiropractor, but now even reporters are voicing
their acceptance. On a recent edition of Don Imus’ nationally syndicated
radio talk show, a reporter covering the war in Iraq told the host that he couldn’t
wait to get back to get an adjustment from his chiropractor.
Clearly, when writers and editors are getting positive results from chiropractic
care it makes them more likely to propose stories covering the profession, says
Lance.
McAndrews, who has fielded thousands of media questions since the days of the
Wilkes anti-trust case against the medical profession, notes that this acceptance
has been growing over the past two decades.
“During the illegal boycott so many of the calls were set-ups,” he
recalls. “They would ask questions, such as what results do we (chiropractors)
get with spina bifida, clubfoot and slow mentality.”
Beginning around 1980 all that began to change.
“Today easily 95 percent of the calls I receive have been simply writers
and reporters who wanted to ask a question,” he says. “They are very
objective. Many are chiropractic patients or users of so-called alternative
healthcare. It’s been a very nice change.”
The attention that it is getting is clearly indicative of how important chiropractic
has become. As the number of patients—including highly influential patients
ranging from athletes to entertainers to Congressmen—has grown, the prominence
of the profession has also soared.
At the ACA’s media office, director Patrick Bernat can reel off a long
list of the nation’s premiere publications that have called seeking information,
ranging from newspapers to mass circulation magazines and content outlets such
as Prevention, Muscle and Fitness, AARP Magazine, Men’s
Health, the Associated Press and others. Many want sources that can talk
not only about chiropractic, but the various everyday physical maladies for
which chiropractic care has proven effective.
“Sometimes
the inquiries that are about back pain or backpacks or sleeping surfaces can
turn out to be the most positive stories,” he asserts. “They position
doctors of chiropractic as health and wellness experts—not just chiropractic
experts.”
Today, the profession’s acceptance has even moved into the ranks of the
notoriously conservative military and Veterans’ Administration healthcare
systems. That has drawn great attention, raising the profile of chiropractic
considerably.
Along with the popular media, chiropractic has been the subject of serious appraisal
in publications such as the Insurance Journal and Orthopedics Today. Getting
such attention, however, can be a two-edged sword.
THE GOOD AND THE BAD
The Insurance Journal, for example, examined Workman’s Compensation
cases in California and found a pattern of rising costs. On the other hand,
Orthopedics Today proclaimed in a headline that it is “Time to Recognize
Value of Chiropractic Care.”
This attention has also given some long time critics new opportunities to bash
the profession.
When the Wall Street Journal published a critical look at chiropractic
in its November 19, 2002, edition that asked “Should You Try a Chiropractor?”
the primary source was Akron, Ohio, D.C. Charles Duvall, Jr. and his National
Association for Chiropractic Medicine—which maintains that much of chiropractic
is unscientific and should be accessible only through a medical gatekeeper.
Although the organization is estimated to represent no more than 100 DCs—and
whose membership is secret—it has become a leading voice about all things
chiropractic in several media stories.
Some within the profession contend that Duvall and NACM may simply be a front
for anti-chiropractic forces.
“On the other side of the coin there are institutions and organizations
that are very heavily funding an anti-chiropractic media campaign,” says
Ron Hendrickson, executive director of the International Chiropractors Association.
“Who they (NACM) are and what they are is somewhat mysterious. What they
do is very clear. They are being paid to demean and diminish and erode chiropractic’s
depiction in the marketplace.”
ON THE SMALL SCREEN
The PBS series, Scientific American Frontiers’ “A Different Way to
Heal,” managed to paint one of the more unflattering pictures of chiropractic.
To many in the profession the documentary narrated by Alan Alda was a good example
of the renewed efforts by the profession’s enemies to quash its newfound
acceptance.
“They (the show’s producers) seemed to be open minded,” remarks
Lance, whose college was the location for telling chiropractic’s side of
the story. The show’s producer even told him he had received care following
a car accident some years earlier and that he had experienced positive results.
In the episode, a former chiropractic student-turned-pharmacist told host Alan
Alda that chiropractic has no basis in anatomy and that the theory of vertebrae
changing positions is an anatomical impossibility. Robert Baratz, a medical
doctor who serves as executive director of the National Council Against Health
Fraud asserted that chiropractic is based on religion and not science.
The program also raised one of the great bugaboos of chiropractic care—the
disproven theory that cervical adjustments can cause strokes.
The professional associations have been quick to respond to these attacks with
letters, press releases and even appeals to influential Congressmen in the case
of the PBS broadcast.
“We do respond when anything like that appears particularly on a national
level,” says the ACA’s Bernat. “We take it very seriously.”
While widely discredited, this assertion has been used effectively in the Canadian
media to attack chiropractors in that country. The National Post and other publications
there have carried the story, and members of the profession say it has reduced
office visits by as much as 30 percent.
“That made a big difference with the practice, especially with new patients,”
says Edmonton chiropractor Rod Giacchetta. “A lot of us are having a problem
with the negativity that’s surrounding chiropractic every time you tell
someone you’re a chiropractor.”
Dr. Giacchetta, in fact, says that he added a low force technique—DNFT—just
for new patients concerned about cervical adjustments.
Back in the USA, some see the attention given to such discredited studies as
part of a coordinated attack on chiropractic.
“This (Canadian) Stroke Consortium, and all the PR firm activity, has taken
place offshore,” says ICA’s Hendrickson. “It may be done there
because of the permanent (federal anti-trust) injunction against the AMA and
other groups for anti-competitive activities.”
At the same time, chiropractic has become the fodder for popular culture. DCs
have been portrayed as characters—usually played for laughs—on TV
sitcom such as “Seinfeld,” “Allie McBeal” and others, including
the long-running series “The Simpsons.”
The profession has, at times, been the target of less gentle humor. Comedy duo
Penn and Teller’s Showtime cable series, whose self-proclaimed goal is
“to hunt down as many purveyors of BS as possible,” took on chiropractic
earlier this year.
To support the contention that chiropractic “hasn’t changed since
one guy just started it, with no proof, in 1895” the show hauled out the
usual suspects—the NACM’s DuVall and his associate Stephen Barrett,
a former psychiatrist who heads “Quackwatch” an organization that
has frequently attacked chiropractic and other alternative healthcare.
WHO ARE WE?
Many in the profession say that the biggest problem is the lack of any concerted
effort to tell a consistent story. That absence has left it to the media to
discover chiropractic’s soul on their own, and some say they’ve found
what can only be described as a patchwork quilt.
It is to be hoped that, someday, chiropractic will present a unified front—at
least to those outside its ranks. Accomplishing such a task, as many in the
profession know, will require bridging some wide differences of opinion about
the nature of this burgeoning healing art. Meanwhile, the interest and attention
from the media and the public to which it caters will only continue to grow.
About the author: Randy Southerland is a freelance journalist and regular contributor
to Today’s Chiropractic magazine.
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