Last night I had a conversation with a very good friend of mine (who seems to think I am a woman) about a myriad of topics. One of the topics that came up is her use of a chiropractor. Normally, I’d be all over this like Oprah on a baked ham, but her circumstance is one of the few times that actually make sense to consider chiropractic treatment. She was in a car accident and damaged her back rather significantly. In situations like this, chiropractic has shown that there may well be some benefit to their ministrations. Personally, I’d have gone to a physical therapist or a massage therapist, but to each their own.

First off, the doctor told her she had scoliosis. This is a 30 year old woman who has lived a very healthy and physical life. Seriously, you could bounce peanut M&Ms off her abs. If she suffered from a crooked spine, she would have known and she would have been in a tremendous amount of pain. And car accidents do not cause scoliosis. It’s widely assumed that the cause of scoliosis is genetic. The minute a chiromancer showed me how dumb he was, I’d get up and walk out. That’s just me. When they start saying they can cure asthma and chronic sinus pain, then they’re lying. Or dangerously ill-informed.

So with this conversation in mind, I head over to Respectful Insolence this morning to check up on what is one of my favorite blogs for both science and sass. And lo and behold, Orac has a piece on chiromancy entitled The Annals Of Quackademic Medicine: Testing Chiropractic In Pregnancy. Clearly, he read my mind.

I wasn’t at all stunned to read the comments of the chiropractors in this article. These are people who I think truly believe their ridiculous claims. The notion that dealing with mythical subluxations in a pregnant woman mean that the baby will be born without subluxations is just laughable. If spinal issues in the fetus were related to spinal issues in the mother, we’d see a quantifiable relationship between women with non-genetic spinal injury and babies born with non-genetic spinal impairments. There’s no data to back up any of their claims, and as we know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Chiropractic care is valid as a form of physical therapy. I won’t take that away from them. But adjusting the spine does not strengthen the pelvic floor. The pelvic floor is generally strengthened by kegel exercises. This is because it causes the muscles in the pelvic floor to flex and release, much like every other exercise on earth. Obviously they have the right to devote whatever testing they like and, provided that the tests are effectively designed, I’m quite willing to adjust my thinking on the topic. But somehow I doubt that’s going to happen.

Jim