I guess I should begin this series by going easy on people’s inane beliefs. To do this, I will begin with chiropractors. You might be wondering, “What could be wrong with chiropractics?” I’m sure that many of you, just like myself, have seen many private practices that have “chiropractor” printed on the door. You should be able to smell the garbage a mile away from a simple history lesson.

Chiropractic is based on the premise that a dysfunction on a spinal joint can interfere with the nervous system. D.D. Palmer founded this “health” care profession in 1895. Palmer held many jobs, including beekeeper, schoolteacher and grocery store owner. You should notice that none of these professions has anything to do with medicine or health care, which brings me to the logical fallacy of the day: Argumentum ad Verecundiam. This informal fallacy, also called appeal to authority, is committed when one tries to use a person unfamiliar to the subject of discourse as an authoritative figure. For instance: Isaac Newton believed God exists. Therefore it must be true. Contrary to popular belief, Newton was a physicist, not an angel, and so this is a fallacious argument. Likewise D.D. Palmer was a grocery shop owner, not a doctor. In fact, he was prosecuted in 1902 for practicing medicine without a license.

Now unlike other alternative “medicine” such as homeopathy, acupuncture, snake oil and magnets (which by the way are all humbug but relatively harmless), chiropractic is actually dangerous. From Stephen Barrett’s article “Chiropractic’s Dirty Secrets: Neck Manipulation and Stroke”: “In 1992, researchers at the Stanford Stroke Center asked 486 California members of the American Academy of Neurology how many patients they had seen during the previous two years who had suffered a stroke within 24 hours of neck manipulation by a chiropractor. The survey was sponsored by the American Heart Association. A total of 177 neurologists reported treating 56 such patients, all of whom were between the ages of 21 and 60. One patient had died, and 48 were left with permanent neurologic deficits such as slurred speech, inability to arrange words properly and vertigo (dizziness). The usual cause of the strokes was thought to be a tear between the inner and outer walls of the vertebral arteries, which caused the arterial walls to balloon and block the flow of blood to the brain. Three of the strokes involved tears of the carotid arteries.”

Basically it’s like this: Most chiropractic is pretty harmless and acts as nothing more than placebos. Unfortunately many chiropractors practice neck manipulation, which is actually dangerous. Even when a patient tells chiropractors about back pain or some pain in the lower body, chiropractors will sometimes perform neck manipulation. Neck manipulation involves pulling the patients head straight then turning it left and right. When the neck is pulled and turned like this, the vertebral arteries are put under stress and can cause tears in the arteries. When this happens, the blood will clot and repair the arteries, but afterward these clots can stop the blood flow to the brain and cause a stroke.

Now I don’t expect my word to be taken so easily and I would invite all of you to do your research on this subject (you’ll have to dig a little because there is a lot of bull). If you have loved ones who go to chiropractors or if you yourself go to a chiropractor, I will be more than happy to take your money and awkwardly rub your back in return. And if I didn’t have this pesky thing called a conscience, I would have no qualms taking advantage of the credulous.

Unfortunately it takes more than just a vague understanding of the human body to heal it. The thousands of years it has taken our species to understand what little we know about our own bodies has been deeply rooted in experimentation, data, evidence, science, chemistry, biology and physics. It takes more than mere belief and placebos to heal the most awful of diseases and alleviate suffering. I know many of you are pre-med and I hope you never forget the Hippocratic oath.

About the writer:

Ken Ueda is a senior math major and can be reached for contact at [email protected].