June 2002

Chiropractic Leaders Work to Counter
Negative Impact of PBS Program
By Tracey Blair
Contributing Editor

Boston - Leaders in the profession are outraged about a recent program that aired on public television, in which chiropractic was portrayed in a negative light.

Dr. Daryl Wills, president of the American Chiropractic Association (ACA), said in a letter to PBS that the producers of the series “Scientific American Frontiers” did not give the chiropractic profession a fair chance to respond to comments by skeptic groups on the recently aired segment, “A Different Way to Heal?”

Dr. Gerard Clum, president of Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward, Calif., also took issue with the program. Clum said “SAF” visited the campus under false pretenses. He said before representatives of Life West were interviewed, they were told the program would focus on chiropractic science and research. “The outcome was not anywhere near what I anticipated, and it is safe to say the college was actively misled by the parties we worked with as to the intent of the project,” Clum said.

The program was narrated by actor Alan Alda and first aired on June 4. The program, which also highlighted alternative therapies such as herbal remedies, acupuncture, and therapeutic touch, has been airing in different PBS (Public Broadcasting System) markets throughout the country.

The “Adjusting the Joints” portion of the program included an interview with Dr. Robert Baratz of the anti-chiropractic group the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) as an “expert” health-care source. NCAHF describes chiropractic as “America’s homegrown health-care cult” on its website.

On the program, Baratz said chiropractic has no basis in science and can even be dangerous, and he inaccurately claimed that chiropractic adjustments to the neck paralyze “hundreds” of people each year.

Former chiropractor Dr. John Badanes was also interviewed extensively on the show. “It’s never been proven the shape of the spine has anything to do with disease or health,” Badanes said in an interview with Alda.

The program also included pro-chiropractic interviews with faculty, leadership, and a student at Life Chiropractic College West. The Life West interviewees included college president Clum, student and frequent chiropractic patient Kim Mah, and faculty/ staff members Dr. David Donaldson, Dr. Stephen Rowe, and Dr. David Browning.

The show touched on D.D. Palmer, the history of chiropractic, and the subluxation, but did not address the definition of a subluxation with any of the pro-chiropractic interviewees. Badanes was used as the source instead.

The show featured Mah getting both a spinal adjustment and an adjustment to her neck. When Rowe asked her how she felt after her previous adjustment, she said: “Really good, actually - I was feeling really good after, thank you.” She said later in the interview that: “Chiropractic is a regular way to stay healthy. I get adjusted on a regular basis, approximately every two weeks to three weeks, depending on how I feel and on how everything’s going. If my adjustments are holding well, then we can make the time between adjustments last a little bit longer.”

Alda said in a narrative following Mah’s positive comments about chiropractic that skeptics such as Baratz say chiropractic patients are “confusing cause and effect.”

Donaldson demonstrated an activator and a leg length examination, providing a clinical explanation of each. Browning demonstrated a toggle recoil adjustment on a patient.

In many instances, the show would include a pro-chiropractic comment or a demonstration of a procedure such as a chiropractor determining a leg-length discrepancy or giving a neck adjustment, and then the show would cut back to the anti-chiropractic interviewees, who then “refuted” the information or talked about “risk” factors.

The closing scene in the “Adjusting the Joints” segment of the program featured Baratz saying: “There is no scientific basis for what chiropractors allege they are doing. It is totally based on a religious belief system. And as long as you call it that, fine; but don’t call it healthcare, and don't call it a form of science, because it is not.”

The show’s producers did not interview any doctors of chiropractic besides those at Life West, and the pro-chiropractic interview subjects were never given a chance to refute the claims made by groups like NCAHF.

Fred Schultz, director of Institutional Advancement, Life Chiropractic College West, said: “We were surprised that the presentation was not more balanced, especially since the segment producer told Jon Lance, Life West’s P.R. manager, that chiropractic had helped him following an auto accident. Since the program was about science and research, and since SAF chose to air comments implying there was no research supporting chiropractic, it seemed strange that the show included none of the interview they did with Life West’s research director Dr. Greg Plaugher, or interviews with any chiropractic researchers, or for that matter any medical researchers, interested in the spine or the central nervous system.”

Schultz added: “I was also personally surprised that SAF chose such stridently anti-chiropractic people to provide outside opinion. I mean, here is a health-care profession that’s over 100 years old, licensed in all states, covered by Medicare and most insurance companies, with millions of demonstrably satisfied patients. Why did SAF need to choose such close-minded people to provide evaluation? Why not pick someone neutral, like SAF did in the acupuncture segment, with the MD doing research into acupuncture?”

John Angier is co-executive producer of “Scientific American Frontiers” and one of the partners of Chedd-Angier Production Company near Boston, which produces the series for PBS stations across the country. When asked why chiropractors weren’t given the opportunity to refute the anti-chiropractic claims made by groups such as NCAHF, Angier said: “We felt they were given an extensive opportunity to describe and show what they do. There was a full range of discussion on the topic…. Where do you draw the line? If we asked the chiropractors what they thought about the other comments, then we would have to go back to the critics again, and it’s like a tennis match."

ACA’s Wills called the segment irresponsible in a letter he wrote to PBS program executives urging them to publicly take back the assertions about chiropractic and apologize to the ACA and the nation’s chiropractic colleges. Clum also wrote a letter complaining about the program to PBS executives, as did many other chiropractic groups and individuals. The letters that PBS has decided to post on its website so far can be viewed at: http://www.pbs.org/ saf/1210/mail.htm, and the ACA letter is available at http://www.acatoday.com/media/record/ pbs.shtml

“The program did not offer any of your pro-chiropractic guests an opportunity to rebut the foolish statements made by the NCAHF group and John Badanes,” Wills said in ACA’s letter to PBS. “This would be the legal equivalent to a jury trial in which the plaintiff’s attorney is the only counsel permitted to make a closing statement to the jury.”

The ACA letter to PBS included 14 clinical citations, and said in part that: “A study by the Rand Corporation found that a serious adverse reaction from cervical (neck) manipulation may occur less than once in 1 million treatments. Studies have also shown that these rare adverse reactions more frequently occur after visits to health-care professionals who are inexperienced or inadequately trained in spinal manipulation, rather than to licensed doctors of chiropractic. A more recent article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found only a 1-in-5.85-million risk that a chiropractic adjustment of the neck may result in vertebral artery dissection.”

PBS has issued a lengthy response - also accessible from the PBS letters web page listed earlier - that stands by the information presented in the program. “The segment did not claim that chiropractic is fraudulent and did not attempt to prove or disprove that chiropractic works, but it does state that chiropractic has no basis in science,” the statement says in part. “In summary, we believe ‘Adjusting the Joints’ was fair, accurate and balanced.”

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