Joseph B. Strauss,
  D.C., F.C.S.C
  Editor

  Volume 16 - Number 1
  October 1999

A Personal Message from Joe Strauss
This issue marks the beginning of the 16th year of my writing The Pivot Review. It has been an honor and privilege to share my views of chiropractic with you. It has also been an exciting period in the history of the chiropractic profession. We have seen the insurance boom and bust. We have seen schools open and close as well as the greatest period of prosperity for the profession. It has also been a time to tighten our belts. With all of that, The Pivot has tried to present the philosophy of chiropractic for a congruent and a successful practice.

The first Pivot was mailed to 300 chiropractors along with a form to send back if you desired to keep receiving it. Today we mail on a quarterly basis to over 3,500 chiropractors in the U.S. and six foreign countries. Additionally, over 2,000 students regularly receive The Pivot. We are happy to report that during this time we have never asked for a penny to subscribe.

Two years ago the Foundation for the Advancement of Chiropractic Education (F.A.C.E.), publishers of The Pivot, began a Web Page. Thousands of chiropractors and students regularly access our web page to learn about and discuss chiropractic.

This year we have begun the Tapes for Everyone Program which, in my opinion, is the most exciting public education endeavor since B.J. began W.O.C. I wish I could sit down with every reader and share with them the potential this program has to change the public's perception of chiropractic. Nothing like this has ever been undertaken by a chiropractor or chiropractic organization and the possibilities for building practices and public awareness are astronomical.

I could not end this note without thanking all of you who have encouraged me personally and who have supported the Foundation and its programs. With your help we continue to pursue new avenues and to design and promote new products to educate both our fellow chiropractors and the public.

This is a commentary on Volume 34, "Evolution or Revolution" Chapter 4
This chapter is a must read for the chiropractor. We have learned that new principles are needed in order to advance mankind. Today we discuss this concept in terms of creating new "paradigms." B.J. talks about Henry Ford's new principle which replaced the principle of transportation by one's own feet or by an animal. He also discusses Samuel Morse's new principle of verbal communication over distances far greater than that which the voice will carry and the principle of electricity and harnessing it for our own use. Many more principles like these have been developed in the last 150 years. B.J. likens the discovery of chiropractic to that of these great principles which have changed mankind for the better (although some would disagree with that assertion). B.J. tells us that in order to utilize a new principle, we must first break with the old. Ford needed the new principle of the combustion engine before he could revolutionize travel. To B.J., chiropractic represented a break with the medical model, a new principle on the cause of disease (above-down vs. outside-in). But I see it a little differently. As a cure for the cause of disease, B.J. says we have "refined the idea of getting sick people well." But if that is all chiropractic does, then we really have not created a new paradigm or a new principle. The principle has always addressed the cause of disease. B.J. just disagreed with the medical community over what that cause was. The real paradigm shift or "new principle," as B.J. calls it, came about when we concluded that chiropractic really is not about disease, its about improved innate expression. It is not about getting sick people well, it is about enabling people to better reach their potential in every area of life. Disease is not about potential. No one has a potential for disease. What they do have is a potential for health. They may not reach their potential and one of the consequences of that may be disease but we are interested in the potential for health. You do not have potential for negatives. One does not have a potential for failure, only a potential for success. Not reaching that potential is called failure. We are not programmed for failure any more than we are programmed for disease. We have potential for happiness, for excellence, for knowledge, for longevity of life and for athletic performance. We can either reach these potentials, or fall short of them to varying degrees. The really revolutionary principle in chiropractic will never be realized as long as we address or even acknowledge sickness, disease or their accompanying effect, symptoms or even their cause as part of our model. We will be like Henry Ford trying to improve upon the horse and buggy. He could probably have made some improvements in breeding and in design but it would still be a horse and buggy. That would not have been a new principle, just a refinement of the old one. I believe B.J. truly gave us this new principle but he only gave it to us in "theory." He never seemed to put it into practice. It was as if he talked about the combustion engine but continued to improve upon the design of the horse and buggy. Perhaps had he lived longer, he would have stopped refining the "getting sick people well" principle and begun the modern-straight chiropractic paradigm. I like to think he would have. Perhaps he would have developed it sooner than 1976 and involved more of the profession by virtue of his authority. I wish he had. But he did not. As it is, we did not have that breakthrough until the late 70s and we have been about the process of refining that principle for the last 25 years. Imagine where we could be today had B.J. put it all together. To his credit, I think B.J. refined the old paradigm of getting sick people well to such a point that we realized it could not be refined any further and yet it still did not sufficiently meet mankind's needs. It was not until then that we realized a new principle was needed. Of course, the issue is not where we could have been, but where we go from here. We need to move forward with the potential principle, some of us need to abandon the getting sick people well principle and some of us just need to get out of the way.

