April 2005, Vol. 15, Iss. 2
Table of Contents
Altered Cervical Lordosis and DJD • Chiropractor Invents Car Seat Headpiece • DACBRs Cause Professional Embarrassment at RAC • Eight Major Aberrant Forms of the Lumbo-Pelvic Spine • European Spine Journal to Publish 6th CBP® Clinical Control Trial • Evidence Based or Not • Glutamate/Aspartame - Pain and Your Brain • Greg Buchanan Donates $30,000 to CBP® Nonprofit • Inappropriate Characterization of CBP® Technique • Missed Appointments and Patient Education • Money, Taxes, Life and Practice • Palmer College Takes Alumni Group to Court • PosturePrint™ Research with ICA • Presenting Defendable Care Options to Patients • Published Papers Near 81 • Resign or be Terminated • Thermography: Renewed Interest • Using Silence to Communicate • Whiplash Injuries: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, Medical Management and Prognosis
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DACBRs Cause Professional Embarrassment at RAC
By Jason Haas, D.C.
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Dr. Jason Haas graduated from Life Chiropractic College West. He participated as a CBP student club officer and instructor throughout his chiropractic education. He successfully passed the CBP® Club Certification in June of 1997 and passed the CBP® Technique Certification, making him a Distinguished Fellow of Clinical Biomechanics of Posture®. He is originally from Colorado where he attended undergraduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His association with CBP® began at Life University in Georgia where he was Student Club President and Vice President. He has co-authored the Cervical Rehabilitation text with Drs. Don and Deed Harrison and has been a contributing author to research papers on the Thoracic Spine Normal Model, reliability studies, and a clinical control trial showing the efficacy of CBP® protocols. He is currently the International Chiropractic Association representative by proxy for the state of Wyoming. Dr. Haas is currently working with CBP® researchers in Wyoming and Nevada to further the knowledge of the human spine and advance chiropractic principles.
On March17-20 the Annual Research Agenda Conference was held at the Alexis Park hotel in Las Vegas Nevada. I was asked to speak on behalf of Dr. Deed Harrison presenting the paper, “Radiographic Pseudo-Scoliosis in Normal Male Subjects Following Voluntary Lateral Translation (Side Glide) of the Thoracic Spine.” Dr. Harrison previously presented this project at the annual proceedings of the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine in 2002.
Dr. Harrison, because of a scheduling conflict with RAC and the CBP® seminar in Montreal, Canada, asked me to present in his place since I was a co-author on the paper.
As a clinician, I feel that this is one of the more clinically relevant papers that CBP® research has authored. This study gives clinicians the ability to distinguish between “simple” abnormal translation postures (side shifts comparing the thorax to the pelvis) and clinically relevant scoliosis. Clinically, I see many of these abnormal postures on a daily basis in my patient population and discrimination between the early stages of lumbar scoliosis and trunk translation can be difficult.
I tried my best to present the need for our study, the methods, results, and to discuss the clinical significance of this paper. However, this was my first time presenting a research project on the platform at a formal research conference so as you might imagine I was a little nervous.
Following my presentation at the RAC conference, I was verbally insulted and assaulted. Many of the members of the audience ignored the study data and potential relevance of our findings in favor of “Ad Hominem” (character) attacks.
For example, following this presentation, Dr. Cynthia Peterson questioned me as to whether I was concerned because we used ionizing radiation for this study. Dr. Terry Yochum, professed that he was disturbed by our “incestuous” CBP® NonProfit Institutional Review Board (IRB). These and other obviously biased and unbelievably inappropriate remarks following the presentation of our study shocked me.
Furthermore, Dr. Terry Yochum, in the form of a question, claimed that our paper and the others published by the CBP® Research Team were, “The reason that chiropractic is not accepted into the mainstream.” Honestly, I was dumfounded that these individuals, many of whom teach future Doctors of Chiropractic, just couldn’t get beyond petty, Ad Hominem attacks on the character or ethics of our research team.
I did my best to present the fact that the CBP® IRB meets all national and international standards for an Institutional Review Board. They did not seem to care. I was even more disturbed when the implication was made that the subjects in our study would be at increased risk of leukemia or breast cancer.
They even had the audacity to ask whether the individuals signed informed consent! What a tremendously ridiculous statement/question!?!
