Chiropractic school angers FSU professors

A growing number of professors in the Florida State University College of Medicine are saying they will resign if FSU administrators continue to pursue a proposed chiropractic school.

"I would no longer wish to volunteer my teaching energies to FSU medical school, should it encompass a school of chiropractic," wrote Dr. Ian Rogers, an assistant professor at FSU's Pensacola campus, in a Dec. 15 e-mail. "This is plainly ludicrous!!!!"

The threatened resignations - at least seven to date, all from assistant professors who work part time - reflect a belief among many in the medical establishment that chiropractic is a "pseudo-science" that leads to unnecessary and sometimes harmful treatments. Professors are even circulating a parody map of campus that places a fictional Bigfoot Institute, School of Astrology and Crop Circle Simulation Laboratory near a future chiropractic school.

Opposition is clearly mounting as the chiropractic school heads for crucial votes in January before the FSU board of trustees and the state Board of Governors.

In fact, the school is now seen as a test case for the fledgling Board of Governors, which critics have accused of kowtowing to Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature on the higher education issues it is supposed to oversee.

FSU was closed for the holidays Tuesday. FSU president T.K. Wetherell, provost Larry Abele and John Thrasher, chairman of the FSU board of trustees, could not be reached for comment.

But Sen. Dennis Jones, the Treasure Island Republican who spearheaded legislative support for the school in the spring, said the professors were "overreacting."

He accused anti-chiropractic groups from outside the state of stirring faculty opposition at FSU.

"If they resign, so be it," said Jones, a chiropractor himself. The instructors don't deserve to teach at FSU, he said, "if they're putting their credentials with people known for promoting professional bigotry."

The Legislature appropriated $9-million annually for the chiropractic school, which was pushed by Jones and then-Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, an FSU graduate. It would be the only school of its kind in the country.

As supporters envision it, more than 100 new faculty members would train legions of chiropractors, with a special emphasis on Hispanic and African-American students. The school would also draw lucrative federal grants in alternative medicine.

Planning began years ago, but criticism didn't ramp up until after the legislative session.

Some opponents see the school as an end run around the Board of Governors, which oversees the state's 11 universities but has yet to consider the chiropractic school. Last week, a group headed by former university system chancellor E.T. York filed a lawsuit against the board, accusing it of failing to flex its constitutionally granted muscle and pointing to the chiropractic school as a prime example.

But some FSU faculty members are upset, too, fearing the school will shatter FSU's academic reputation. The list of critics include FSU's two Nobel laureates - Robert Schreiffer, a physicist, and Harold Walter Kroto, a chemist - and Robert Holton, the chemistry professor who developed the cancer-fighting drug Taxol, which has brought FSU tens of millions of dollars in royalties.

In recent weeks, more than 500 faculty members have signed petitions against the chiropractic school, including about 70 in the medical college, said Dr. Raymond Bellamy, an assistant professor who is leading the charge against the proposal. The medical college has more than 100 faculty members.

"I teach wonderful medical students from Florida State University here in Orlando," Dr. James W. Louttit wrote in an e-mail to Bellamy, who shared it with the St. Petersburg Times. "If they decide to start a chiropractic school I would no longer be able to support this program."

"It should come as no surprise that no major medical institution in this country, public or private, has embraced chiropractic medicine," wrote Dr. Henry Ho, a Winter Park physician and FSU assistant professor, in another e-mail. "If Florida State University were to do so, its fledgling attempt for credibility as a medical institution of stature would be severely jeopardized."

The situation at FSU isn't the first time chiropractors have sought to tie themselves to an established university.

In the late 1990s, faculty at York University in Toronto - one of Canada's largest schools - considered plans to affiliate with Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. The plan would have brought York millions of dollars in new facilities and donations and given the chiropractic school academic credibility.

After a bitter, years-long fight, York faculty narrowly vetoed the plan in 2001.

At FSU, faculty have not officially voiced their concerns about the chiropractic school. Bellamy said they fear retaliation from lawmakers if they do.

"he is quite simply a traitor to everything he was taught of his profession."

Not really. Knowing chiros as I do, I those that I have known have all said that medical practitioners have their place and physical healers do as well. It is the horrible chiros that think they can treat all things.

I never said that chiropractors say or think that they can prevent all disease, much less treat all disease. What they are absolute about, and cannot be swayed by evidence on, if they accept what they have been taught, is chiropractic theory.

Despite what chiropractors may think, conventional medical practitioners do not “have their place" in any absolute sense. The minute there is a really effective anti-cancer drug cocktail equivalent to multi-drug treatment of cancer, every specialist cancer surgeon in this country – and, hopefully, the world – is out of a job, and just like the old TB surgeons will have to move on to another area of medicine. By contrast, true chiropractors will always believe there is a place for their manipulations regardless of any medical advances.

