But in doing so, it has been criticised for letting standards drop and allowing bogus institutions to award degrees in their name.

The BBC have been on the case for a while. Last year they investigated the University’s support for a Malaysian college run by a pop star who had questionable qualifications. Since then the University watchdog, the QAA, have asked Wales to review their accreditations. Government minister Leighton Andrews says “the University of Wales has let down higher education in Wales and brought the nation “into disrepute”.”

Closer to home, the University has been accrediting the controversial McTimoney Chiropractic College in Abingdon. When the British Chiropractic Association decided to sue science writer Simon Singh for libel, the McTimoney chiropractors reacted bizarrely by telling all its members to take down their web sites for fear of complaints being made against them. The college soon came under the spotlight for its MSc degrees in chiropractic manipulation for small mammals and children – treatments that “do not have a jot of evidence” behind them.

So, it looks like the McTimoney College will soon have its degree awarding rug pulled from under its feet. This is a very serious situation for it as their students need an accredited degree in order to register with the General Chiropractic Council and practice legally as a chiropractor. It is illegal in the UK to call your self a chiropractor without registration.

It is likely that current students may still be awarded degrees as other colleges affected are saying this is the case. However, this will need to be clarified. I am sure there are many anxious back cracking students wanting to know if their tens of thousands of pounds have been wasted.

For students about to start their degrees, the future is much less certain. The College will need to find another University to accredit their programme. This might take some time, and not least because chiropractic as a therapy has come under much criticism as a useless hang over from Victorian travelling bone-setting charlatans. It will be a brave or desperate institution that takes them on.

Quackery has many victims, and the first are the students who get fooled into training. We now know chiropractic is a largely useless therapy, with a history of pseudoscience and magical thinking. Many students will come to McTimoney as second careers and will not get direct funding. They will have spent tens of thousands of pounds on a four year ‘MSc’, long before this government decided that should be the norm. In order to repay that cost, students must work very hard as a chiropractor with some, no doubt, getting into the very dubious arts of ‘wellness’ chiropractic.

By accrediting these degrees, Wales has been doing these young people a disservice.  It has given these techniques an air of legitimacy that they do not deserve. When starting a degree, students ought to have confidence that what they are learning is based on sound principles, academic rigour and good evidence. Chiropractic lacks these vital features and so today’s announcement is good news for future students.

Update

DCScience picks up the news and gives lots of useful background.

Related posts:

1. The Role of UK Universities in Chiropractic The decision by the British Chiropractic Association to sue Simon Singh will undoubtedly bring increased scrutiny of chiropractic. I would like to start with a first look at the education...
2. The University of Wales is Responsible for Enabling Bogus* Chiropractic Claims to be Made The Simon Singh/BCA libel case is having the unintended consequence of the media being full of reports of the strange beliefs of chiropractors. They are a cult like body of...
3. McTimoney Chiropractors told to take down their web sites This letter has been issued from the McTimoney Association to all its members… Date: 8 June 2009 09:12:18 BDT Subject: FURTHER URGENT ACTION REQUIRED! Dear Member If you are reading...

The English law of defamation would disagree with me though. The law allowed the British Chiropractic Association to bring a libel case against the science writer Simon Singh for suggesting in the Guardian that many of the techniques they promoted were ‘bogus’ – that is, not based on a sound scientific footing and lacking credible evidence. Most people would have caved and apologised. It is not rational to defend a libel claim in the UK, as the economic considerations will mean that you will almost certainly lose a shed load of money – win the case, or not. But Simon Singh did not make an economic decision – he made a principled decision – that what he wrote was defendable, important and in the public interest. The BCA did not count on attacking a principled man – with money to defend those principles.

Two years later, and hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on lawyers, the BCA have now dropped their case. They state that this is for economic reasons, “to avoid further legal costs being incurred by either side”. However, they acknowledge that Singh was given a very reasonable way of defending himself in this case that would meant it would be unlikely the BCA would win.

But in dropping the case, the BCA are still insisting that they have been defamed and that they would still have a strong case if they chose to appeal. They are even claiming that they have been ‘vindicated’.

This is absurd and demonstrates the irresponsible and unthinking nature of the BCA.

They claim in their press release that “The BCA takes seriously its duty and responsibilities to members and to chiropractic patients.” This precisely what they are not doing. In their attempt to defend their reputation, their members and their customers are the very people who have been ignored and let down, with disastrous consequences.

Simon Singh made a very simple allegation: he stated that the BCA were happily promoting treatments for children and babies for which there was not a jot of evidence. If this claim was true then the BCA were involved in activities that could be seriously detrimental to public health. The BCA chose not to defend their approach to chiropractic but instead decided to sue the writer, knowing the outcome would almost certainly be his bankruptcy. Their chiropractic patients were never featured in their response – and they still are not.

The BCA would appear to wish to carry on as if they have been involved in legal error – not of their making – and nothing else. They have been the unfortunate victims of a byzantine legal process. But this is of course absurd. The BCA had many chances to restore its reputation – most notably by taking up the offer to publish their own account of their reasons for promoting chiropractic for children in the Guardian. But they did not. They could also have simply ignored the minor comment piece in the Guardian. Instead, their actions look like the deliberate attempt to punish a critic of their trade who has written books and spoken publicly about the shortcomings of chiropractors. Confident of an early victory, I am sure they felt that this would sent a message to people not to write about chiropractic in less than glowing terms. For this, they have been resoundedly and quite rightly condemned.

In failing to achieve their aims, they have now ensured many more people do not see chiropractic as just a small branch of the medical profession that looks after backs, but as a bizarre, cult-like pseudomedical trade who make spurious healing claims with little regard to evidence. Their reputation has been trashed. However, not all chiropractors can be characterised as medical know-nothing chancers. There are many who would appear to value the move towards evidence based medicine and want to work with other medical colleagues on the mutual basis of good evidence and responsible practice. The BCA are letting these chiropractors down badly.