How could any self-respecting researcher-utilizing subjects in a study not get informed consent? Apparently, they did not even read the RAC guidelines for manuscripts to be submitted for possible inclusion at the conference. RAC guidelines clearly state, in order for your manuscript to even be reviewed, you must have an IRB and informed consent when using human subjects. Obviously, these individuals had a preconceived agenda. Dr. John Taylor even had the audacity to suggest that, “Any competent chiropractor could find these (our study data findings) abnormalities without the use of x-rays!?!?
At one point during this questioning period, another CBP® colleague had stood up to help address the inappropriate concerns regarding the use of x-ray as used in our study on healthy volunteers.
Two issues were raised that completely refute the safety issues with use of diagnostic x-ray.
First, the presumed health risks associated with low dose radiation are based on data extrapolated from high dose exposures (atomic bomb data). This extrapolation is done in a linear fashion, called the Linear-No Threshold (LNT) model and assumes that any amount of radiation is a health risk. This model has been directly tested and found to be ‘invalid,’ (Cohen, 1994,1995, 2000) and it has even been stated: “THE CANCER RISK FROM DIAGNOSTIC RADIOGRAPHY IS MUCH LOWER THAN IS GIVEN BY USUAL ESTIMATES, AND MAY WELL BE ZERO” (Cohen, 2000).
Second, there is a substantial amount of (unknown) evidence that low level radiation (as given by x-rays) actually stimulates health. In fact, “DATA FROM RADON EXPOSURE IN CHRONICALLY EXPOSED NUCLEAR WORKERS, ACUTELY EXPOSED HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI VICTIMS AND OBSERVERS OF ATMOSPHERIC NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS, COMBINED WITH ANIMAL RESULTS, PRESENT IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE THAT LOW DOSES OF IONIZING RADIATION ARE BENEFICIAL” (Goraczko, 2000).
In retrospect, I was rather personally insulted by the presumption that CBP® is the reason that chiropractic is not being accepted in the mainstream. This comment made me sick to my stomach. I could not believe that these chiropractic research “Role Models” (term used extremely loosely) could be so ignorant as to the current state of the literature and the “mainstream.”
For example, just two weeks before the RAC, I attended the Spinal Injury Foundation’s 2005 International Whiplash Trauma Congress in Breckenridge, Colorado. This conference was very well attended by some of the most respected researchers, and clinicians on numerous spine-related conditions.
There are several chiropractors on the board of this organization and at least four of the presenters were chiropractors. I found the entire proceeding to be very refreshing with many of the presenters, MD’s and PhD’s demonstrating the benefits of conservative care in the treatment of whiplash and spine related conditions. The general tone of the conference was non-confrontational and of all of the presenters, none made the ridiculous type of statements questioning the ethics of the fellow researchers.
Furthermore, THE ONLY CHIROPRACTIC TECHNIQUE MENTIONED IN THE ENTIRE PROCEEDINGS AND REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE WAS THE WORK OF THE HARRISON’S AND THE CBP® RESEARCH TEAM by Dr. Richard Seroussi, M.D., M.Sc of the University of Washington’s Seattle Spine & Rehabilitation Medicine in a presentation entitled, “Review of the current imaging and other diagnostic studies for whiplash related disorders: Utility, limitations and future promise.” This statement demonstrated that chiropractic is being spearheaded into the mainstream by the quality literary work by the CBP® team, not dragged down by old, stale ideology. And, I feel it is interesting to note that Dr. Yochum’s textbook on radiology and Dr. Peterson’s “facet hyperplasia” research was absent from this review of the imaging literature!
This further confirmed my belief that many in the DACBR and chiropractic research community ignore the current state of chiropractic and its associated literature in favor of their own personal agendas. No matter how much conflicting literature is published, they will continue to profess the erroneous belief that chiropractic has limited benefits for back pain and neck pain, that x-rays should never be taken, that subluxation does not exist and that the only great chiropractic work comes from “the good ol boy network” of people that think like they do.
This RAC left such a very bad taste in my mouth for our chiropractic “role models.” I thoroughly understand now why many clinicians would not want to participate in these venues. I believe that these people owe CBP® and myself an apology for such Ad Hominem remarks. I was saddened to see this.
The good news is that following the conference, I was even more determined to continue to work with the CBP® research team and continue the strive for top quality subluxation based research.
