JVSR Research Update - April 2, 2001

When someone runs down our profession such as the individual from Florida, the best response is one of sadness and sympathy, such as:

"We as a profession feel a sense of complete sadness when a doctor, who hasn't check the wonderful modern research that has proven Chiropractic's tenets, expresses 19th century obsolete concepts that are of no relevance in today's world on dynamic scientific, evidence based healthcare. We hope with our hearts that this person decides to get proper care for his obvious problem. We wish him and his family well."

Respectfully
I. M. Abovethisnonsense

I am outraged to read about these published comments by "Dr." Homola. He obviously has not kept up with the literature and has not the vaguest understanding of chiropractic practice or of current vertebral subluxation theory and its components.

I have to admit that even after going through chiropractic school (I have been in practice for 4 years) I have had occassions where I have wondered if the battles we face are really worth it. Well, they are, and I am glad that the JSVR and Council on Chiropractic Practice Guidelines (especially the treatise on Vertebral Subluxation, the most lucid, clearly defined, focused analysis of chiropractic practice and subluxation concepts I have ever seen) exist, and I am glad to support JSVR. I hope one day soon to publish my own case study in JSVR, and perhaps in some small way, contribute to subluxation research.

Thanks for taking the stand on the front lines. I hope comments like this shake up the subluxation-between-the-ears called apathy from which our profession seems to suffer.

Yours sincerely,
Gerald Anzalone, D.C.ays.

Thank you for your work. All your work is so important. I do think that our political strategies should be more grass roots. Its the power of our patients that will enable us to keep doing what we do. They won't give it up no matter what the journals say. We need more press releases to mainstream media. We need your research in lay form for our offices. (much of which does disseminate through the ICPA)

And we need to empower chiropractors to talk children more. The best opening to explain the subluxation is the question, "Why do you see children?" In addition, I think more basic neuro research should be done (EEG, BSEP, nerve conduction, etc.) to settle this argument once and for all. The more we do studies on medical conditions the more we play into the hands of the medical paradigm, where we shouldn't be.

Just letting off the steam you created this morning

Yours in Chiropractic,
Dr. Adam Kerzner
Former research assistant and newsletter editor at the ICPA

Good job on Homola`s articles. I just wanted to say a quick hello.

I know you think this guy Homola is suffering from some type of--retro-cephlic anal retention, however be assured that people like him have been around ever since chiropractic was discovered. In the 1950`s there was a movie with Burt Lancaster called "Come Back Little Sheba"-Lancaster was portrayed as an alcoholic chiropractor, who became a chiropractor because he flunked out of med school.

In the 1970`s there was a book published titled "What Price Your Life" I do not remember the author, however much of what Homola is saying sounds like it came from that book. Nonetheless, it is the same attack that has been going on for years. If you need help in trying to find the book "What Price Your Life" - let me know , I may have some people who just may know name of the author.

Keep in touch.
Dr. "B'

Dr. Homola is implying that subluxation correction does exist and can be considered a treatment of disease. This kind of rhetoric only demonstrates the inconsistencies in the nature of Dr. Homola's remarks.
In terms of safety Dr. Homola states "the use of spinal adjustments as a method of prevention is unnecessary treatment that subjects patients to unnecessary risk." I can only say that if chiropractic and the subluxation theory were so destructive and dangerous to the public, than why do the actuarial charts of every major malpractice insurance carrier rate chiropractic at a fraction of the liability of traditional medicine?

I wonder why Dr. Homola became a Chiropractor? Surely with his in-depth insights into what chiropractic and the subluxation theory are not, he could have chosen a more honorable profession. It is not enough to say that "there is no credible evidence that spinal subluxations play a significant role in health conditions." The philosophy of Chiropractic states that a body free from interference to the nervous system will express life to a greater degree. If better health falls into this category so much the better, but to infer that subluxation correction WILL play a significant role in health conditions demonstrates Dr. Homola's limited knowledge of chiropractic philosophy.

