Category Archives: Chiropractic

Pediatric Chiropractic integrity faces new challenges

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Big Placebo, Chiropractic, Health by

Yesterday the BBC reported that the University of Wales is to cease validating “other degrees”.

Accrediting degrees from private colleges has no doubt been lucrative for the Uni of Wales. But it’s also proven to be a slur on expected standards. Early last November the BBC reported on the Uni. of Wales suspending accreditation of degrees from a controversial Malaysian business college. Overseas accreditation was always a risky venture and this debacle led to Leighton Andrews, Minister for Education in Wales to claim that Wales itself had been brought into disrepute. The university he said, had let down Higher Education. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education ultimately requested that the Uni. of Wales review the entire caper.

The decision places doubt upon McTimoney Chiropractic College, having its degrees approved. This is nothing less than tremendous news for thinking Australians and anyone concerned about a discipline that runs “seminars” designed to lure paying customers into entrusting their child’s health to unproven guesswork. Such as, How to create the ‘It’s normal for children to be adjusted’ mindset with your clinic and your community, or How to have the majority of your patients as children. These are just a couple of the gigs run by RMIT graduate Glenn Maginness of the Mt. Eliza Family Chiropractic Clinic.

All this comes together if we consider that McTimoney College offer degrees in the McTimoney Chiropractic Method, named after the late John McTimoney. These guys are famous for ordering all members to remove their entire websites at the beginning of the Singh libel case because they were veritable cornucopias of bogus claims. McTimoney always knew they were in the business of scamming when it came to claims about children and feared justified complaints. They also hold claims to fame for having atrocious academic standards in “make believe degrees” as espoused by David Colquhoun.

One of the “special” degrees from McTimoney College happens to be in Pediatric Chiropractic. Indeed, to my knowledge the only degree worldwide in Pediatric Chiropractic comes from McTimoney, and is validated by The University of Wales. From this hub radiates the dangerous and unproven practices and claims from the RMIT pediatric clinic – subject to a highly supported request to close it down reported in the BMJ – the greed of people like Glenn Maginness, potentially lethal antivaccination misinformation from Warren Sipser and Nimrod Weiner and the overarching mystical philosophy of Simon Floreani’s Chiropractors’ Association of Australia.

One hopes this abuse of Higher Education will be challenged, given the lack of evidence for chiropractic in general and the total absence of evidence for pediatric hanky panky. You may have heard of the KiroKids franchise chain in Victoria. In which case you’ll be delighted to know that the “course leader” for the Masters Degree at McTimoney is none other than the brains behind the unconscionable KiroKids scam. Not-a-real-doctor Neil J Davies himself. He boasts:

The MSc degree course now offered to the chiropractic profession by McTimoney College of Chiropractic was designed and written by the Course Leader, Dr Neil J Davies in conjunction with a group of leading paediatricians and other medical specialists and chiropractic advisors.

The course was in development for a period of 4 years and in August 2003 it was duly validated by the University of Wales. The course has been so well accepted by the chiropractic profession that enrolment applications have been received from 14 different countries including the United Kingdom.

Davies waffles about Intelligent Neurological Chiropractic. He has not one research paper published. He does have a text book however, and has won the auspicious Fishslapper of the week prize. Given that UK criticism of chiropractic has been scathing of the “new breed” of outright cons if you will, it may be that validation of McTimoney chiropractic degree ceases. This will put a welcome abrupt halt to the growth of one of the most unfortunate exploitations of vulnerable parents ever witnessed. But it goes further than just scamming a gullible public. They not only cause harm to children’s musculo-skeletal integrity and inflict stroke and death through cervical manipulation. By peddling misinformation and indirectly sustaining falsehoods about conventional medicine their status as a one stop shop for quackery is firm.

Consider this from the abstract of Pediatric vaccination and vaccine-preventable disease acquisition: associations with care by complementary and alternative medicine providers:

Children who saw chiropractors were significantly less likely to receive each of three of the recommended vaccinations. Children aged 1-17 years were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with a vaccine-preventable disease if they received naturopathic care. Use of provider-based complementary/alternative medicine by other family members was not independently associated with early childhood vaccination status or disease acquisition.

Pediatric use of complementary/alternative medicine in Washington State was significantly associated with reduced adherence to recommended pediatric vaccination schedules and with acquisition of vaccine-preventable disease. Interventions enlisting the participation of complementary/alternative medicine providers in immunization awareness and promotional activities could improve adherence rates and assist in efforts to improve public health.

Still, we must remember whilst the claims of chiropractic are primarily nonsense, John Reggars, past president of the Chiropractors Registration Board of Victoria and present vice president of the Chiropractic and Osteopathic College of Australasia, is a voice of sanity. Reggars has been scathing toward tactics (presently backed and encouraged by the CAA), used to increase income for chiropractors and. His article Chiropractic at a crossroads or are we just going around in circles, [Archived copy] published in Chiropractic and Manual Therapies, May 2011, is a compelling read.

Reggars claims the “all-encompassing alternative system of healthcare is both misguided and irrational”. And;

“Chiropractic trade publications and so-called educational seminar promotion material often abound with advertisements of how practitioners can effectively sell the vertebral subluxation complex to an ignorant public,” Mr Reggars said.

“Phrases such as ‘double your income’, ‘attract new patients’ and ‘keep your patients longer in care’, are common enticements for chiropractors to attend technique and practice management seminars.” Mr Reggars, who stressed his support for the “mainstream majority” in the profession, also condemned the use of care contracts, where patients signed up to a fixed number of treatment sessions.