Instead of trying to spin this defeat into what it is not, the BCA should be trying to repair the profession that now sees about a third of its members under professional investigation by the regulating authorities for making unsupportable claims. I cannot see how the current leadership of the BCA are in any position now to take chiropractic forward. If the leadership care about the reputation of their members they should resign and make way for new hands who are committed to evidence-based chiropractic, no matter how limited their scope of practice may then turn out to be. This is the only approach that is in the best interests of chiropractic customers. Any other path will simply be seen as either the protectionist practices of a guild of unscrupulous charlatans.

The reputation of the BCA is now worth nothing. But the wellbeing of their customers is well worth defending. Only new chiropractic leadership can ensure that the interests of their paying customers are placed at the heart of their trade and help steer reasonable chiropractors through the regulatory mess that the current incumbents have got themselves into.

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And on a personal note to Simon. We both became fathers three weeks ago. I believe our babies were born 10 hours and 23 minutes apart. I am sure that you are finding this is a time of great wonder. With the collapse of this case, I hope the only lost sleep you are now getting is when little Hari decides to complain about something. Far better than the back quacks complaining. Well done on this case. You are a true superstar.

Related posts:

1. What Next for the British Chiropractic Association? The BMJ has today published an exchange between the British Chiropractic Association and Professor Edzard Ernst examining the claims of the BCA that chiropractic is effective in treating childhood ailments...
2. How the British Chiropractic Association Targets Children The British Chiropractic Association do not appear to be too hot on evidence. Given that they are suing Simon Singh, a science writer, for saying that they promoted treatments for...
3. A Carnival of Bogus* Chiropractic One of the side effects of the BCA vs Chiropractic libel case is that there are a growing number of people who now realise that Chiropractic is bogus*. Even though...

The Society against Quackery claims to be the world’s oldest sceptics group. Its first newsletter was published in 1881 (Google translation) and has campaigned ever since against the misleading claims of alternative medicine.

In 2000, their magazine published an article “Quacks of the 20th Century” that looked back over the last 100 years and wanted to ‘preserve the history’ of the characters that had dominated, in their view, the world of quackery. They published a score card of how they had arrived at the top twenty quacks and stated that this list was “not meant to belligerently settle scores” but provide ‘insight into the personality of the healers of this period”.

In publishing their top 20 list, the Society were quite careful to explicitly define what they meant by the word ‘quack’. They said, (Google translation)

‘Quackery is:
(a) any professional act and/or the extending of advice or assistance related to the state of health of either man or animal;
(b) which is not founded on contemporary and/or empirically tenable hypotheses and theories;
(c) which is actively propagated among the public (“over-promotion”);
(d) which has not been tested on efficacy and safety within the professional group;
(e) which is (usually) performed without consultation of fellow practitioners.’

Now, you may not agree with this definition. And that is fine. But it is important to note that this is what the Society explicitly said about the meaning of the word. The Society also made it quite clear about what they thought about the honesty of such people:

As has been made clear by the Society & co, being labelled a ‘quack’ does not in the least imply bad faith or fraud: in practice, it is hardly possible to establish this. Therefore, nominees on the “long list” need not feel they are accused of immoral behaviour; the only thing they are accused of is quackery and nothing else!

I quite agree with this. In my explorations with the Quackometer, I can say that one of my biggest discovered undertsandings is that there are very few people out there practicing alternative medicine that fit into a simple categorisation of ‘fraud’. Most people sincerely believe that what they practice is genuine and are sincerely trying to help people. They are not deliberately misleading people, they are just mistaken in their beliefs. And why they are mistaken is much more fascinating and insightful into human behaviour than mere trickery and con-artistry. And when I do suspect genuine fraud, it is impossible (bar a few exceptions) to prove that this is the case. As the Dutch Society make clear, “it is hardly possible to establish this”.

At number seven on the list was a doctor by the name of Maria Sickesz (Google translation) who claims to be a “doctor of Orthomanual Therapy”. Sickesz believes that she has “developed a unique method to correct misalignments of the spine and the pelvis. She pays attention to the individual misalignment of each vertebra and noticed that they followed specific patterns.”

Misalignments of the bones in the back can be responsible or add to all sorts of diseases according to her. She claims to be able to treat “syndromes such as lung and digestive disorders, problems with the menstrual cycle, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsonism”. According to the VtdK, she has claimed to be able to treat “anorexia, asthma, autism, bipolar disorder, dementia, depression, diarrhea, eczema, palpitations, high blood pressure, fever, stomach pain, menstrual complaints , migraine, neck pain, tinnitus, psychosomatic stomach, schizophrenia” all by manipulation and hammering of the spine. She says that “The connection between these seemingly unrelated conditions and the spine is that the nerves, which serve all areas of the body, can be irritated directly or indirectly by spinal disorders.”

Yes. Sickesz has developed hew own brand of chiropractic or osteopathy. Indeed, a paper by her describes her subluxation based theory of why children develop colic. It is pretty indistinguishable from the sort of nonsense promoted by British chiropractors.

Displaying what we now know to be a typical chiropractic response to criticism, she decided to sue the VtdK for calling her a quack. An initial ruling by a district court said that the Society had not acted unlawfully and rejected Sickesz’ claim to prohibit the society from calling her a quack. However, on appeal, this decision was overturned and the Society was told not to repeat the claim and to issue an apology in De Telegraaf, a popular daily newspaper. It would appear that the main reason was that a major Dutch dictionary, “Van Dale, Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal” described quackery as follows: “

Someone who applies useless remedies to cure some disease or other or claims knowledge of remedies for all kinds of diseases, and/or someone who offers such remedies for sale, usually with a lot of noise; – unqualified practitioner of medicine, (fig) someone who wants to take the public for a ride, syn. cheap swindler, fraud, trickster.

This is a far more negative definition that the one offered by the Society in their article and the court decided that it is this meaning that the ‘ordinary’ man would ascribe to their article despite the Society being explicit about what they meant.

The Society decided to appeal this decision as it had far wider implications than just this case. Indeed, it would make it very difficult to talk about quackery in the Netherlands at all if courts were to take it as fact that an accusation of quackery meant that the Society were calling someone a “cheap swindler, fraud [and] trickster.” Fortunately, at appeal last May, this decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. A number of very interesting things were said.

