January 2005

FCA launches campaign to save FSU college

JANUARY 17, 2005 — The Florida Chiropractic Association (FCA) has launched a massive media campaign to ward off attacks designed to kill the nation's only state-funded chiropractic college at Florida State University.

As part of that campaign, FCA has launched an online petition and encourages doctors and their patients to sign it. "We need a groundswell of consumers to make the point that Americans are benefiting from chiropractic care and that they want a degree program for chiropractic at a public university that will increase federal research funding," said Debbie Minor Brown, CEO of FCA.

The school was signed into law in March by Gov. Jeb Bush, with a legislated annual budget of $9 million. On Jan. 14, the Board of Trustees of Florida State University voted 11-2 to move ahead with the chiropractic college proposal and to send the measure to the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) for its consideration. The trustees also asked the BOG for permission to investigate establishing the degree program at FSU through normal policy channels.

The BOG, which oversees programs and funding for the state's higher education system, had not been involved at the time when the funds to establish the school were allocated. The BOG may consider the FSU submission at its next meeting on Jan. 27.

The legislatively-allowed chiropractic school has created an uproar among some faculty members at FSU. During the winter holidays, a group of medical-school adjunct professors, led by Ray Bellamy, MD, floated a petition to stop the college.

According to Brown, "Dr. Bellamy summoned the old rhetoric of bigotry, calling chiropractic 'quackery' and 'pseudoscience.' … [He said] that the addition of a chiropractic degree program would endanger the accreditation for FSU's medical school, even though the two programs would not share facilities. He has invited the likes of Dr. Bill Kinsinger of 'Quackbuster' fame to speak to faculty."

The FCA has responded to the bias by providing chiropractic physicians holding dual degrees and who are active in academia and research to speak to FSU faculty, to present the chiropractic point of view.

Present at a Jan. 13 open-forum meeting, sponsored by the FSU Graduate Policy Committee were Jay Triano, DC, PhD; Partep Khalsa, DC, PhD; Howard Vernon, DC, PhD; and Greg Kawchuck, DC, PhD.

Triano and Jack Zigler, MD, an orthopedic surgeon from the Texas Back Institute, spoke before the Board of Trustees at its Jan. 14 meeting in support of the chiropractic program prior to the trustees vote.

The association online petition on its Web site, www.fcachiro.org is part of the overall media campaign to persuade the BOG and trustees of the value of the chiropractic college.

It has also set up a special media information section of its Web site, which provides information on chiropractic, positive talking points about the new school, the historical development of the college, information on the longstanding medical bias evidenced by the landmark Wilks v. AMAcase and a contact list for writing letters to the editor for all major Florida newspapers.

The association encourages doctors and patients alike to sign the petition on line and then write letters to the editor.

Source: Florida Chiropractic Association, www.fcachiro.org; Chiropractic Economics, "FSU chiro college caught in political tug-of-war," Miami Herald, www.herald.com; the Tallahassee Democrat, http://www.tallahasse.com

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