In this issue:
1.Philosophy and Neurology
Nutrition
6 April Sacramento
2. Adjustophobia – New chiropractic disease?
3. Excerpt from vaccine text: Prevnar
5. Challenge to Debate:
Defending Vaccines? Now’s your chance!
6. Peanut Allergy Correction
1. CHIROPRACTIC PHILOSOPHY AND NEUROLOGY
Seattle WA 9 Mar
Edinburgh, Scotland 8 June
Boulder CO 27 Jun (with Dr Tim Young)
VAXIMMUNOLOGY
Amsterdam 1 June
Weymouth, England 6 June
W. Sussex, England 4 Jun
Sacramento 6 April
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2. ADJUSTOPHOBIA? PLEASE!
A colleague, who teaches at a chiropractic institution located somewhere on Earth, recently told me a shocking story. Apparently there was a first quarter student who presented to the student clinic for evaluation and treatment of a serious neurological problem. The dizziness, migraines, and neck pain were becoming so severe that the student was having great difficulty completing her studies.
X-rays, MRI, CT scan and chiropractic exam ruled out pathology and clearly pointed to axis subluxation. But the student intern was forbidden by the clinic doctors from adjusting the patient unless ‘further medical evaluation’ was done to rule out other possible brain defects.
Having been told this story by the patient, my colleague promptly put the student on an adjusting table and delivered a very specific, high-velocity adjustment.
Routine chiropractic. Anybody ever hear of it…?
Now anyone who’s been in practice for any amount of time might guess the next part of the story: the student was about 100% improved by the one adjustment.
But the fable is not over. Hearing of her improvement, the clinic doctors went postal. They proceeded then to unreasonable extremes to ensure that such a thing (as a real chiropractic adjustment) would not occur in the future. Not on their watch!
So let us look at some of the consequences of this tale, and the cognitive dissonance it reveals.
First, the effect on the patient. Having now experienced first-hand the power of the chiropractic adjustment, where all else had failed, the patient can no longer be tricked. No one else helped her except the adjustor. If not for that adjustment, her condition would be deteriorating further. No fancy phrases can dissuade her of the truth her CNS now knows. So how is she to reconcile the clinic’s feeble, pathetic attempts to tell her what she knows just happened didn’t really happen? That ‘real medicine’ must be brought in to verify and evaluate the profound reconnection she just experienced.
This student is about to spend $175,000 and four years of her life learning this profession. Being confronted with these profound contradictions, is she now looking around for a school whose stated philosophy is more in harmony with what her nervous sysrtem just experienced? Why are her teachers trying to deny what happened?
Second, the student intern. Forget about the difficulty of finding patients willing to be treated by student DCs, this young intern was confronted with the genuine article, right out of the gate. That is, a case of the classic vertebral subluxation. After seeing all the clinical indications of it, he was then told that this was not it, and furthermore that whatever this was would be too dangerous to attempt with mere chiropractic. This severely displaced vertebra, the epitome of vertebral subluxation by any measure, was beyond our scope!
Even with the dramatic success of the legitimate adjustment by a real professional.
Now if this intern has no other source of information and doesn’t realize he has just been lied to by a group of incompetent posers, his perception of his chosen profession may be permanently traumatized.
Third, the clinic doctors. Please, let’s not use the phrase ‘just doing their job.” Doesn’t really apply here. These were presumably licensed DCs who made it all the way through school and testing without being able to recognize the unique service that chiropractic offers the world – to detect and correct the vertebral subluxation. This was a judgment call – no matter what the school’s policy was, their decision here means that the directors of this clinic are unable to identify the one entity that, by law and by licensure, DCs exist to address. And they lacked the courage to correct it.
Finally, the school. Its role can best be assessed with a group of questions:
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Is chiropractic philosophy an integral part of the curriculum?
What is the school’s mission statement?
What is the school’s stated definition of chiropractic?
Does it mention the word subluxation, as included in every state’s legal definition of chiropractic?
How often does the faculty get adjusted?
What percentage of the faculty has ever practiced?
Do clinic doctors have to demonstrate any level of adjusting competency whatsoever before they are hired to teach students clinical chiropractic?
Has the school’s philosophy of education undergone any radical transformations in the past 3 years?
The Art, Science, and Philosophy of chiropractic were complete when BJ and DD handed it down to us. Of course there can be improvements in the art and science of adjusting, as real professionals achieve mastery, with years of practice. But the whole package was complete when we got it. Are we going to allow the unanchored few to transform chiropractic into an anemic imitation of the original?