The Society claimed they had a duty and a right to warn the public about medical treatments that claim to be effective but are not supported by science. They believed there was no scientific evidence to back up Sickesz’ claims. They claimed the treatments met with fierce criticism from academic circles and that the treatments could even be dangerous,

Five experts in the fields of neurology, internal medicine, lung diseases and psychiatry, when asked for their scientific opinion, said: ‘the answers not only show that there is not a jot of scientific backing in serious medical literature for the opinions of Sickesz, but also that experts cannot even imagine that OMM could have any efficacy for their professions.’ The Society & co also have concerns about the safety of the manipulations. They have placed Sickesz on the list not just because of her claims concerning neck and back complaints, but mainly because of her other claims.

The court looked at the case from the perspective of the European Convention on Human Rights. They had to balance Article 8 that gave Sickesz a right to personal privacy against Article 10 that gave the Society a right to free expression. The court had to decide between a “colliding of fundamental interests interests in determining what level of carefulness should be practiced in society towards one’s fellow man.”

The Supreme court found in favour of the Society against Quackery. The court decided that the definition of ‘quack’ must follow the Societies own definition if it is to protect its right to free expression. That an average reader might not have the same definition cannot be blamed on the Society. Furthermore, there was substantial important public interest in the publications of the Society and so the publication of the list with Sickesz name on it cannot be “unlawful or grievous towards her”.

No justice is done to this freedom when no attention is being paid to the content that the Society & co themselves have given to the term and the context in which the term is used. The [previous] court has also failed to take into account that the publication with the list of quacks comes from a society with a serious character and a serious aim and the circumstance that in the medical world a treatment is considered quackery when it is claimed that it can cure something while there is no scientific evidence to support this claim.

It was also noted that the publication did not say anything about Sickesz private life but only discussed aspects that were matters of public interest and should as a matter of principle be part of a public debate. As such, the court said that “there must be sufficient room for freedom of expression in situations like these”.

This freedom of expression was characterized by the European Convention of Human Rights as ‘one of the essential foundations of a democratic society and one of the basic conditions for its progress and for each individual’s self-fulfilment’ and consequently: ‘must be narrowly interpreted and the necessity for any restrictions must be convincingly established.’

This court hearing only overturns a decision by a previous court that the Society should defend itself on the basis of the dictionary definition rather than their own definition. My understanding is that the full case is yet to be heard.

What does this mean for the current British Chiropractic Association vs. Simon Singh case in the UK? I present this here simply as a parallel and a reflection on how other countries might view such cases. Simon Singh is in quite a different situation at the moment.

The Dutch case has very much depended on the court allowing decisions to be appealed. Simon has of yet no such luxury and must defend his article on the definition of the word ‘bogus’ handed to him by Justice Eady – and that definition is that ‘bogus’ implies dishonesty. As Simon made his own meaning of the word bogus quite clear in his article as referring to chiropractic’s lack of evidence, he has to defend his position on a basis that quite obviously he himself does not believe.

Simon also has currently no platform to defend his case on European Human Rights grounds. But it is worth noting that the laws considered by Dutch judges are also applicable in the UK. Whether, a similar conclusion can be come to in this British case I will leave to better qualified commentators although my amateurish perspective would suggest that Simon would have very similar grounds to appeal.

Simon Singh must decide this week how best to move forward either with an oral appeal or some other route. This decision will undoubtedly rest not just on the apparent injustice being done but also on the financial and emotional drain placed on Simon (Defending English libel law may cost a hundred times more than most European proceedings, plus Simon has to defend his article on his own.)

My own commentary would be this:

Science is so successful because of one central feature: its self correcting nature. Ideas in science get better over time. Ideas that do not match reality are discarded and those that do survive testing are refined and become more useful. The Dutch sceptics are in the fortunate situation they find themselves because the legal decisions so far have been subjected to several bouts of scrutiny and refinement. Everyone in the Netherlands should have confidence that those decisions have got better with each legal iteration.

Simon Singh has not been so fortunate. He has been refused permission to subject the current ‘bogus’ ruling to any scrutiny under an appeals process. He is currently subjected to the tyranny of the man on the Clapham omnibus where the meanings of the words he has written has been decided by one man who appears to believes he can have definitive and infallible insight into the mind of the ‘common man’. There is currently no mechanism to question that ruling and so Simon is being forced to defend his words in the terms of a definition that is quite arbitrary, at the extreme of possible interpretations and in contradiction with Simon’s own stated definition.

And even if Justice Eady’s is right (and many doubt it is), then what the Dutch decision shows us is that by forcing Simon to accept an opinion about quackery that Simon would himself believe to be ill informed and ignorant of the true nature of alternative medicine then he is being denied a legitimate right to free expression about an issue of important public health. The ordinary man on the Clapham omnibus may indeed view quackery as simple fraud, but it is vital for public health for people to appreciate that it may be a little more complicated than that. And laws that force Simon to accept this situation are fundamentally unjust and oppressive according to rights that are now enshrined in European law.

The more I look at how English libel law operates the more convinced I am that such laws are an anachronism. Born in an age where a gentleman needed his honour protected against the tittle-tattle of the popular press, they now serve as a source of oppression where the powerful, the wealthy, the corrupt and the vested interest can close down democratic discussion. We now live in an age where we are all publishers, not just the press. The law is out of step and if the BCA vs Singh case causes fresh thinking about how we mediate the various rights involved in free speech then a great good will have been done.

With thanks to Cees Renckens (pictured) of Vereniging tegen de Kwakzalverij and to Jo van Ringen for translating the court papers (my Dutch is limited to ordering a beer at the bar). I must add that the opinions and interpretations discussed are mine alone.

Related posts:

1. Simon Singh to Appeal Bogus Decision   “The law has no place in scientific disputes” Simon Singh is to appeal the absurd and astonishingly illiberal ruling made by Sir David Eady in the libel case...
2. Bogus Law   The University of Oxford recent completed a report into the comparative costs of defamation proceedings across Europe. Its conclusions were that the costs of libel proceedings in England and...
3. Omniscan and GE Healthcare’s Sinister Libel Suit There are quite a few libel cases underway at present where large financial vested interests are using the insidious English libel laws to attempt to silence scientists and journalists...

