Take a look at what political medicine is doing to keep MDs prosperous.
"The American Medical Association (AMA) is indeed the most powerful medical organization on the planet. The Journal of the American Medical Association has a circulation of 700,000, making it the world's largest medical journal. The AMA also publishes 10 medical specialty publications, numerous books on health for the public, as well as its weekly newspaper, the American Medical News. Each week, its public relations department sends news releases to 4,000 medical and science journals and dispatches video news releases via satellite to 340 TV outlets. Everyday, the AMA sends one minute medical reports to 5,000 radio stations. The information it dispenses is presented to the public by the major networks, newspapers and magazines as objective and reliable and is often incorporated verbatim into news stories or presented to the public as the news."What will it take before WE CAN WORK TOGETHER?
How many DCs have to go out of business before our chiropractic organizations will put down their egos and face the issues?
What separates us is not a matter of philosophy, but egos. Look at the incredible effort by the Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC) in their position paper that was inserted into the September 12, 1996 issue of Dynamic Chiropractic so that every DC in the US and Canada would have a copy. In their paper, the chiropractic college presidents presented their "position on chiropractic and the chiropractic paradigm." Our chiropractic college presidents even established a definition of the subluxation:
"Chiropractic is concerned with the preservation and restoration of health, and focuses particular attention on the subluxation.Can you imagine all 15 college presidents coming together to form a consensus on this important aspect of chiropractic. The full chiropractic spectrum was represented, from Thom Gelardi, DC, and Sid Williams, DC, to Jim Winterstein, DC and Reed Phillips, DC, DACBR, PhD."A subluxation is a complex of functional and/or structural and/or pathological articular changes that comprise neural integrity and may influence organ system function and general health. "A subluxation is evaluated, diagnosed, and managed through the use of chiropractic procedures based on the best available rational and empirical evidence."
If the college presidents can come to consensus and move forward, what is holding back the other chiropractic organizations?
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.
What matters is that this great profession and the individual chiropractors and chiropractic students are on the verge of a new era. Like the founding fathers of the United States, we stand ready to throw off the tyranny of political medicine.
And like those founding fathers, we are struggling to define our purpose. Instead of being 13 colonies trying to form "a more perfect union," we are multiple chiropractic organizations hoping to unleash a profession whose time has come.
The Wilk, et al. lawsuit was effectively our Declaration of Independence. But where is our Constitution?
Can we meet in our own Philadelphia and hammer out a structure that allows our national organizations to work together? Can we unite to address some of the most serious challenges ever to face chiropractic?
That remains to be seen.
But like Benjamin Franklin, the "printer"/journalist of his time, I have but one thing to say to every member of this profession:
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."1Reference
1. Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
DMP Jr.
Click here for more information about Donald M. Petersen Jr., BS, HCD(hc), FICC(h), Publisher.