A question of libel - science and chiropractic 'medicine'
From the UK
Guardian comes this sad tale of science and libel:
Why are they trying to gag a top British science writer?
This week, Simon Singh, one of Britain's best science writers, will decide whether to carry on playing a devilish version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He has already lost �100,000 defending his right to speak frankly. He could walk away. No one would think the worse of him if he did. Or he could go on and risk losing the full million by ensnaring himself in the rapacious world of an English judiciary that seems ever eager to bow to the demands of Saudi oil billionaires, Russian oligarchs and the friends of Saddam Hussein to censor critics and punish them with staggering damages and legal fees.
It seems no choice at all. Any friend Singh phoned would tell him to cut his losses and run. But if he were to turn to the audience, he would hear scientists all but screaming at him to go to the Court of Appeal and challenge a judgment that threatens the robust discussions open societies depend on. A national defence campaign is ready to roll on his command. At a preliminary support meeting, a cheering crowd acclaimed him as a free-speech champion.
In truth, he makes an unlikely warrior. Singh is a serious and amiable man, whose accounts of the solving of Fermat's last theorem and code breaking won high praise and provoked no controversy. Last year, he published Trick or Treatment? with Professor Edzard Ernst on the reliability of "alternative medicine", and devoted a chapter to the strange history of chiropractic treatments. One Daniel David Palmer invented the therapy in Davenport, Iowa, in 1895, when he convinced himself that he had cured a janitor's deafness by "racking" his back.
Inspired by this miracle, Palmer developed the theory that "95% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae", rather than, say, the germs that so bothered conventional doctors of the time. Chiropractic therapy was a new religion, Palmer declared, and he was a successor to Christ, Muhammad and Martin Luther. At home, he practised vigorous racking on his children.
His son, Bartlett, described how he beat them with "straps until we carried welts, for which Father was often arrested and spent nights in jail". Bartlett bought the first car Davenport had seen and paid his father back by running him down on the day of the Palmer School of Chiropractic Homecoming Parade.
Palmer died of his injuries a few weeks later, but his ideas lived on. In 2008, the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) announced that its members could help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying. Writing in the Guardian, Singh said the claim was "bogus". Chiropractic treatments may help relieve back pain, but Professor Ernst had examined 70 trials and found no evidence that they could relieve other conditions.
The very idea that this is even going through the court system is ludicrous. Chiropractic is great for joint and muscle pain. I have used it before and gotten great relief. The same for acupuncture. I certainly do not see my acupuncturist when I have an infection or a burn or other injury, I see my Doctor. By the same token, for relief after my hip surgery, I used the acupuncturist and not prescription medication.
The idea that Chiropractors are trying to expand their scope into Medicine is foolish and dangerous to their clients.
The book: Trick or Treatment
is available at Amazon.
There is also a website:
Trick or Treatment and a �10,000 challenge to any homeopath to prove their efficacy in a standardized double-blind test of 100 or greater participants (as yet unclaimed).
Posted by DaveH at May 31, 2009 2:51 PM