It has been a bit of a surprise to me to learn that the Society of Homeopaths is wanting to lobby the Health Professions Council to include homeopathy within its regulation remit. As such, you will receive protected title (only registered homeopaths will be able to call themselves that) and be held against a code of standards and ethics.

Why do you want to do this? I can guess some of the reasons.

Homeopathy has always battled to be recognised – both as a science and as a healing profession. Deep within the homeopathic mindset is a belief that you hold a valuable principle of healing, if not the fundamental theory of healing. Over two centuries you have battled to gain acceptance and validation against what you see as a hostile (even conspiratorial) medical profession. You call the medical profession allopaths and define yourselves in opposition to your own picture of them.

Undoubtedly, you see that statutory regulation will put yourself at least on a par with doctors. You will no longer legally be invisible in the healing professions. But there are other more economic reasons too. Being statutorily registered will make it easier to gain referrals from the huge source of cash that is the NHS. It will also make it easier to get payments from private health insurers. You won’t have to pay VAT, although I doubt many of you make enough to have to worry about that. Universities have recently said that they will not teach BSc courses to train homeopathic practitioners unless they achieve statutory regulation.

So, the prize appears to be huge. Recognition, financial gain and the secured future of your profession through accredited education. The Society of Homeopaths can free itself of the tedious burden of having to pretend to regulate you and instead become something like the BCA and concentrate more on trying to sue its critics.

But what of the cost? Such rewards will come at a price – and I am amazed that the Society of Homeopaths believes you will wish to pay that price.

First, before we look at what this might all mean for homeopathy, I would suggest that the path to Statutory regulation will not be easy. I am sure you are aware that there are many people who think such a step would be absurd, myself included. Homeopathy has failed in two hundred years to make any progression in showing that it is nothing other than a inert treatment based on pre-scientific and magical thinking. The basic science to show that your principles are true is not there. My own simple challenge to homeopaths to demonstrate their fundamental propositions has not been taken up in 85 weeks. More damningly, in the two hundred years since homeopathy was invented, our scientific understanding of medicine, chemistry and physics has moved on enormously and it clearly shows that homeopathy is not just implausible but is utterly contradicted by everything we know about the world. Homeopathy lies outside of reason and science. It is a pseudo-medicine and is just a placebo therapy. It is just not tenable to hold any other position.

To gain statutory regulation, you will have to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to have meaningful standards in education and training for a pseudoscientific subject. That is not impossible – the current government has on the whole failed to see the problem with regulating absurd treatments. It is funding Ofquack, the Prince Charles backed Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, as a voluntary regulator for a rag bag of quack practitioners. The government does not appear to see that upholding such people to high degrees of training and competence is problematic when such people believe in absurdities. I would suggest though that the HPC may well be tougher judges than Prince Charles.

So, onto the costs. In order to appreciate what such regulation might mean for homeopaths it is worth looking at what it has done for other statutorily regulated alternative medicines. Chiropractic would be a good example.

The regulation of chiropractic was not without its controversy. The Society of Homeopaths claim that 65% of its members support the route to such regulation. The Society of Homeopaths only represents 65% of homeopaths, so we can only be sure that 42% of homeopaths support such a route. Even then, this survey was taken in 2006 and a lot has changed since then. I would be very surprised if this support has grown. Are the majority of you in favour of this move? Chiropractors were also split when the Chiropractic Act was brought in. Many saw it as an attempt to control their practice and restrict what they could do. Chiropractic philosophy appears to embrace a libertarian stance and many resented passing control of their work to people who may not share their beliefs and views. Some were worried that the move had conspiratorial overtones of the medical community trying to suppress an alternative to them. There were quite a few who refused to be registered and had to cease calling themselves chiropractors and instead called themselves simply spinal manipulators or even the grand sounding osteomyologists.

Over a decade later, the political infighting still continues. Many resent that the McTimoney Chiropractors were let into the exclusive regulated club. McTimoney is seen as a chiropractic heresy where bones are not cracked so violently and training takes place through part-time courses. It is not seen as being real chiropractic and the practitioners as being undertrained – through cheaper courses. It represents a threat to the chiropractors who will have invested well over £40,000 in fees for their training at one of the other two ‘real’ chiropractic colleges.

The General Chiropractic Council, the regulatory body, appears to be popularly despised by the ordinary chiropractor. It is seen as heavy handed in its regulation, costly and not in tune with chiropractors’ needs (to be left alone). It has no duty to promote chiropractic but only to protect the public and enforce its code of conduct. It is also increasingly dominated by lay representatives – chiropractors are getting a smaller voice in its running. Much of this resentment has been well documented on the chiropractic blog chiropracticlive.com.

When the British Chiropractic Association decided to sue Simon Singh for criticising the lack of evidence base for the treatments it was promoting, I doubt they understood the difficulty they would be putting their members in because of the very fact that they were statutory regulated. The ensuing debate has exposed the non existent foundations of much of chiropractic care and this has led to an unprecedented number of complaints being made to the GCC about chiropractors misleading the public on their websites for the effectiveness of the treatments they offered. There are now perhaps 20-30% of the entire chiropractic profession undergoing statutory complaints procedures which could result in the loss of their registration and their ability to practice.

The mistake the government and chiropractors made in accepting statutory regulation was allowing it to go ahead before chiropractors could demonstrate that they were not simply a vestigial remnant of Victorian back cracking quackery. Now, chiropractors find themselves being held to the highest forms of professionalism and practice without an evidence base for pretty much anything they do. It is now possible that chiropractic in the UK will not survive the current onslaught of professional complaints and trading standards investigations being pursued against them. What will come out the other side is pretty much anyone’s guess, but I am pretty sure it is not a situation that the majority of chiropractors would have wished for in their quest for recognition.

