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In know people who have benefited greatly from chiropractic, but the claims for it by its practitioners are commonly so sweeping that they tend to discredit and overwhelm the good it can do.

If chiropractors kept to the spine it would be OK - that's their area of expertise. There's a kookopractor with a local radio show that is always pushing his herbal medicines and talking about how awful vaccinations are. I wish I could lock him in a room full of kids in iron lungs because of polio, but we don't have those anymore because of #$$(#($#! vaccinations.

What exactly is "expert" about their spinal knowledge. There is no credible, peer-reviewed scientific evidence that chiropractic is beneficial to spinal issues. Moreover, chiropractors do not have a scientific view of spinal structure and neural systems. They are simply quacks preying on the weak and gullible.

Myriad stings have shown that people with no pain can present to a series of chiropractors, get x-rayed, and then have each doctor come up with a a different, unfounded issue and recommended regimen. Does anyone ever go to the chriopractor and hear "There's nothing wrong with you" or "Maybe you should see a doctor"? Doesn't happen.

And, when's the last time you saw a neurosurgeon with a booth at the mall adivising you to get some brain work? In my local mall the chiro booth is about 20 feet from the Dyanetics crowd. One wonders which offers the more credible solution...

I agree with you as to chiropractors, but their claims and criticisms based on alternative medicine are not entirely out of line.

Herbal medicines have valid applications. They are used by some medical doctors, and I have found them effective from time to time. There is a great deal of marketing puffery in alternative medicine though, and purity and safety issues about some preparations; but it also has some effective remedies with a solid basis in science. Unfortunately, as ignorant as doctors tend to be about herbal medicine and nutritional supplements, chiropractors tend to be ignorant, credulous, and enthusiastic, with little real knowledge of what works and what doesn't and why.

Vaccines have been a great advance, but they are subject to controversies: the use of mercury and aluminum compounds as adjuvants; contamination with a monkey virus in early polio vaccines; and adverse effects, ranging from claims of autism in children who were given the MMR vaccine to Gulf War syndrome and anthrax vaccine reactions in veterans. The benefits of vaccines though far outweigh their harms and risks, a point many of the critics seem incapable of acknowledging.

My view of these issues is mixed: great respect for the virtues and accomplishments of conventional medicine; frustration at its often willful blindness to its faults; and an openness to alternative therapies in concept -- with much skepticism in their application and as to most practitioners.