The most effective way to create confusion within and ultimately the destruction of a profession is to eliminate the use of its characteristic language and replace it with language that contradicts the original.
In this series I am considering some of the many commonly misused words that have diluted chiropractic. It seems that all of the words that chiropractic has adopted that are the domain of another profession (medicine). By adopting them we lose the original meaning and take on the reality of its origin. I contend that the use of these words have helped to remove our profession’s identity, cohesion and strength thus resulting in chiropractic contradiction.
I have used the Oxford Dictionary for the references and where necessary have taken the definition that is most used in the context of health care.
The first word I have chosen is a critical one and the point is that it is conspicuous by its absence. There are words being used in its place like manipulable lesion or fixation or sticky joint or posterior joint dysfunction along with many more attempts to not use the dreaded ‘S’ word.
The ‘S’ word is of course subluxation.
Definition – “A slight misalignment of the vertebrae, regarded in chiropractic theory as the cause of many health problems”.
Even though this definition is not accurate, it refuses to consider that science and chiropractic can go in the same sentence and is even written in a mocking tone it is from the Oxford Dictionary. So, let’s accept that, in the English-speaking world at least subluxation with this definition is considered to be the realm of chiropractic.
Let me also note that DD Palmer acknowledged that the word subluxation was a word that existed when he discovered and defined chiropractic. He used it because it spoke to his hypotheses and observations.
The fact that many chiropractors and chiropractic education institutions deny this “theory” despite the mountains of research evidence pointing to the existence of the complex of phenomena that are described within the full subluxation definition speaks to a purposeful intention to strip chiropractic of its identity and change it into something that it is not.
This is the height of scientific dishonesty. In the case of chiropractic colleges purporting to teach chiropractic, charging students huge amounts of money to become a chiropractor and then not giving them the essence of chiropractic by denying the objective clinical reality of subluxation is nothing short of commercial fraud.
This first word in this series is in the process of being eliminated. The very thing that made chiropractic flourish is being taken away from modern chiropractors. The very object of a chiropractors clinical focus is being denied. No wonder the number of people that chiropractors are serving is dropping.
This week ask yourself, where has the subluxation gone in your vocabulary and what are you gong to do to bring it back?