And this is what I find extraordinary about the attempt by homeopaths to join the HPC. At present, the nightmare that is happening to chiropractors cannot happen to homeopaths. Despite what you say, you have had the freedom of living without any form of genuine regulation. The Society of Homeopaths has never ruled against a homeopath for the way they practice when when faced with clear breaches of the code of ethics. Homeopaths have been free to indulge in whatever delusions they fancy without fear of sanction. You have claimed to treat malaria and AIDS and have done so without a single voice of censure from within the lay homeopathic trade. You have no idea what it is like to be regulated and to be subject to a real code of ethics and practice. I suggest you pop along to your nearest chiropractor to find out what it is like.

And I must say that chiropractors have it fairly easy. Their treatments (at least for lower back pain) have an air of plausibility and some evidence for effectiveness. Homeopaths lack these luxuries of plausibility and reliable evidence for anything. What makes your situation worse is that your belief set is acutely in conflict with those who will become your statutory medical colleagues. You regularly undermine public healthcare messages about childhood inoculation and believe your sugar pills are an alternative. You show no sense of boundaries for what you can reasonably hope to achieve and make claims to be a superior treatment for everything from asthma and swine flu to autism and cancer. Do you really believe you could continue with your alternative beliefs in a statutory world? And they are alternative. Whilst you denounce the side effects of real medicine as being avoidable by homeopathy you pitch yourself against the medical world. And I doubt that a regulated profession could last long with such rhetoric.

Homeopaths. You have never had it so good. And you do not realise it. You are pretty much free from any constraint on what you say and do. You may moan about the continuous criticism you get from people like me – but that is the worst you have to suffer at the moment – criticism. If by some fluke you do manage to achieve full regulation, expect your cosy world to come crashing down very fast. Your quest for regulatory recognition will be hubris. It took over fifteen years for the chiropractors to realise they had been practising on borrowed time. Your regulatory nemesis will come much quicker.

Related posts:

1. Is Statutory Self-Regulation the Answer for Homeopathy? The ambush by the Prince of Wales on the various factions of Alternative Medicine by announcing the set up of the Natural Healthcare Council, Ofquack, is starting to have effects....
2. Chiropractors at War with their Regulator, the GCC From Richard Lanigan’s blog, we learn that the head of the four chiropractic associations have written to the GCC to state that their members have no confidence in their regulatory...
3. The Society of Homeopaths: The Failure of Self Regulation The Adverting Standards Authority has today found that a homeopath advertised their asthma clinic for kids by making untruthful, unsubstantiated and irresponsible claims. Archway House Natural Health Centre holds...

The article is being posted and reprinted today on many blogs and in magazines as a sign of solidarity with Simon as he fights this misconceived libel case. His lawyers have edited several sections that are at the heart of the BCA claim. As you can see, the substantive article remains – that chiropractors lack evidence for their treatments. I believe it is in the public interest that such criticism is not allowed to be stifled by the legal actions of vested interests.

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

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1. Chiropractors Try to Silence Simon Singh Hot on the heals of New Zealand Chiropractors trying to silence David Colquhoun and the The New Zealand Medical Journal, we learn today in the Telegraph that the British Chiropractic...
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The GCC Indicative Sanctions Guidance notes for the Professional Conduct Committee suggests that misrepresenting evidence is not looked kindly upon:

This term is used to describe a range of misconduct from presenting misleading information in publications to dishonesty in clinical trials. Such behaviour undermines the trust that both the public and the profession have in chiropractic as a science, regardless of whether this leads to direct harm of patients. Because it has the potential to have far reaching consequences, this type of dishonesty is particularly serious.

Others have made vast ‘omnibus’ complaints about chiropractors making misleading claims on their web site.

Well, the GCC has written to all the chiropractors concerned with the following letter:

10 July 2009

Dear XXXXX

TIMESCALE FOR lNVESTIGATION OF COMPLAINT AGAINST YOU

In a letter from the GCC dated 6 July 2009, you received preliminary notification of a complaint against you. That letter was not a formal notification under the provisions of the GCC’s Investigating Committee Rules (and nor is this letter).

No doubt you are aware that the GCC has received an unprecedented number of complaints in the last month or so – 590, as compared with an average of 40 per annum.

In these circumstances it will be necessary to increase our regulatory staff capacity before we issue formal notification of any complaints relating to chiropractic websites.

We anticipate that we will start issuing the relevant formal notifications in September 2009. They will not all be issued on the same date as we need to spread the workload both for staff and the Investigating Committee. I appreciate this is a stressful situation for you but I trust you will understand the reason for this timescale.

Please note that you don’t need to take any action in response to this letter, it is intended for information only.

Yours sincerely

Margaret Coats
Chief Executive & Registrar

Clearly, the GCC are taking this all very seriously. I would be very surprised if they did not. The GCC are bound to do so by law and have an overriding prerogative to protect the public. Last year, the GCC dropped its commitment to promote the profession as this was seen to be in conflict with its role in regulation.

It is a shame that things are being delayed. These issues need to be cleared up. I shall write some more soon about the possible future of the Chiropractic profession in the UK as a result of these extraordinary events.

Related posts:

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2. The University of Wales is Responsible for Enabling Bogus* Chiropractic Claims to be Made The Simon Singh/BCA libel case is having the unintended consequence of the media being full of reports of the strange beliefs of chiropractors. They are a cult like body of...
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His demolition of the 18 references is, to my mind, complete.

This would look like it is now the definitive assessment of these claims and buries any suggestion that the BCA can defend its claims on the strength of evidence.

Meanwhile, the BCA continues to pursue science writer Simon Singh through the courts for an alleged libel when Singh wrote in the Guardian that these treatments were ‘bogus’ and that the BCA were ‘happily promoting’ them. Despite the BMJ clearly showing that there is little evidence to support the BCA claims, they could still win against Singh as the trial judge, Eady, has ruled that the meaning of ‘bogus’ suggests that the BCA were being ‘deliberately dishonest’ in promoting these claims. Singh has since contended that what he meant was that the BCA were simply wrong in their assessment of evidence.