See the contrast here – between the veteran doctor for whom detection and correction of this displacement was just everyday routine – nothing out of the ordinary. And the new slaves to fashion, ‘teachers’ of the New Agenda – the you-can’t-be-too-careful, we’re-not-really-doctors-after-all, it’s-too-dangerous herd… See the contrast?
Between those two poles there gapes an abyss.
The global agenda to trivialize and dilute chiropractic – that we all know about but nobody talks about – is not new. True, it has skyrocketed in the last 3 years. But BJ fought this exact same battle, all his life. It’s all through the Green Books.
Those who chant that there’s no proof subluxation exists haven’t looked for any. Haavik, Minardi, etc. That’s the substance of the new Chiropractic Seminar.
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3. Excerpt from Vaccination Is Not Immunization , 3rd ed. 2013
PREVNAR
“Since its addition to the Schedule in 2002, the Prevnar (PCV) vaccine has been surrounded by controversy. Prevnar contains elements of Strep pneumoniae and diphtheria bacteria, and is marketed as protection for otitis media and bacterial meningitis.
The first and most striking problem with Prevnar is the claim that it protects against otitis media, which is usually a simple earache. Practically all babies get temporary earaches, which are mild and self-limiting and resolve in a day or two. Even the 2007 PDR cites 90% as the figure for infant earaches. [244]
It may be surprising to review the definition of otitis media:
“a visually abnormal tympanic membrane suggesting effusion” [227] (p 3468)
That means looking in the baby’s ear, the ear drum appears red. This can happen after crying. There’s no culture, no blood test, nothing besides looking in the ear necessary to diagnose the commonplace “otitis.” Inflammation, not infection.
So why would violating a child’s bloodstream with a vaccine be necessary to prevent such a mild condition?
Are there any side effects from such a marginally important vaccine? Here’s a partial list, according to the manufacturer:
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fever anaphylactic shock
seizure hives
heart failure gastroenteritis
rash thrush
asthma choking
pneumonia conjunctivitis
otitis media – 2007 PDR p 3468 [227]
Wait a minute. Otitis media as a side effect of the vaccine? Wasn’t that what the vaccine was for? And pneumonia? Is it a surprise that injecting healthy kids with Strep pneumoniae might cause pneumonia? And look at all the other serious side effects.
As we read through the manufacturer’s description of the original clinical trials, he states that the subjects were receiving all other standard vaccines at the same time. So how many of these other vaccines list otitis media as a side effect? Answer: 5.
Does that mean we needed this new vaccine to take care of a side effect from other vaccines? Looks like it. The only way this study would have been legitimate would have been if the control group were unvaccinated.
By the way, there were 12 deaths among the original subjects. [227]
The next amazing part of the sales job for Prevnar is the claim of protection against bacterial meningitis – an extremely rare disease in the US. The 2007 PDR claims that the incidence is “7 per 100,000” ([227] p 3463) and cites a source from a study written up in the 2 Oct 1997 New England Journal of Medicine [160]. But looking at the actual figures cited in the NEJM study itself, one finds they are claiming less than 1 case per 100,000 of bacterial meningitis. ([160], page 970) Guess the PDR sales force figure no one would actually look up the sources they cite, which generally is true. We can learn two things here:
1. PDR’s sources can’t necessarily be trusted, and
2. the incidence of bacterial meningitis is 7x rarer than they claim.
PROVEN EFFICACY
Does the Prevnar vaccine work? This subject is addressed head-on by a very thoroughly researched article entitled Prevnar : a critical review of a new childhood vaccine, by British educator MichaelHorwin. [161] The original clinical trials on Prevnar resulted in only
a 7% reduction
in earaches from the vaccine. That’s the highest benefit they’re can claim for Prevnar – a vaccine for simple childhood earache, with all the above dangerous side effects, that may only work 7% of the time.”
Vaccination Is Not Immunization – now in 6 languages.
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5. CHALLENGE TO DEBATE
Since the new book came out, I have been hearing many loud voices proclaiming the safety and necessity of vaccines. So let’s make this very simple:
I hereby challenge any and all parties who wish to defend the scientific value of vaccines to a public debate, to be held in the classic collegiate forensics format.
I have advisors from the the best university debate departments who will moderate.
So step forward, all you experts in vaccine theory. Here’s your chance to be heard. Teacher or poser? Expert or dilettante? Do you have the courage to step up and defend your private contentions in public? Some credentials required, but will consider all takers. What say you? Want to be taken seriously? Here’s your chance.
How about some chiropractic professors? Want to keep hiding, or will you step up? Let’s bring the issue out in the open once and for all. Many people are waiting to hear your side of it.
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