Terminology
I was sitting in a chiropractic seminar recently when a well-known chiropractic speaker was giving a strong motivational talk. In the middle of it he spoke of "giving your chiropractic treatment" to your patients. I was really stunned at the use of the word "treatment." I guess I lead a pretty sheltered life inasmuch as most of the seminars I go to are straight. I have never heard a straight chiropractor use the term "treatment." We are, at least in that regard, strict in our terminology. Treatment is a medical term. We chiropractors would not use the term diagnosis in the sense of "diagnosing a subluxation." That is another medical term and we are trying our best not to confuse chiropractic with medicine. We are separate professions with separate objectives. We realize that to stay separate and distinct from the medical profession, we must keep our terminology unique. I think that we do that very well in the straight chiropractic community. However, while we do a good job at avoiding mixing medical terminology, it seems to me that we straight chiropractors often do mix terminology from the opposite side of the spectrum. We tend to use religious or theological terminology very promiscuously in defining chiropractic, our philosophy and our objective. D.D. did it as did B.J., but that doesn't make it right, especially if our desire is to make chiropractic clearer to the public and I believe both of the Palmers would have wanted that. After all, they are the ones who made up most of the unique terminology that we use today.

There is an overlapping with chiropractic concepts and theological concepts. But that does not mean we should use the terminology interchangeably. In fact, that is all the more reason to use different terms, so that the overlap does not wipe out the clear lines of demarcation. That is the very reason why we use different terms than medicine. The medical doctor is ministering to a person's physical needs. So are we. But there is a difference in that ministration, hence the terms treatment and adjustment. Determining the presence of something wrong in the body is done by both the physician and the chiropractor. But the something itself is different and exclusive. Medical doctors do not diagnose vertebral subluxations and we do not analyze medical conditions. I like the term Chiropractic Interview rather than Case History. Even though some of the information elicited is the same, the basic objective is different and consequently, we should call it something different.

If straight chiropractors can easily grasp and adhere to all of the above with regard to medicine, why do so many of us still use religious or theological terms to explain our unique philosophy? Why do chiropractors say they unite "man the physical and man the spiritual?" Some chiropractors talk about innate intelligence being "God in man" or "spirit." These terms belong to theology and have long before chiropractic began. They are unique to the area of theology just as much as diagnosis and treatment are unique to medicine. Some say, "D.D. and B.J. used them!" That is true. I have old ads of D.D.'s and B.J.'s where they used the word "treatment." For the most part however, they moved on and developed different terms. So should we. If our goal is to clearly communicate chiropractic, then we have to be clear with our vocabulary.

Mental Impulses

I In the latest issue of Chiropractic Technique there appears a two-part article by David R. Seaman, D.C., M.S., D.A.B.C.N, entitled "Antiquated Concepts Related to Chiropractic Technique Part I: A Case Against Mental Impulses and Nerve Interference." Comments on Part II which was published in the same journal will appear in a later issue of The Pivot.

The article attempts to refute the "cherished beliefs" concerning the existence of the mental impulse which he sees as primarily a "straight chiropractic concept" and the "more widely accepted" concept of nerve interference. Seaman's argument is best summed up in a question that he asks early in the essay, "How is it possible that something immaterial, difficult to define, and impossible to demonstrate empirically could be heralded as the defining factor for a health care profession that exists in the third dimension and that often clamors to be viewed as scientifically based?" He goes on to say that there is an inconsistency in this viewpoint. Frankly, the only reason there is an inconsistency is because medicine has created a box regarding health care within which people like Seaman have chosen to stay. That box as far as medicine is concerned is totally mechanistic. It has chosen to disregard any vitalistic component to the healing process or to acknowledge a concept apart from the matter that is involved in health. The creation of that box, by the way, is relatively recent.

I am not very knowledgeable in the science of physics. We only needed two semesters to get a license in the state of Pennsylvania in 1967. From my limited understanding, however, a man named Albert Einstein stepped out of the box called Newtonian Physics some years back and his thinking resulted in a formula that every student knows: E=MC . Einstein's work involved the "immaterial." It was "difficult to define, and impossible to demonstrate empirically" (Getting matter to move at the speed of light squared is no small task). Yet, what Einstein did has given us an entirely new field of study called quantum physics as well as nuclear energy which we use in the "third dimension." Dr. Seaman asserts that since we do not know or understand the mental impulse it should not be "the defining element of who we are as a profession." That is like suggesting that since we cannot get matter to move at the speed of light squared, Einstein should have left that out of his equation! The equation cannot exist without it and chiropractic cannot exist as we know it without the concept of the mental impulse. It can, however, exist as a treatment for joint dysfunction without this concept which seems to always be the thrust of Dr. Seaman's writings.