So, Richard Brown of the BCA kicks off by defending the chiropractors position. He starts by saying,

It is quite remarkable that scientists should expect themselves to become exempted from the laws of the land for publishing defamatory comments, be they about an individual or an organisation.

Brown shows his total misunderstanding of the situation in his first statement. It is not that scientists want to be seen as exceptions to the libel laws; rather, that science is hindered by the presence of English libel laws and their application in disputes of evidence is completely inappropriate.

The insidious thing about English libel law is that all you need to do to bring an action is to suggest that you have been defamed; that in some way your reputation has been lowered. But in science, by criticising ideas, it is inevitable that some degree of defamation will occur – that by showing someone’s ideas are unsubstantiated and unsupportable their reputation may well be diminished in the eyes of their peers. The rules of the game in science are that this ‘defamation’ takes place in the open – most often in journals and conferences and public debate – not in the courtroom. Science is a tough calling. It is full of knock-about and direct challenge. In scientific medicine, the ethical demand is that public health is more important than any particular reputation. The BCA’s reputation is completely disposable if it means that people get better medical advice and treatments.

Brown then goes on – “there is in fact substantial evidence for the BCA to have made claims that chiropractors can help various childhood conditions.” This claim is then totally demolished in the following BMJ article that looks at Brown’s references and pulls the weak evidence apart and shows it to be completely lacking. Damningly, the review shows that the BCA have cherry picked their evidence and ignored high quality trials that suggest chiropractic is not effective for treating the named conditions.

And then in a bombshell, Ernst suggests that.

The omissions are all the more curious as the Association apparently knew of these [ignored] articles.

And then goes on to explain why. This would suggest that the BCA were deliberately ignoring pertinent negative evidence in their justification of their stance. Ernst concluded that,

The association’s evidence is neither complete nor, in my view, “substantial.”

This allegation would suggest that even if Singh were unable to overturn Eady’s decision that he must defend his article on the basis that the BCA were deliberately misleading in their statement, that it might be possible to prove that this is indeed the case.

So, what should the BCA do next? A few months ago, they must have been feeling rather pleased with themselves that the trial was going their way and I am sure they would have thought that Simon Singh would have folded his cards. That is not so true now. Indeed, Simon is fighting on and looks like he is prepared to go all the way. It is now clear that the BCA cannot defend their position on the basis of scientific evidence. They must now hope that it cannot be proven that they have deliberately deceived. However, cracks are now appearing even in this defence. Even if they were to win, the only conclusion that someone like myself can come to is that they may not have been deceiving, but that they are incompetent in their assessment of evidence. There does not look like a way the BCA can now ‘win’ in any moral sense.

And what this means is that the chiropractic profession is taking a battering like it has never seen before.

What is ironic is that if the BCA had written this article a year ago, as the Guardian had offered them the space to do so, all this would have been now forgotten. Chiropractic would have continued to thrive under their cloak of intellectual obscurity. But to pursue Simon through legal means only was their own decision, despite their claim that “The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) neither wished nor intended this matter to end up in the courtroom.” That is clearly not the case as they had alternatives presented to them and, indeed, they have belatedly taken up the alternatives in the pages of the BMJ.

And so, after some thought, several weeks ago, I have made a complaint to the GCC about the officers of the BCA for presenting misleading information to the public about the effectiveness of chiropractic in children. If they had written this article a year ago, I would not have done so. But if they feel happy that they do not have to defend their evidence in court now, perhaps they might be less happy that they now have to defend their position to their professional regulator. Their code of conduct is quite clear:

If chiropractors, or others on their behalf, do publicise, the information used must be factual and verifiable. The information must not be misleading or inaccurate in any way. It must not, in any way, abuse the trust of members of the public nor exploit
their lack of experience or knowledge about either health or chiropractic matters.

If you want to be treated like a regulated profession, then expect to be held against high standards.

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Date: 8 June 2009 09:12:18 BDT

Subject: FURTHER URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!

Dear Member

If you are reading this, we assume you have also read the urgent email we sent you last Friday. If you did not read it, READ IT VERY CAREFULLY NOW and – this is most important – ACT ON IT. This is not scaremongering. We judge this to be a real threat to you and your practice.

Because of what we consider to be a witch hunt against chiropractors, we are now issuing the following advice:

The target of the campaigners is now any claims for treatment that cannot be substantiated with chiropractic research. The safest thing for everyone to do is as follows.

1. If you have a website, take it down NOW.

When you have done that, please let us know preferably by email or by phone. This will save our valuable time chasing you to see whether it has been done.

1. REMOVE all the blue MCA patient information leaflets, or any patient information leaflets of your own that state you treat whiplash, colic or other childhood problems in your clinic or at any other site where they might be displayed with your contact details on them. DO NOT USE them until further notice. The MCA are working on an interim replacement leaflet which will be sent to you shortly.

1. If you have not done so already, enter your name followed by the word ‘chiropractor’ into a search engine such as Google (e.g. Joe Bloggs chiropractor) and you will be able to ascertain what information about you is in the public domain e.g. where you might be listed using the Doctor title or where you might be linked with a website which might implicate you. We have found that even if you do not have a website yourself you may still have been linked inadvertently to a website listing you or your services.

CHECK ALL ENTRIES CAREFULLY AND IF IN DOUBT, CONTACT THE RELEVANT PROVIDER TO REMOVE YOUR INFORMATION.

CHECK OUR PREVIOUS EMAILS FOR SPECIFIC ADVICE AND KEY WORDS TO AVOID.

KEEP A LOG OF YOUR ACTIONS.

1. If you use business cards or other stationery using the ‘doctor’ title and it does not clearly state that you are a doctor of chiropractic or that you are not a registered medical practitioner, STOP USING THEM immediately.

5. Be wary of ‘mystery shopper’ phone calls and ‘drop ins’ to your practice, especially if they start asking about your care of children, or whiplash, or your evidence base for practice.

IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE, YOU MAY BE AT RISK FROM PROSECUTION.

IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE, THE MCA MAY NOT BE ABLE TO ASSIST YOU WITH ANY PROCEEDINGS.

