The Chiropractic Cult

Got an email from William Esteb, today.  He wrote about something I've been thinking about for years.

Is your practice a cult?

One characteristic of a cult is the attempt to control what its members say and do. Such as...

No talk about symptoms. How to you expect to change what symptoms mean to patients if they're not allowed to talk about them?

Wellness is superior to relief. How will patients believe the benefits of regular checkups if they don't start care, stop care and experience a relapse or two?

Drugs are bad. Every cult needs an enemy and medicine is a convenient target. Drugs aren't the enemy.Beliefs about symptom treating are.

These and others suggest a profound mistrust of patients. Hijacking their free will, even if justified in a patient's best interest, is parental and potentially exploitive. Such practices require a constant replenishing of new patients as the limitations of their power is revealed by patients who discontinue care without notice and rarely refer others.

It's easy for a chiropractor to rationalize that certain selling techniques, like eliciting an emotional response when going over a patient's x-rays, is best for the patient in the long run.  But forcing someone to comply to certain standards is never the right way for a doctor, teacher, coach, or parent to help another grow and develop.

Any progress achieved in the realms of education, athletics, health and even morality must be attained through the process of exercising total free agency without someone from the outside (even someone of great authority) manipulating and coercing right behavior.