Doctors: keep chiropractic 'at a distance’

Press, 6 December 1979, Page 26

Doctors: keep chiropractic ' at a distance’

I PA " Wellington The editorial in th* latest i“New Zealand Medical Jour-: i Pal” urges doctors to keep! chiropractic “at a distance’’! until they have scrutinised! What it has to offer. The editorial is harshly critical of the recent findings of the Commission Of Inquiry into Chiropractic. The commission said chiroopractors should be accepted as partners into the health Care system of New Zealand. They should be accepted as specialists in hospitals, and doctors should refer patients to them. The commission suggested social security and accident compensation benefits should be available to chiropractors.' The editorial says the doc- ■ tors will have to explore “the ' nether world of pain of mus-Culo-skeletal origin, particularly spinal.” “The task for the future: should be to submit the chiroopractic case to critical scrutiny just in the same way that new substances have to

|j be examined however dubi-l ■ ouS their Origins — until 1 chiropractic has mor* going ' jfor it than popular acclaim,, iwe must keep it at a dis- ' i tance.” The editorial also criticises,, the make-up of the tribunal , of three — a Queen's counsel , as chairman, a headmistress, and a professor of chemistry. It says they were "all people of high intelligence, but innocents in thA woods of, medicine, whether orthodox or otherwise.” It says the commission, made much of chiropractic: success, and little of chiropractic failure. "Some evidence was given that failure to give significant symptomatic relief for a group with back pain wAs as much as one in five, or that positive results occurred in some 70 per cent.” The editorial says money i spent on taking chirdprACtics into the health system would be better Spent on trials to evaluate the chird-, praetors’ treatment claims.