Although this advice may seem extreme or alarmist, its purpose is to protect you. The campaigners have a target of making a complaint against every chiropractor in the UK who they perceive to be in breach of the GCC’s CoP, the Advertising Standards Code and/or Trading Standards. We have discovered that complaints against more than 500 individual chiropractors have been sent to the GCC in the last 24 hours.

Whatever you do, do not ignore this email and make yourself one of the victims. Some of our members have not followed our earlier advice and now have complaints made against them. We do not want that to happen to you.

Even if you do not have a website, you are still at risk. Our latest information suggests that this group are now going through Yellow Pages entries. Be in no doubt, their intention is to scrutinise every single chiropractor in the UK.

The MCA Executive has worked tirelessly over the last week keeping abreast of development and contacting at risk members. We have decided that this is our best course of action to protect you and the Association at this time of heightened tension. This advice is given to you solely to protect you from what we believe is a concerted campaign, and does not imply any wrongdoing on your part or the part of the Association. We believe that our best course of action is simply to withdraw from the battleground until this latest wave of targeting is over.

Finally, we strongly suggest you do NOT discuss this with others, especially patients, Firstly it would not be ethical to burden patients with this, though if they ask we hope you now have information with which you can respond.

Most importantly, this email and all correspondence from the MCA is confidential advice to MCA members alone, and should not be shared with anyone else.

Please be aware that the office phone lines are likely to be busy, so, if you need our help, please send an email to the office and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Yours,

Berni Martin

MCA Chair.

Best wishes,

Nicki

Stunning. What have they got to hide?

The McTimoney web site itself now just reads:

For all enquiries regarding McTimoney chiropractic, please contact :

McTimoney Chiropractic Association
Crowmarsh Gifford
Wallingford OX10 8DJ
admin@mctimoney-chiropractic.org
Tel : 01491 829494

The most stunning admission is that Chiropractors are told:

IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE, YOU MAY BE AT RISK FROM PROSECUTION.

****************************************************************************************************

Update:

All the missing websites have been archived here: http://yaxu.org/tmp/chiros.html

Smashing job yaxu

PS Dont forget to sign the Simon Singh support campaign.

http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/333/

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Two of the central criticisms of chiropractic are that they promote improperly evidenced treatments and that they attempt to enrol customers on lengthy, expensive and unnecessary treatment plans. Furthermore, they market themselves as ‘wellness’ therapists where you should attend your chiropractor even when you feel fine for ‘corrective’ adjustments. My investigations of the BCA reveal that they are deliberately targeting children with an unevidenced chiropractic message.

Every year the BCA hold a Chiropractic Awareness Week. For the past few years, they have been promoting themselves with a campaign called “Straighten Up UK”. The idea of this campaign is to suggest to people that they should be performing a daily exercise programme “to help strengthen the spine and improve posture.” They are specifically targeting children by introducing a couple of cartoon characters, Abbey and Jake, and suggesting some exercises that kids can do to keep them in shape.

The exercises are divided into three parts and given kid friendly names – ‘stars’, ‘flying friends’ and ‘core balance’. The idea is that children can do a simple three minutes that can be incorporated into their ‘daily routine’ – whatever that means for kids. You can look at the video of the exercise here.

Now, anything that helps kids lead active lives ought to be good. But the campaign is not just about getting kids to bend and stretch – it is closely linked to the idea that chiropractic for kids is a ‘good thing’. Some chiropractors advertise that they would like you to “visit your chiropractor as you would your dentist”. There is no evidence to suggest this is necessary or beneficial. The BCA say in their Straighten Up UK (SUUK) campaign,

As children grow, chiropractic can help not only with the strains caused by the rough and tumble of life but also with some of the problems that children can suffer in their first years:

A BCA chiropractor will carry out a full examination and take a thorough history before advising an appropriate treatment programme for you or your children. Treatment consists of specific adjustments done by hand to free stiff joints and remove spinal nerve irritation.

We have previously seen how chiropractors are taught that birth introduced trauma to the bones of children can be corrected by manipulation. Again, there is no decent evidence for this.

So, where did this campaign come from and where is the evidence that their exercise programme benefits children?

Well, a PR Company looks like it is taking the credit. Publicasity, who describe themselves as ‘brand alchemists, have the BCA as a case study. Publicasity take the credit for creating the “three minute exercise called “Straighten Up UK” and using it is a tool for creating “clear ROI” for the BCA. (For my gentle readers not engaged in marketing activities, ROI is ‘Return on Investment’).

Publicasity also undertook some ‘research’ by conducting a survey to look at “ who was suffering from back pain and attitudes towards bad posture”. Dutifully, the market research showed that “50% of 16-24 year olds were currently suffering back pain and that the UK was indeed a nation of ‘Slouch Potatoes’.” Press releases were then issued and obediently picked up by Jenny Hope and Sarah Stacey of the Daily Mail for verbatim publication.

Indeed, in the Daily Mail, we are given a quote,

Mr Hutchful [Tim Hutchful, BCA spokesperson] said the BCA has launched a three-minute exercise programme called Straighten Up UK, which is designed to help strengthen the spine and improve posture.

It gives instructions for three quick sets of movements designed to warm up muscles, and advice on posture care and balance.

He said that although chiropractors can assist in diagnosis and treatment of painful joints, ligaments and the spine, they are more concerned with prevention.

“It’s like looking after your teeth,” he said. “It doesn’t take long to brush your teeth every day but it pays dividends for life.

“We want people to take that amount of time to care for their backs.”

PR job done.

Well, not quite. A ‘call to action’ is also important in marketing terms. Being ‘with it’ Publicasity made sure there were some ‘flash events’ and ‘stunts’ in ‘high footfall’ locations (English translation: train stations and shopping centres). They also made sure they interfered with Fern and Phil on ITV’s This Morning. Publicasity also made sure that ‘press toolkits’ were available to BCA chiropractor members so that they could get people into their premises for ‘free posture check ups’.

Joy.

A pretty slick operation. Publicasity state they had a reach of 53,998,551 people. I think that figure pretty much sums up their attitude to relevance, accuracy and precision.