This is a little exaggerated because there is a chiropractic college in LA that also teaches a lot of massage and acupuncture. What other chiro schools are responding to the research linking the manipulations with strokes by mostly switching over to safer treatments like massage and acupuncture? None that I know. Until they do start letting scientific research findings continually change their treatments, I’ll still consider them quacks.

Is the Palmer school the one where they used the table with drop-down thingies on springs?

Here are my two chiropractor stories. I'll make them as brief as possible.

1. As a wild and stupid youth I dove off the roof into a swimming pool and hurt my back horribly. I slept standing up, couldn't walk the next day and my roommate took me to the hospital. They laid me on a table, lifted my legs, and told me I'd sprained my back, and that there was nothing at all I could do about it but lie still for a couple weeks. Charged me $85 (which was A LOT of money in 1977, probably equal to about $250 today) and told me to go home. This was bad news. I was a college student, waitressing to work my way through school and to pay the rent. I simply could not afford to "lie still for a couple of weeks," though medical doctors told me I had no other alternative.

Long story short, though strange circumstances, the next day I was referred to a chiropractor. He had me up, walking, and going back to work in one day.

2. Years later, in my late twenties, I still thought chiropractors were mostly quacks. I'd had a chronic problem with horrible itching in my right ear, eye, and nostril, for a couple of years. Saw many docs and specialists, exrays showed congestion in my sinsuses, they had no idea what caused it and could only stifle the symptoms with drugs that were very expensive and had awful side effects. My mother saw that the cure was almost as bad as the affliction, and referred me to her chiropractor. He was a handsome guy with an Australian accent whom I knew was a quack taking advantage of my mom. But she said she'd pay, so I went to see him and told him about the chronic inner ear itching and runny nose and running eye on the right side of my head.

He took some exrays of my back. He pointed out where the top vertebrae in my neck was tilted to one side. Then he asked in passing, "Do you also get hay fever?"

I regarded hay fever as a fact of life. Every spring I put up with it by eating those pills that help mask the sneezing, burning, etc. I didn't tell him that, though. I just said, "Yes." He said, "Maybe we'll be able to do something about that, too." Then I knew he was a quack.

My low opinion was further enforced when he asked me, "Do you often get bladder infections or yeast infections?" Odd question -- no to the latter, but as regarding bladder infections, there again I simply lived with them -- they were a fact of life. Over the years I had seen doctors and a urologist (very unpleasant experience!) and they had run expensive tests and prescribed expensive medicines, none of which had any permanent effect. I had lived with chronic bladder infections since I was about 17 -- about ten years. Sometimes they were so bad my pee was pink with the blood, and they hurt like hell. Aside from the medicines, I drank lots and lots of cranberry juice. It helped a bit, but man I got sick of cranberry juice.

Again, however, I didn't tell the chiropractor any of that, I just answered, "Yes, bladder infections." He pointed to an area on my exray showing some vertebrae in my lower back that were off kilter, and said, "Maybe it's caused by this mess down here. Maybe I can help with that, too."

Hearing that, I became convinced that this guy was a quack supreme -- fix hay fever and bladder infections? How he knew I suffered from them was probably a lucky guess on his part. But my mom was paying, and I had nothing to lose ...

Guess what? I have NEVER had hay fever since I was treated by this guy, over the course of a year or so, some 20 years ago.

The only time I had a bladder infection since, was about ten years later. By that time I'd moved to another city. The returning bladder infection motivated me to hunt down another chiropractor who used the drop-table method -- NO electric gizmos, no shock treatments, ONLY the laying on of hands. I finally found one, and voila, bladder infection went away and I have not had any since.

As for the original ailment of the jaw, ear, eye, and nose, it nearly disappeared; I still suffer from itching in my ear above my jaw, but only the mildest, merest traces. No runny nostril, no weeping eye.

Medical doctors are a neccessity, especially for women. My new gyencologist asked me about previous doctors, who had I seen? I said a couple of chiropractors. She gave me a very stern look and said, "Never, ever go to a chiropractor."

I have never, ever been back to her office. If she's that ignorant, then I'd be stupid to trust her with my health.

My low opinion was further enforced when he asked me, "Do you often get bladder infections or yeast infections?" Odd question

Not in the least. They are trained to ask those questions in order to make you think you are getting more for your money. Doesn't change the treatment one iota, any more than the x-rays.

I have never, ever been back to her office. If she's that ignorant, then I'd be stupid to trust her with my health.

Maybe she'd had a patient who got a stroke after seeing a chiropractor. Or maybe she just believes in the principles of her profession and doesn't hide them to ingratiate herself with patients, as would a well-trained chiropractor. Instead, I presume, you prefer physicians who tell you what want to hear.

Now, I'm presuming here that you're open to hearing from other posters who don't tell you what you want to hear. If not, you have my apologies.

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