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.

Boston Herald

Mass. car insurance rates dipping a bit

Accident scammers will face felony penalties
By Kimberly Atkins
Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Scammers paid to stage auto accidents and direct participants to clinics in order to file phony insurance claims will face felony charges under a new law.
Flanked by legislators who helped push the bill, Gov. Mitt Romney [related, bio] signed into law yesterday a measure that makes hiring or acting as a ``runner'' a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $4,000 fine.
It also better enables state medical licensing boards to oversee chiropractic and physical therapy clinics, where runners often send crash ``victims'' to bolster their bogus insurance claims.
``Massachusetts has twice the auto injury rates as other states,'' Romney said. ``That makes it twice as likely'' that a claim stems from a staged crash.
Communities north of Boston seem to be particular hotbeds, state officials said.
``In Lawrence, we had a chiropractic clinic on every corner,'' said state Sen. Susan Tucker (D-Andover), a sponsor of the bill.
The law gives state medical licensing boards $400,000 a year to review insurance claims data in search of fraudulent claims and to enforce the law against offenders. Health care providers found in violation could face license suspension.
Chiropractors and physical therapists with more than one fraud-related suspension can lose their licenses permanently.
A state task force was launched to crack down on insurance fraud after a 65-year-old Lawrence woman was killed in a staged accident in 2003.
Since then, more than 100 have been arrested, officials said. The number of reported auto accidents also decreased by about 1,000.
Insurance fraud costs each American household between $100 and $200 annually, a figure that is likely much higher in Massachusetts, officials said.
``This bill will go a long way in reducing that,'' said state Rep. Ronald Mariano (D-Quincy), chairman of the House Insurance Committee and task force member.

Chiropractic school out of alignment with taxpayer interests

Tallahassee Democrat - March 10, 2004

The Florida Legislature recently dug into the public's purse and pulled out $9 million to fund a school of chiropractic at Florida State University. That $9 million is only the beginning, as the school will need a building (up to $35 million) and annual funding.

FSU did not ask for a chiropractic school and does not want one, but dollars are dollars and FSU is reluctant to agitate the legislative leadership by complaining. The impetus behind the new school is Senate Majority Leader Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, a longtime chiropractor.

Other than that, there is no evident rationale for spending millions of taxpayers' money on this pet project. If there is a pressing need for more chiropractors (phone book listings suggest otherwise), that fact is not reported in the legislative analysis.

But who needs facts?

Sen. Jones has enjoyed the support of Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, and Speaker of the House Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City, each of whom gets a research program named in honor of their parents in the same bill (CS/SB 2002).

The bill does not name the school after Sen. Jones, but the astute reader can spot a trend here. The legislation sailed through, or rather over, the committee process and landed on legislators' desks in the first week of session, where it passed with only one "nay." Gov. Jeb Bush is expected to sign it this week.

FSU is attempting to put a fig leaf of scientific respectability on its new acquisition by implementing a five-year program of chiropractic study and requiring a collateral master's degree in microbiology, nutrition, health policy or biomechanics. This is in contrast to the usual two years of college and two years of chiropractic school required to confer the "Doctor of Chiropractic" degree by the majority of the 16 private schools of chiropractic in the United States, none of which is affiliated with a public university.

In mixing scientists and chiropractors in the same program, FSU may have planted the seeds of the new school's demise.

Ever since Daniel David Palmer, a self-styled "magnetic healer" gave birth to chiropractic in 1895 by applying force to a protrusion on a janitor's back (which he claimed cured the man's hearing loss), spinal manipulation has been the chiropractor's standard treatment. (Florida law allows the use of manipulation to treat all but a handful of diseases.) Manipulation has its devotees among the public and many will swear that it "works." This is known in scientific research as "anecdotal" evidence, but for a medical treatment to be scientifically valid it must stand up under far more exacting examination.

While chiropractic employs the language of medicine - physician, diagnosis, subluxation, board certification, for example - at present the hard science behind chiropractic practice is between slim and nonexistent. This is partly because, as a consultant's report commissioned by FSU itself points out, chiropractors have never rigorously researched their methods.

Fortunately, others have stepped into the breach. The report, done by MGT of America, reviewed existing research and found no scientific evidence that chiropractic is effective in treating any but a very few conditions - certain types of back pain, headaches and neck pain - and even for those the results are mixed. A beneficial physiological response by the body to spinal manipulation is "largely speculative." The report flatly states that chiropractic care for children "remains controversial" and should be the subject of more study.

And therein lies the rub. Will the FSU microbiology student have to suspend his scientific knowledge when he walks across the hall to his class in chiropractic methods? How can the grad student in biomechanics believe chiropractic's claim that "malpositioned" vertebrae interfere with the transmission of nerve impulses between the brain and tissue cells, thereby causing disease, if her study of science tells her otherwise?

And what will happen if future research concludes chiropractic treatment isn't effective for treating disease at all? Will the FSU school of chiropractic simply close its doors after consuming tens of millions of the taxpayers' money?

No one publicly raised these issues in the rush to open a new chiropractic school. No one said, "wait a minute, shouldn't we make sure chiropractic 'medicine' is scientifically valid before we open a school to teach it?" Not the FSU administration, not the legislators, not the medical and scientific community (which knows better). Perhaps they all need to have their spines adjusted. The scientifically savvy Gov. Bush should stiffen his own backbone and refuse to sign this legislation.

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