British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh

A related development:

Zeno2712's response to the Pittilo Consultation on the proposed regulation of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine is a must read as it gets to the heart of the problem regarding the (lack of) protection of the public from unscrupulous practices/practitioners. He uses the UK General Chiropractic Council as an example of how "statutory regulation has spectacularly failed in the most fundamental of areas: that of protecting the public from bogus claims":
http://www.zenosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Pittilo-Consultation-Response.pdf

Lifted from this blog post:
http://www.zenosblog.com/2009/11/regulating-nonsense-my-response/
 
Filippo Lippi said:
One of the photos that accompanies that story shows a baby being manipulated.

Sickening.
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Well, no, they have thought of that.

Conveniently, in the treatment of babies, the force used to realign the spine is described as being similar to the force you would use to test an apricot for ripeness.
A very gentle soft touch.

Why the baby's spine would therefore not immediately jump out of alignment as soon as its mother picks it up is anyone's guess however.
 
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Swerek said:
The art of chiropractic consists of keeping the patient paying while Nature heals the disease.
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Whether we ascribe this to Chiropractic or medical practice in general, I can't help wondering where the art in Libel Law lies. Is the plan to wait till all the parties involved die of old age , so the lawyers keep all the money?

How in the name of all that's holy can it take a whole bunch of adults so long to sort something so simple? Are all lawyers paid by the hour?

In my line of work, (making holes in the ground), we do our damnedest to save time during every aspect of the job; five minutes here, ten minutes there- at the end of drilling a 100 day well, we may have saved a week. Offshore, that could be a two million dollar cost saving off the cost of a well.
This entire affair could be settled in twenty minutes. What the blazes is taking so long?
 
Soapy Sam said:
Whether we ascribe this to Chiropractic or medical practice in general, I can't help wondering where the art in Libel Law lies. Is the plan to wait till all the parties involved die of old age , so the lawyers keep all the money?

How in the name of all that's holy can it take a whole bunch of adults so long to sort something so simple? Are all lawyers paid by the hour?

In my line of work, (making holes in the ground), we do our damnedest to save time during every aspect of the job; five minutes here, ten minutes there- at the end of drilling a 100 day well, we may have saved a week. Offshore, that could be a two million dollar cost saving off the cost of a well.
This entire affair could be settled in twenty minutes. What the blazes is taking so long?
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It is so difficult these days to find people who know Latin. :duck:
 
Soapy Sam said:
What the blazes is taking so long?
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My sentiments entirely.

But is applies to all legal matters.
An acquaintance of mine was assaulted in a pub some years ago. He sustained soem facial bruising and a cracked rib. He made the mistake of pressing charges against the assailant. There followed an initial police interview, a formal statement, signing of the formal statement, discussions with the police prosecutor, a preliminary hearing where the assailant was sent to trial, further discussions with the police prosecutor, and finally the trial - except that, just before the trial was to commence, the assailant did a plea bargain and got off with a bit of community service.
The whole process took over two years.
 
Soapy Sam said:
This entire affair could be settled in twenty minutes. What the blazes is taking so long?
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Queueing. Until permission to appeal was granted they couldn't agree a date to hear the case. Once it was ruled that the appeal could be heard both sides put in their unavailable dates and an estimate of the duration of the hearing and the court looks for a slot for it. Normally courts have 6 months of bookings.
 
Does anyone know why, in the whole wide universe of possible bogus claims, the chiros choose to claim to treat infant colic and asthma?

Does this reflect their workload? If I had a colicky baby I can't see why, as a parent, I would even think of going to a chiro, so it would seem to me that this is more a case of it being pushed as a claim by the practitioners rather than being pulled by demand from parents and patients.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
Does anyone know why, in the whole wide universe of possible bogus claims, the chiros choose to claim to treat infant colic and asthma?

Does this reflect their workload? If I had a colicky baby I can't see why, as a parent, I would even think of going to a chiro, so it would seem to me that this is more a case of it being pushed as a claim by the practitioners rather than being pulled by demand from parents and patients.
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It seems to be a blatant case of practitioner practice building tactics. IOW, catch ‘em young by appearing to successfully treat self-limiting or fluctuating conditions that impact negatively on the quality of parents' lives. See the Quackometer’s revealing post on ‘How the British Chiropractic Association Targets Children’ here:
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/06/how-british-chiropractic-association.html

And UK Skeptics have this to say on the matter:
Targeting children

As with many alternative practitioners, chiropractors are looking to increase their presence in an expanding, lucrative market. One target market seems to be children who, apparently, cannot be too young to have their spines examined and manipulated.

