It sometimes seems that I'm on a different planet, devoid of a common language. Everyone speaks a tongue only they can understand. Hardly a day goes by without a letter from some confused soul claiming I'm trying to dictate to him or her about how they should practice.
In all the time that I've been writing in chiropractic journals I never once intimated that people should practice the way I do, or have the same philosophy. While I believe that the way I practice is best, and that my philosophy is correct, it doesn't matter to me what someone else thinks or does as long as they don't try to force me to think and practice as they do.
As for education -- yes, I believe the public we are supposed to serve should be protected from incompetence. Whether the super straights believe it or not, a good portion, if not most, of the graduates from the straight schools eventually start using adjuncts such as physical therapy or nutrition in their practices. Without proper schooling, the unskilled can become a potential hazard to their patients and a detriment to the profession. It's for this reason -- and this alone -- that I feel that any and all accredited schools should expose their students to those things most of the states allow. Doesn't that make sense? To the super straight, however, even exposure to something they don't suscribe to is a form of heresy. As if what they believe is so fragile that the whole fabric of their philosophy will unravel by merely speaking about something like diathermy. For what it's worth, some of the most idiotic super straights I have ever known have come from mixer schools. In other words, philosophy is peculiar to each individual and may God grant that we don't become a profession ruled by repressive ideologists.
All of the preceding I've written, in one way or another, over the years and, yet, I will still get correspondence from those who either don't know how to read, skip read and interpret the blanks, or don't bother to read at all.
What it boils down to is: Can we leave each other alone? Essentially, we have not two but four factions within the profession. On one side are the pseudomeds who would love to see the profession become an adjunct council in the AMA. In the middle are the straights and mixers and on the other side are the super straights who would force everyone to do nothing but adjust.
It's not the mixers and the straights in the middle who have the problems -- it's the nutty fringes. The pseudomeds arrange speaking engagements to denounce the rest of the professions as being quacks if they claim to do more than adjust to relieve the pain of the musculoskeletal problems. While the super straights go through the legislative halls in an attempt to restrict everyone else to adjusting only.
We are the only profession that has factions actively trying to restrict what its members do. When was the last time you heard of a group of optometrists fighting to restrict the rest of their profession to working only on the left eye? Or podiatrists to only the big toe of the right foot? Nonsense isn't it?
It's one thing to believe strongly in something but quite another to force what you believe onto everyone else. But oh, those poor innocent super straights! People are always trying to force them to think and allow the students in their colleges to do the same. How terrible! They just want to be left alone to practice their mysterious rights as they wish. So okay. No one wants to stop that. That's between the chiropractor and his conscience. Unfortunately, it's the super straights who want to control. Instead of allowing the majority of the profession to practice as they feel qualified to -- the super straights go around trying to tear down anything that stands in their way.
While small, the supers make of lot of noise. This was again demonstrated recently in the state of Vermont. Right now the state is undergoing a sunset review of each of the professions. Apparently someone from SCASA got hold of some ignorant legislator and had him introduce legislation that would restrict the profession to adjustments only. SCASA would like to build a philosophical legislative wall around us with the help of the medical and physical therapy professions. Who, then, is trying to dictate and force their will upon others? That's right -- the super straights.
It's against all natural law to force the will of one group of human beings on that of another without freedom of thought eventually prevailing. For this reason, I believe chiropractic will flourish as an eclectic natural healing discipline. It will take sacrificing on everyone's part, but the evil purveyors controlled thought in chiropractic will fall before the forces of freedom and common sense. It's only natural.