And what does this say about the BCA? Well, they like their stunts. This is typical of the ‘cash for’ stories that Ben Goldacre documents so well. We may expect cheap PR stunts from a fish oil pill peddler or a fluff headed shampoo maker, but a regulated health profession?

True colours are shining through.

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Another unintended consequence of the BCA decision to sue Simon Singh is that an army of bloggers, scientists and sceptics have been scouring leaflets, advertising and web sites of chiropractors resulting in hundreds of complaints being made to the Advertising Standards Authority, Trading Standards and directly to the General Chiropractic Council. What was once considered a strength of Chiropractic – Statutory Regulation – is now being turned back on them as the GCC is obliged by law to investigate every complaint made to them. They are now sitting on a huge pile of letters. The ASA has recently ruled on one claim by a Dr Carl Irwin that he should not call himself ‘Dr’ or claim he can treat things like babies colic. Hundreds of chiropractors make similar claims. The GCC will be busy.

This sort of mass complaint would be powerless against homeopaths. It is now well established that the homeopath’s regulatory bodies, such as the Society of Homeopaths, do not upkeep their own code of conduct and ethics. They are under no obligation to do so by law. But Chiropractors now have to suffer from their own status.

Statutory Regulation of chiropractic makes a number of demands on the trade. Importantly, their education must be from one of three approved schools that provide a degree level education. One school stands out here: the McTimoney College based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, where the degrees are underwritten by the University of Wales. McTimoney Chiropractic is a sect within the bigger cult. It has its own ideas about how hard you should hit the body when it is ill. According to the McTimoney Chiropractic Association, the School was set up in Oxfordshire by John McTimoney who believed that “health depends on healthy nerve messages, subluxations of the vertebrae or other joints interfere with these, and that such subluxations can affect not only joints and muscles, but every cell and organ in the body.” McTimoney Chiropractors do not rely on X-rays to ‘diagnose’ problems, but use their hands to ‘feel’ for things to ‘correct’. Their Latin motto, In Manu Vis Medendi, means ‘in the hands is the power of healing’.

These sort of beliefs would appear to be the root of the sort of claims that Simon Singh was disputing. Whilst there is some plausibility that a chiropractic back massage may help back pain, there is no good evidence that chiropractic subluxations exist and that correcting them allows general health conditions to be treated.

The McTimoney Association is quite explicit in its beliefs. Singh was questioning the role of chiropractic in children. McTimoney’s believe that the act of birth harms children and that chiropractic can correct birth problems:

Birth is probably one of the toughest events we undergo as humans. A baby’s head has to squeeze through a small birth canal to be born. In doing so the baby’s head in particular will absorb much of the shock, and the soft bones will yield slightly allowing it to travel down the birth canal. This is called ‘moulding’. After birth the baby’s head will gradually revert to a more normal shape. However, if this ‘unmoulding’ doesn’t take place completely, the baby can be left in some discomfort which they are unable to communicate.

Most babies cope extremely well with the process and emerge contented, happy, able to feed, sleep, and grow normally. However, for some, the recovery can take longer, especially those who had a particularly difficult entry into the world and these babies may show some, all, or a combination of the following signs:

• Irritability, fractiousness
• Feeding problems
• Continuous crying
• Sleeps little, difficult to settle
• Colic, sickness and wind

All of these could indicate that there is a misalignment in the baby’s skeletal system and that the baby is uncomfortable as a result.

Evidence for this is of course lacking. It’s nonsense.

Of course birth is not the only problem, but growing children also suffer “simple bumps and tumbles associated with growing up can often cause misalignments of the skeleton”. Naturally, only chiropractors appear to be able to detect these problems. There appears to be few childhood conditions that a good bone rub can’t help:

There is also a range of problems which cannot necessarily be associated with a bump or fall, but which may nonetheless be due to bony misalignment and the subsequent interference with nerves. There are many recorded incidences where treatment has been beneficial for the following symptoms:

• Some childhood asthma
• Learning difficulties and behavioural problems including:
  • Poor concentration and inattentiveness
  • Fidgeting and difficulty sitting still
  • Hyperactivity
• Vunerability [sic] to infections including:
  • Ear infections
  • Repetitive colds
  • Sinus and dental problems
  • Clumsiness or poor co-ordination

It would appear that a huge source of bogus* chiropractic claims come straight from the (undoubtedly sincerely held) beliefs of the McTimoney’s.

Amazingly, the McTimoney School offers a MSc in Chiropractic Paediatrics. This postgraduate degree is underwritten by the University of Wales. You can also gain a similar MSc in crunching the bones of animals as well as babies. The University validates these degrees and presumably passes them as meeting acceptable standards. What these standards are though must surely exclude having a sound scientific basis. It is the GCC that assesses the content of the courses. We may not expect the GCC to be too harsh in assessment – its own survival depends on the survival of the college. It may also be worth noting that the McTimoney College Principal, Christina Cunliffe, is on the Education Committee and General Council of the GCC.

Without the degree awarding body of the University of Wales endorsement of these courses, students could not join the GCC and subsequently practice as Chiropractors. By underwriting the claims that chiropractic can treat colic, the University has allowed this whole affair to happen.

Recently, Universities have been attacked for offering bogus* science degrees in pseudoscientific subjects, such as homeopathy. Many courses have closed as a result. This does not harm homeopaths too much; most learn their trade from private unaccredited schools.

Somehow, the Chiropractic degrees have escaped this scrutiny. I do not think that will last. And if similar decisions are made in places like the University of Wales as has happened elsewhere, the very future of chiropractic in the UK will be severely threatened.

Chiropractic statutory regulation has given this form of quackery* great strength. But that strength may well be turned against itself and be the undoing in the long run.

* Deliberate deception not implied.

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1. McTimoney Chiropractic College in Deep Trouble Today, the University of Wales announced that it is to cease accrediting degrees at all but two colleges. The University has made a business in education by accrediting degrees from...
2. The Role of UK Universities in Chiropractic The decision by the British Chiropractic Association to sue Simon Singh will undoubtedly bring increased scrutiny of chiropractic. I would like to start with a first look at the education...
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