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Chiropractors are quacks. If someone has a sore neck or back, and they get a massage [adjustment], they are likely to feel better. Since most acute back/neck pain episodes resolve spontaneously within 7-10 days, of course chiropractors can claim that their "therapy" was responsible for the "cure". And of course if a patient is told that a particular treatment is designed to make them better, a certain percentage will improve no matter what the treatment consists of [placebo effect].

Modern medicine is NOT limited to surgery and medication prescription. Physical therapy is routinely prescribed for neck/back problems. A whole specialty of Pain Control has evolved to deal with the chronic pain of neck/back disease. Chronic neck/back pain is VERY hard to control, hence the emergence of a pseudoscience like Chiropractic.

As for the "modern medicine can cause people harm" posts, the posters show an amazing degree of lack of understanding of the complexity of medical treatment. For instance, one poster cited an allergic reaction to an antibiotic as an example of modern medicine causing illness. If a patient is found to have a pneumonia, that patient needs an antibiotic to recover. There is no may to predict if a patient will have an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. What would you have the physician do, refuse to prescribe the life saving antibiotic for fear that the patient will have an allergic reaction? All drugs have the potential for side effects; thats the fault of REALITY, not modern medicine.

Consider this situation: you go to your doctor and are diagnosed as having very high blood pressure. You do not respond to a low salt diet. You are told what has been shown in SCIENTIFIC studies, that you are at high risk of having a stroke or a heart attack as a result of untreated high blood pressure. You are told that you have to take blood pressure medication, and that ALL MEDICATION HAS SIDE EFFECTS, which are listed for you. Choice A: refuse to take medication, and play the odds that you will have a disabling illness as a consequence. Choice B: take the medication and play the odds that you may have a side effect to the medication, but a much lower risk of stroke/heart attack. Which will you choose?

All of modern medicine consists of this choice, which basically is to offer the patient a lower risk therapy to avoid the higher risk of the disease. In real life, there is absolutely no therapy without side effects; there is no food to which someone won't be allergic, and there is no car that can't suddenly break down in traffic. So if you are told you have an illness, go ahead and refuse any treatment without side effects, and you will therefore do without treatment. Such is the nature of the real world.

Modern medicine is NOT limited to surgery and medication prescription. Physical therapy is routinely prescribed for neck/back problems.

Physical Therapy is where I draw the line. I have watched my mother go through session after session of PT and it does absolutely nothing, nada. I think most therapists are in cahoots with the doctors and then find out that many of the PT's are actually funded by their referring Dr.

My daughter and I were in an accident and we went the PT route for months. Absolutely NO, and I mean NO relief from the pain. They kept giving reason after reason and tried all kinds of different things. At the time, I hated Chiropractic medicine and was totally against it, but we were desperate. After four sessions, we were up and running and only had maybe 3 visits each over the next six months. There are good ones out there and bad ones... just do your research.