Surely we all can agree that people seem to express a better adaptation to life under chiropractic care when that care is properly employed. Even Dr. Homola must have experienced this phenomenon at least once in his 40 years of practice. Even if the subluxation theory is only partially accurate, how can you justify 100+ years of continued growth of the profession? You see, this whole discussion is not about the word subluxation, it is about the concept that people express life at a higher potential when adjustments are justified and employed.

It is my opinion that there are forces at play that keep us content arguing over the type of technology, the generation of new drugs or the degree of proficiency in scientific understanding of the subluxation theory while never really addressing the problem of diversity in the different approaches to healthcare. In other words we are content discussing the "candy" while the issue of running the "candy store" goes undetected. Dr. Homola's obvious lack of understanding of basic human physiology, let alone chiropractic philosophy, leads us all to the inevitable conflicts that keeps our healthcare system in turmoil. I respect his right to freedom of speech in various journals but not at the expense of my profession. I have yet to hear a better explanation of why the human body performs better after receiving "whatever those mysterious things are that chiropractors do."

Face it Dr. Homola, your argument is old and weak. Let's hear what you do think is happening when an adjustment is given. A fool is one who questions the essence of life. A bigger fool is one who tries to prove it.

Sal Martingano, D.C.

The one quote that exposed the crux of his argument was this one...

"The mysterious and elusive chiropractic subluxation is obviously not the same as a medically recognized orthopedic subluxation, a partial dislocation, which causes pain and loss of mobility but does not cause disease or ill health. The truth is that slight misalignment of a vertebra has no effect on spinal nerves."

Here we run into that syntactical buzzsaw between vertebral subluxation, the clinical model, and subluxation, the literal phenomena. The public AND the scientific community have a map of each and neither one matches up with their direct, independant experience. We have an opportunity to shake off 106 years of fuzz...

Homola cannot dismiss the literal phenomena. He can only attack the correlations we make with it. So now we have our map of "vertebral" subluxation and his map of "orthopedic" subluxation duking it out.

The rest of the quotes echo the sentiments of every gadfly we've faced since 1895. There's a faction of the present day constituents of the profession who would nod in approval at many of the assertions Homola cites. It's ironic, *sad*, that he feels we've somehow won over a culture that is so saturated with drugs and surgery that blind faith in it results in the 4th leading cause of death. Relax Sam, relaxxxx.

The notion we're not "scientific" enough is as valid as Santa Claus within the contemporary scientific community. The real threat is that our model poses an ongoing economic challenge to every faction of the allopathic political machine. It must suck out loud to get beat by a bunch of rubber-*subluxated* chicken waving quacks like us!

Homola has given us a rare and unprecedented opportunity to talk in terms of a *figurative* subluxation, one that embraces our vitalistic roots.

By leaving the body out of the equation, we can speak about the adaptations of "living systems", which include us taxpayers! He's right, we're guilty of perpetuating the limitations of 19th century English. All we're REALLY guilty of is using lousy grammar to explain ourselves to both the public and the scientific community.

Everyone reading this post can compile a stack of peer-reviewed MEDICAL articles that substantiate the first three components of BJ Palmer's MOPI model of vertebral subluxation. If we chop off the MOP and confront the I -- which is the disruption the mental impulse -- we enter a world you can't put a fork in -- the information domain. No gadflies there.

Take his ill-designed article as a death rattle for mechanistic skeptics and use it as a declaration of independance for us vitalistic heretics. Let them persecute vitalism with their mechanistic map. Sooner or later we need to drop the lunar module and just speak from our philosophical vantage point and let the *whole* world reply in kind.

To attempt to compete with Homola, or Barrett is not a fruitful course of action anymore. To quote my editor emeritus, Ralph Boone, DC , we need an "academic immune system" that can systematically zap these gadflies on contact. It sucks that people are out in the field getting hammered by this garbage, it makes me long for the early days of Mercy, (not!). But like the Koren case a few years back, most of the profession has a NIMBY attitude. Better u than me.>>It's time we enlisted the rest of the world in the task of taking these gadflies off our radar. The result would be an ecology check of cosmic proportion. Barrett can go back to looking for dangling participles in psychiatric papers and we can get back to serving humanity.

Ready-Fire-Aim, MRF 4/3
Mark R. Filippi, D.C.

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