Issue 10 - July2004

ICA reflects on changing times and timeless principles

During these past 50 years, and for several decades before that, the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) has been a steady, active and dynamic component of the organizational infrastructure of the chiropractic profession.

Founded in 1926 by Dr. B.J. Palmer, ICA was created as a means to bring chiropractors together to defend and promote chiropractic as a separate and distinct science, philosophy and clinical art and to translate those concepts into a living profession, worldwide.

Worldwide community
ICA has become a worldwide community of like-minded doctors of chiropractic, with members in 40 nations, every state in the United States and every Province of Canada. With more than 4,000 general members and an additional 2,000 in ICA’s postgraduate council system, ICA continues to serve a membership united behind the timeless principles established by Drs. D.D. and B.J. Palmer.

ICA has worked to support those principles with state-of-the-art strategies and technologies in the public policy process, in public education, through the translation of chiropractic information into other languages, through research and through postgraduate education.

ICA is also dedicated to providing a sense of community and support for our values and principles and to each other. ICA is a democratic organization in which any member in good standing can run for office.

Anchored in basic principles
ICA is firmly anchored in the fundamental principles of chiropractic and provides a unique and vitally important bastion to promote and defend the values and the vision of our founder and his generation of pioneers.

ICA events highlight our sense of community as DCs from around the world regularly gather in record numbers to participate in our conferences and symposia.

Our organization also gives voice to its principles through a host of publications, from our flagship magazine, The ICA Review, to the relatively new profession-wide newspaper The Chiropractic Choice. ICA also publishes the profession’s only peer-reviewed pediatrics research journal, The Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics. This important communications process, in which all opinions are welcome and in which ICA’s vision can be communicated without distortion or spin, means that members and allied organizations have a voice in the ongoing dialogue on the pressing issues of the day. ICA is, above all else, an advocacy organization.

ICA’s role is one of guardian of chiropractic’s unique principles and values. We will never hesitate to offer our point of view about chiropractic’s future, based on a wealth of experience in the real world of healthcare.

In an age in which the pressure not just to compromise those principles but to abandon them altogether seems so tempting to so many in chiropractic, ICA stands foursquare behind what got us this far — our unique subluxation correction role.

ICA continues to fight in every context, from legislation and education to the media and the marketplace, to project a clear picture of what makes chiropractic unique in healthcare. Consumers are responding in great numbers to the drugless, non-surgical option chiropractic offers.

Making a difference
ICA has been hard at work making a difference not just for the profession, but for a greater world of suffering millions badly in need of chiropractic care. ICA secured the first-ever federal funding for chiropractic research in the early 1970s. ICA regularly defends patients’ rights and the right of informed consent, including active support for individual choice on controversial vaccination issues around the world.

ICA has sponsored more legislation over its 78-year history, both state and federal, than all other chiropractic organizations combined. ICA was also the first organization to support the federal anti-trust lawsuit against the AMA.

Over the years, ICA has sponsored more postgraduate educational programs than any other chiropractic organization.

ICA also has had a steady commitment to community service. Since its earliest days, ICA members have organized to provide chiropractic services to those in need, from USO centers and homeless shelters around the United States and from refugee camps in Central America to the orphanages of Romania, where dozens of ICA volunteers answered the call to service to aid those thousands of children in the most difficult conditions imaginable.

Perhaps ICA’s finest hour, however, was during the aftermath of the September 11 tragedies, when ICA volunteers by the hundreds answered the call at the Pentagon and Ground Zero in New York, selflessly providing thousands of hours of volunteer service to the massive rescue and recovery efforts at those sites.

I have never been more proud of my ICA colleagues or made more aware of our responsibilities to each other as human beings than through the spirit of giving displayed by those courageous individuals.

Chiropractic’s challenge
Sadly, chiropractic’s biggest challenge is the internal pressure — from a minority to be sure — to abandon the subluxation concept in favor of a medical manipulation direction.

Chiropractic has an awesome future, if we remember who we are and strive to be the best chiropractors in history. If we forget, we will be history sooner than you can imagine.

ICA believes that competition between organizations is also healthy for chiropractic, but understands the value of cooperative efforts too.

ICA has great faith in the scientific and clinical validity of the basic tenets of chiropractic. We understand that the nervous system and structures of the spine have a powerful impact on the health of the human body and we are committed to exploring the full potential, as well as any limitations of chiro-practic science, according to the highest and most exacting standards. ICA is an open door in which all are not only welcome, but wanted.

This article was contributed by Robert Braile, DC, FICA, past president of the ICA, former board chairperson and current southern region director on ICA's board. The ICA's Web site is www.chiropractic.org.