Chiropractors have claimed that conditions that may respond to chiropractic care in babies and young children include: asthma; ear infections; Attention Deficit Disorder; learning disorders; respiratory problems; clumsiness; bed-wetting; stomach problems; hyperactivity; colic; and immune system problems.

Chiropractic has been described as "a treatment in search of a disease". An illustration of this effect was shown when Stephen Barrett, M.D took a perfectly healthy young girl to five different chiropractors, and each one gave a misdiagnosis based on finding subluxations. This form of subjective diagnosis is common in alternative therapies. Each practitioner coming up with a different diagnosis and treatment to all others practising in exactly the same field.

A claim chiropractors make is that by treating babies and children, they are preventing disease from developing. Proving this type of negative is not possible, and the claim is an emotional appeal to fear.

http://www.skeptics.org.uk/article.php?dir=articles&article=chiropractic.php
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Rose Shapiro also touches on the subject in her book Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools Of Us All (p.144). Here’s a snippet:
Practice-building advice for the modern chiropractor comes from CJ Mertz, former president of the International Chiropractors Association, through the scheme he calls ‘Lifetime Family Wellness™’. He says "ordinary practices become championship teams by mastering the fundamentals of a high volume subluxation –based, cash-driven, Lifetime Family Wellness™ practice" and claims to have "revolutionised 14,000 practices worldwide" through his lectures and franchise schemes http://www.teamwlp.com/ One might hope that even the most unsuspecting client might be able to detect the hard sell implicit in the following outline written by Mertz which appeared in the Chiropractor’s Journal, but it must be difficult to resist, especially while lying prone and semi-naked. This is how C J Mertz suggests chiropractors promote what he calls a Waiting List Practice:
  • Step One: When talking to a prospective new patient your [assistant] asks “Is this appointment for you or your entire family?”
  • Step Two: During your pre-consultation, let the patient know you make a point of creating a family record for the detection of vertebral subluxation…

More links to chiropractic practice building gurus can be found here:
http://www.chirobase.org/09Links/pb.html
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For the benefit of new, or drive-by readers, here’s a reminder of what impartial British scientists, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, propose on p.285 of their recent book*, Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial, that all chiropractors be compelled by law to disclose to their patients prior to treatment:
“WARNING: This treatment carries the risk of stroke or death if spinal manipulation is applied to the neck. Elsewhere on the spine, chiropractic therapy is relatively safe. It has shown some evidence of benefit in the treatment of back pain, but conventional treatments are usually equally effective and much cheaper. In the treatment of all other conditions, chiropractic therapy is ineffective except that it might act as a placebo.”
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*After having taken a thorough look at all the available evidence on chiropractic.
 
Colic is the perfect condition for woos to "treat". There doesn't seem to be any real medicine that works very well, and the condition resolves spontaneously and very suddenly at about 3 months of age. So whatever cure you were trying at the time seems quite miraculous. And the parenting messaging boards are the perfect place for parents to share tips for their miraculous cures.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
Colic is the perfect condition for woos to "treat".
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Yes.

In Denmark, chiros have largely succeeded in claiming all sorts of ailments to come from "pinched" nerves, and if you do not know what a "pinched" nerve really is, and what effect it would have, or that newborn babies have too few bones to pinch anything, it sort of sounds reasonable that a pinched nerve must be painful, and that it must be a good thing if a chiro can unpinch the nerve.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Treating an infant for anything is a lot like treating an animal in that feedback from the patient is severely limited.
Rolfe has often observed that the placebo effect in veterinary homoeopathy does not work on the animal, but on the animal's owner. In the case of a baby, the parent feels better because they have taken charge and done something. Whether the child feels better is another story.
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UK Skeptics have an article on veterinary woo that sums it up nicely:
Vets, like doctors, hold a lot of power over their clients. This can lead to a placebo effect by proxy where the animal’s owner is assured that the treatment will work, the owner de-stresses and becomes less anxious, the animal senses this and de-stresses itself and responds more positively to its owner’s more positive attitude. Illusion: the treatment is working! But of course the animal remains medically untreated.

http://www.skeptics.org.uk/article.php?dir=articles&article=it_works_in_animals.php
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BTW, yesterday the UK McTimoney Chiropractic Association unveiled its new website, complete with a promotion of neck manipulation for infants...
http://www.mctimoneychiropractic.or...content&view=article&id=58&catid=43&Itemid=37
 
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