Over the past year chiropractic has been bombarded with research reports and stories in the press and media about the issue of adjustments and strokes. It seems that, despite the fact their patients are dropping dead like flies all around them, organized medicine has some extra time on their hands to stick their nose in our business. However, a recent study published in the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research Vol. 4 No. 3 adds further evidence that, despite what some biased researchers purport, chiropractic is indeed very safe.

The study titled Stroke and Chiropractic: A Review of the Literature was done by Ari Cohn B.S., D.C. a private practitioner from New Jersey and a graduate of the University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic. Dr. Cohn originally did the review as a requirement for graduation but was encouraged to submit it for publication by his advisor.

There were a number of flaws in the literature that Dr. Cohn reviewed relative to the supposed dangers of cervical adjustments. These included clumping all manipulation together and calling it chiropractic. According to Dr. Cohn: "In the literature there is a lack of distinction between professions and different styles and techniques of manual procedures, adjusting and manipulating. Medical doctors, osteopaths, physical therapists and chiropractors have different levels of expertise and levels of training in the area of spinal manipulation and adjustment. Although chiropractors perform approximately 94% of all spinal manipulation/adjustments it is misrepresentation to include statistics of injuries caused by other professionals, and even non-professionals and refer to the procedures as chiropractic in nature when clearly they are not."

Other issues involve blaming the cause of a stroke on chiropractic based on the temporal relationship to an adjustment. "Just because a person had an adjustment a day or two before their stroke does not mean the adjustment caused the stoke. I bet those people also drank water the day before the stroke but no one is going to say the water caused the stroke" stated Dr. Cohn.

Interestingly Dr. Cohn reviewed the statistics regarding stroke in the general population versus in the chiropractic population and showed that the incidence is actually lower in those people under chiropractic care. He pointed out "the statistics might indicate that perhaps we are actually preventing strokes in our patients as opposed to the other way around."

Dr. Cohn's review also compares the risk of common medical procedures to the risk of stroke from cervical adjustment and says that medicine should clean up its own backyard before looking at ours. As Dr. Christopher Kent often challenges "I'll compare body counts with medicine any time."

Let's get this straight: Medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in the United States and medical malpractice kills more people than handguns and car accidents. We spend $75 billion a year on drugs and then we spend another $76 billion a year cleaning up the problems those drugs cause and the U.S. ranks near the lowest of all countries in morbidity and mortality. More Americans die every six months than died in the Vietnam War and the number of people that die at the hands of the medical industry is equivalent to 3 fully loaded jumbo jets crashing and killing all aboard every 2 days. To make matters worse we spend over a trillion dollars a year on this "health care." The chance of having an adverse event from a chiropractic adjustment to the cervical spine is less likely than getting struck and killed by lightening. Who needs to clean up their act?

Dr. Cohn pointed out that "medical procedures have an inherent risk that the public for some strange reason seems to accept without any question. Even a simple venipuncture is many times more dangerous than the risk of stroke from a chiropractic adjustment. These are obvious flaws in logic that people are just not seeing."

Dr. Cohn urged chiropractors to take the time to write and publish more studies on chiropractic that document the benefits and safety of the care we provide. "The more information we have published then the more ammunition we have for everything from court cases to conversations with patients and other health care professionals."