Posted on 01/01/2005 7:13:21 AM PST by aculeus
Some threaten to resign over the proposed school.
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.
But the professors' stance has a political aim, too.
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.
Some of them say they're willing to do more than sign a petition.
"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.
"Everybody wants somebody else to kill it," he said.
Ron Matus can be reached at 727 893-8873 or
matus@sptimes.com
© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved
Just because a physician can't find a problem isn't to say the patient isn't sick. The physician can at least apply what IS known about a patient's symptoms and screen out most problems that could make a chiropractic visit tragic.
But, sadly, there are a large number of people with painful conditions with no detectable etiology. You are right, once classified as such, some get thrown to the chiropractors.
As long as the nonsense is kept out of the universities and medical schools. One of the best things to happen to our species was the transition of medicine into a science.
There is plenty of medieval spookery in our culture in all aspects of life for people who want it. All I ask is that we at least try to keep medicine clean of it.
I'm open enough to let you have your witchcraft. Please let me have my science.
I actually know one who did. He did it so that he could be of some real help.
I'm sure the increased income didn't hurt either.
You are quite right about that.
Is it unlimited? On my plan we're limited to 6 visits per year.
I don't know. I've never had to go more than twice in one year & w/ a $1000 deductible, the cost has always been out of pocket.
That isn't true. The practice of chiropracty is founded upon unsubstantiated (and apparently false) claims, and many chiropractors make additional absurd claims.
I know there are chiropractors who admit that much of what they were taught in school and what many chiropractors claim is utter nonsense. Good for them. However, chiropracty is best judged on the princples of chiropracty. Those principles do not hold up to scrutiny.
If someone helps you feel better, you may not care whether or not he claims that Elvis's ghost did it, but ideas are supposed to be the specialty of universities, and such nonsense cannot be ignored by them.
That's all I'm saying - most of them are quacks, but there are a few good ones out there.
"Chiropracty" isn't my invention (try an Internet search). I prefer it simply because it sounds more like a noun than an adjective.
Chiropractic is a moderately successful business technique based on the (extremely powerful and very real) placebo effect.
There is still some controvery regarding the meaning of the results known as the "placebo effect". One needn't appeal to it in this case. Anecdotes are sufficient for the success of chiropracty.
I did an Internet search and you are, of course, correct. "Chiropracty" seems to be used in Great Britain more commonly.
Like most successful medical fraud, there are many success stories with chiropractic treatment. These successes are real, but are due to the extemely powerful placebo effect on very desparate people. The Chiropracty business technique has no scientific basis beyond this, and in fact is overtly hostile to the scientific method or intellectual honesty, as one can see on this thread.
Chiropracty has no place in a university.
And of course we all know that these things would NEVER happen with regular M.D.s
Can happen with anyone. Are you suggesting that the imperfectibility of knowledge acquisition means that we should give up on it altogether?
"That would be a felony in most states."
You don't seem to know too much about chiropratics.
"Universities, however, are in the business of truth. "
Ya got the "business" part correct. They are all about money these days. But the "truth" part? Well, only if it doesn't get in the way of their left-wing political agenda or that "business" part.
"New York is another fraud hellhole, led by chiropractors who are nothing more than an organized crime enterprise here.
"
They aren't criminals because they are chiropractors, it's because they are New Yorkers, next to Jersey, home of the organized criminal.
The nice thing about science-based medicine is that such problems can actually get discovered. Quacks have little interest in rigorously researching their own claims. It can't even be said that their clients are guinea pigs, because at least guinea pigs are treated under controlled conditions to further knowledge. What quacks do to their clients remains hidden in a cloud of rumors, anecdotes, and extraordinary claims.
Oh the New York No-Fault Mill chiropractors are criminals all right. And the same goes for New Jersey. Due to the chiropractor/shyster fraud these two states have the worst auto insurance irates in the USA.
My doctor, a well respected GP who used to head the county medical society, goes to a chiropractor.
And my orthopedist confessed that he once went to a psychic. Should we now ofer "Psychic Hotline" and Ms Clio their own college at FSU?
It matters what REASONS the chiropracters give, with regard to its merits for a place in a university.
It is rare to find a MD who hasn't undergone 3 to 7 years of residency training. Therefore, nearly any MD you encounter has had, or is under the supervision of a physician with, 7 to 11 years of medical training.
Chiropractic requires a HS degree + chiropractic school.
Medical doctor = 4 years pre-med college + 4 years med school + 1 year Internship + 3 years residency + Board Certification exam + Re-certification exam every 10 years!
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