The author castigates us for a lack of "investigation into the nature of the mental impulse." While his charge is legitimate that we have done little research into the concept of nerve interference, the fact that the mental impulse, as he has acknowledged, exists in the "immaterial" realm makes it impossible to study empirically. In making this charge, however, he can then illogically move into his conclusion: since we have not investigated it empirically, it is therefore a religious concept. To substantiate this claim he uses what are clearly pseudo-religious comments from one of B.J.'s later texts. I believe that since B.J.'s time, the straight chiropractic profession has "addressed the religious aspects of the mental impulse concept "and taken them out of the religious realm. While they are no longer religious concepts (if they ever were), they are still metaphysical ones and probably are not discussed in the type of journals that Dr. Seaman reads hence, he is unfamiliar with the continuing evolution of thought on the mental impulse.

In refuting the religious aspects of the mental impulse, Seaman reviews the development of the mental impulse theory from as far back as the 5th Century BC. It is interesting that these theories had nothing to do with religion. They were theories of life. In fact, his quotes come from a paper entitled "The Nature of Life in the History of Medical and Philosophic Thinking" published in the American Journal of Nephrology. The fact is that the thinking which promotes concepts like the mental impulse was the predominant way of thinking little more than a century ago. Mechanism then became the controlling viewpoint of the scientific community since with the reductionist approach answering questions such as the "nature of life" was no longer important. The promise that "one day we will be able to explain life in terms of chemistry and physics alone" seemed to be sufficient for the scientist. If all you address is joint dysfunction (sprains and strains) and practice in the reductionist/mechanistic model, the nature of life is really of little importance. It is insufficient however for some of us chiropractors if we are going to work with life rather than disease. If we are going to improve its expression and enhance one's life experience, then we want to know the nature of it.

Dr. Seaman maintains that it is not "appropriate to promote" the mental impulse "(U)ntil more is understood about this concept." I disagree. If Dr. Seaman does not want us to promote it, he should come up with a better one. To date, the mechanists have not only not come up with a superior theory for the phenomena we call life and the intelligently created force that directs it, but they have not even come up with an inferior one. They only give us the promise that one day they will and they have been promising that for far longer than 104 years.

Dr. Seaman finishes his section on the mental impulse, saying that "chiropractic and vertebral subluxation can do fine without the burdensome mental impulse dogma." He cites three articles to support that argument, all written by him. If we want to practice Dr. Seaman's model of chiropractic, we need to give up the concept of the mental impulse which he equates with faith healing practices. That assertion detracts from the scholarly presentation of his argument. The model that we present has no relationship to religious approaches to healing and to even suggest that they are associated is academically dishonest.

This argument will go on forever and perhaps we are all wasting our breath and ink discussing it, for it really gets down to a way of looking at life and until we can agree on this very fundamental issue, we will continue to move our practices in different directions.

Dead Doctors Don't Lie and Live Doctors Don't Tell the Truth

Most everyone has listened to or at least heard of the popular audio tape "Dead Doctors Don't Lie." Its message ultimately is about nutritional supplements and how you can receive or sell a particular supplement through a multilevel marketing program. It is an interesting tape and probably has some good material in it. Whether it is a sufficiently good message to warrant hundreds of thousands of copies being produced and disseminated to the American public is open to discussion. Regardless of whether their message is important, I know ours is. The idea that by correcting vertebral subluxation a person's potential for self-healing can be raised, as well as their potential to perform better at work or school, in sports and their potential to generally get more out of life is elevated, is an important one. I believe that every person in the world needs to hear that message in a clear way.

Unfortunately, they are not hearing it. Chiropractors are not telling the truth. We are telling them a lie, a half-truth or nothing at all. Telling people that chiropractic is a cure for all physical ailments is a lie. Chiropractic does not get sick people well. As far as getting well is concerned, the best thing that we can say about chiropractic is that sometimes it enables a person's body to work sufficiently better so that the body is able to heal itself. I am not minimizing the value of that. But I am saying that it is a far cry from the idea that vertebral subluxation is the cure for the cause of all disease.

