Abstract
One hundred and fifty years ago the conventional medical profession believed in blood letting and chiropractors believed that they could treat meningitis by manipulating the spine. Now both professions are medically registered and neither believes in these myths! As Professor Ernst suggests, chiropractors now adhere to the ethics of evidence-based medicine.
As has been pointed out to Baum (and Singh) repeatedly, the evidence for harm in the paediatric population receiving chiropractic is based on limited and questionable case reports. The evidence for chiropractic causing harm in the adult population is even flimsier with good solid case-controlled studies suggesting that chiropractic manipulation of the neck is not unsafe and appears not to cause stroke. 1
I have great respect for Professor Baum but unfortunately he has a particular blind spot with respect to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) which fails to create a thoughtful and informed debate. 2 There is no doubt that we all have much to learn about CAM and the evidence for the safety and effectiveness of chiropractic will no doubt change chiropractic practice over the coming years as it has done already with respect to the way we manage back pain within the NHS. To a very large extent Dr Singh brought this battle upon himself and appears to have created a cause celebre around the libel laws possibly because he failed to win the initial hearing against the chiropractors.
Footnotes