[Editor's note: This letter is in response to "To Tier or Not to Tier Chiropractic?" featured in the Sept. 1, 2004 issue. We received numerous responses to that article, many of which were published in the Sept.
Dear Editor:
I guess Drs. Winterstein and Phillips feel that all the pieces are in place. States require NBCE tests for licensure; PACE will control continuing education; if your license expires, you'll need another NBCE test; CCE will close schools that don't follow proper "standards"; the word "chiropractic" has been removed from the names of their schools; and here comes the "best practices" program, as if the Mercy Guidelines didn't do enough damage.
I always feared that my ability to practice as I saw fit might be threatened by the medical establishment. I love practicing a mix of many diverse chiropractic techniques. However, I never considered the threat to my practice from medipractors within my own profession.
I guess the straight doctors felt it first, but anyone not using "evidence-based medicine" will also see the danger of this march toward medical orthodoxy. And all this at a time when the bright and honest in the medical field agree that it is crashing faster then they could have ever imagined. This is what these doctors want us to join en masse?
Chiropractic school enrollment is dropping and new doctors are struggling. Could it be that there is no more "chiropractic" in these "Universities of Health Sciences?" No "chiropractic philosophy" and no "chiropractic passion?" No "belief in the power of chiropractic?" I know that I would never recommend a student aspiring to be a chiropractor to attend one of their schools.
The gloves are off now and the reason for the failure to unify the profession is obvious. These doctors are ashamed of chiropractic, as it was and as it is. They can only tolerate chiropractic as they want it to be. I don't understand how these doctors rose to such positions of power, but they are in a position to destroy chiropractic as it was and is. And for what? To restrict ourselves to being second-rate medical doctors?
So, I guess I agree that chiropractic should be tiered. Those who love and believe in chiropractic, with all its wonderful diversity and warts, should stay chiropractors. Those ashamed of chiropractic should leave and attend the medical or osteopathic school of their choice. Then they don't have to worry whether "our/your children will be able to choose and become competent, advanced practitioners of chiropractic medicine." They can just be chiropractors or medical doctors, or both.
Dennis Rhatigan, DC
Honolulu, Hawaii