Some chiropractors tell people half-truths. Chiropractic may help people with minor musculoskeletal conditions and studies seem to confirm that. But it seems to me if we are presenting chiropractic as a treatment for minor sprains, strains, aches and pains, we are withholding valuable information from them. Frankly, while withholding information may not seem like lying, it is anything but telling the truth or at least telling the whole truth. It is a half-truth. Chiropractic can benefit people with back problems but if your back problem goes away and you fail to reach every potential in life, you have been cheated by your chiropractor.

Most chiropractors are telling them nothing at all about the far reaching benefits of chiropractic. They say, "Well, we have not proven scientifically that nerve interference causes the body to work at less than its full potential and until it is proven, I can not promote that concept." Well that is fine for you, get your spine adjusted only when you hurt. But suppose it is proven someday in the future? How are you going to look at those parents whose children never reached their potential or the widow whose husband came 2 to 3 times in the last 10 or 12 years for a back problem and died at age 52? How about giving these people the opportunity to decide for themselves? Tell them we have not proven this scientifically but..."here's the logic and reasoning behind this information." Here is the basis for saying that regular chiropractic care will help your body to work at a higher level. Give them some information. Give them a tape. Have the decency to allow them to make that decision for themselves. You must really want to take responsibility for their health by denying them the opportunity to hear what may be the full truth about chiropractic and deciding for themselves whether they want regular care or not. Some of my practice members do not buy it. They want to use chiropractic for their back pain but at least we give them the whole story. If you believe this idea of correcting vertebral subluxation to enable the innate intelligence of the body to be more fully expressed is a bunch of nonsense, then by all means do not share that with people. But if you think there may be a shred of truth in this idea, if it sounds logical despite not being proven, then at least have the decency to share that with your practice members and let them decide for themselves what they want to do. If you knew that there was a 40% chance of a major tropical storm hitting your town, would you withhold that information because the odds were that it would not happen? No, you would share that information with people. Tell them the likelihood and allow them to decide for themselves what course of action to take. You owe the same consideration to the people who come in your office seeking chiropractic care.

Thots

Isn't it ironic that almost all the pamphlet manufacturers produce pamphlets designed to reach a small percentage of the American public (those people with one or more of about 30-40 specific diseases)? Yet the pamphlets appeal to the greater percentage of the profession. Let me get this straight. That means that the majority of the profession is anxious to see the minority of the public. Does that sound like a plan or what?

The battle between the mechanist and vitalist continues. The problem is simple. We, the vitalists, cannot prove this immaterial thing we call innate intelligence and the mechanists cannot demonstrate the concept of life by virtue of chemistry and physics alone. They say that they are getting closer and one day will. Our thinking is such that until they can create a living cell with chemicals in a test tube, we accept that there is an immaterial factor and will continue to base our practice on that. If the time should ever come that they prove life is nothing more than a mechanistic phenomena, we will rethink our position. Until that day comes, they should cease attacking us for not proving the unprovable and go out and prove what they say is provable. The burden of proof rests upon them.

Why is it that chiropractor researchers are going to great lengths to prove that chiropractic is only good for a small percentage of the public, those with musculosketal conditions. In doing so they are creating an overcrowded market and forcing those chiropractors to learn additional procedures and acquire expensive equipment so they can be competitive in this overcrowded profession. Imagine if Henry Ford directed his research and development to producing an automobile that would only be affordable and of benefit to a small percentage of the public? Every organization, profession or business is looking for ways to expand the market for their product and services except chiropractic. We are working very hard to find ways to limit our market.

Isn't it odd that the chiropractic colleges are not willing to accept the straight chiropractic model of vertebral subluxation (decreasing the life potential of individuals) but in desperation they are anxious and willing to begin to teach "alternative health care" approaches, most of which have no scientific or logical basis and merely small anecdotal proof of their validity. The colleges are grasping at the straws of naturopathy, acupuncture, and the alternative approaches while the historically accepted life preserver of straight chiropractic, the basis for their very existence, passes them by.

Mixing Vs. Adjusting

If people truly understood chiropractic, chiropractors would have no time to do anything else but adjust. If people have not understood chiropractic, then chiropractors have no time to do anything else but educate. If chiropractors truly understood chiropractic, they would not want to do anything but adjust and educate. We chiropractors seem to be latching on to this quantum-healing concept that says everything affects everything (the butterfly flapping its wings causes the hurricane). If we accept that idea, then we must acknowledge the influence that outside factors have on the cause of disease. This may be hard to accept for those who say that vertebral subluxation is the cause of all disease.