“Selling such concepts as lifetime chiropractic care, the use of contracts of care, the misuse of diagnostic equipment such as thermography and surface electromyography and the X-raying of every new patient, all contribute to our poor reputation, public distrust and official complaints.”

“For the true believer, the naive practitioner or undergraduate chiropractic student who accepts in good faith the propaganda and pseudoscience peddled by the VSC teachers, mentors and professional organisations, the result is the same, a sense of belonging and an unshakable and unwavering faith in their ideology.”

Integrity like that of Reggars reminds us that the option of subjecting students to proper education will always come up in this debate. Many will argue that a change at the institutional level will result in professionalism at the clinical level. Yet chiropractic has always had difficulty selling its song as much more than a jingle. It hasn’t just recently gone awry with brats the like of Floreani, Weiner and Davies, all of whom should be vigorously prosecuted for false claims and fraud under the appropriate health act and advertising codes. There have always been crooks and there probably always will be.

It’s not a discipline. It’s a belief system and it peddles subjective faith on so many levels. Many like Reggars have done an admirable job and we can remain thankful for the attempts of the Chiropractic Boards to address complaints. Yet today chiropractors are expected to provide for the new age worried well. In the eyes of so many real disciplines they are not health practitioners. They practice rituals. The superstitious “result” is achieved by so-called “patients” who think themselves into a state of wellnesss – whatever that is.

The very last demographic we need pushed into this anything-goes nonsense are impressionable children. Let’s hope the decision by the University of Wales has far reaching consequences.

Floreani, Golden and the myth of homeopathic immunisation

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Chiropractic, Denialism, Health, Scam, Science by

For a mob that officially professes “no position” on vaccination the Chiroprctors’ Association of Australia disseminate ample false, misleading and quite dangerous antivaccination hanky panky.

Take CAA NSW branch vice president, Nimrod Weiner. The Weiner from Newtown Community Chiropractic whose Nimroddery was pegged as a “rant on vaccines” by The Australian. Although he feverishly ran for cover after outraging real doctors, not-a-real-doctor Weiner’s “rant” bibliography can be found here. A hodge podge of dusty conspiracy twaddle and outright lies, much from the Australian Vaccination Network it alone refutes Weiner’s claim:

I’m good at knowing how to read a research aritcle, and knowing whether it’s viable or not. I’m also good at collecting a lot of research. This vaccine topic I update every single week. So what we’re looking at is new as of yesterday morning.

He didn’t write that, but announced this to attendees of his seminar Vaccinations: An informed choice, in what can quite justifiably be called a lie. There’s more on the entire debacle along with a Radio National segment here. At times we’ve met other crackpots from the CAA. Jason Parkes and Rob Hutchings, both of whom approach their profession like a religious fundamentalist approaches taking up arms. Warren Sipser who believes vaccines cause harm yet chiropractic “repairs DNA”. Genevieve Keating is another pleasant sounding predator who specialises in convincing parents chiropractic builds super human kids. They lean toward the weird beliefs of founder Daniel David Palmer and his views on “God given energy flows”.

Sipser was the subject of an article in The Australian headed The Chiro Kids which brought home just how ludicrous (and scurrilous) the new brand of Mystical Chiropractors really are. Thanks to Dr. Rachael Dunlop we can read the CAA’s Media Release warning CAA members of that article. It’s disturbing stuff given these quacks are subsidised by our government (Medicare foots the bill for five sessions per year) and health insurers. Written by CAA national president Simon Floreani, it is a straight out attempt at damage control, obfuscation and dodging questions.

Floreani himself has run antivaccination clinics and is a member of the Australian Vaccination Network. He describes Dorey’s little fraudulent scheme as a valuable resource for patients. Simon is married to Jennifer Floreani, famous for writing an article supposedly describing (Update – as noted below the bogus article has been removed but can be found here pp. 348-349) her newborn’s battle with pertussis, picked up from an older sibling. Given the outcome and treatment the article is almost certainly fraudulent, but if perchance the diagnosis is correct then at best it is reckless neglect and at worst simple child abuse.
She writes (bold hers):

This experience did indeed test our resolve and we were forced to draw on our support network of healthcare providers. We performed chiropractic checks on our baby daily and utilised a whooping cough homeopathic. I dosed myself with an array of vitamins to boost his immunity via breast milk and kept him hydrated with constant breastfeeding.

Whooping cough is often slow to develop and may respond well to conservative management, including chiropractic, osteopathy, homeopathy, herbs, acupuncture or acupressure. Within two days, the severity of our baby’s symptoms cleared and within a two week period, each of our boys had a complete resolution of their symptoms.

Fortunately for the Floreani’s this little tale is just that – a tale and a comical one too. Every type of “conservative management” is absolutely non efficacious. Babies with pertussis gag, choke and may have profound difficulty breathing making this nonsense of super fortified breast milk as a realistic option seem laughable. More so, there’s no evidence an increase of maternal vitamin intake when breastfeeding will do anything but produce expensive maternal urine. Even more farcical is the notion of “boosting immunity” with vitamins. Either way, if their baby did have pertussis there’d be no magic recovery after two days but admission to intensive care many days later as the insanity of their hokery pokery gradually sank in. Yet, that’s not really the point.

The dangerous, deluded and unconscionable message pushed on parents here is that using your breasts, vitamins and witch doctor spells, you can clear up a potentially fatal disease within two days. It’s outrageous and a bald faced lie that I cannot even begin to comprehend the motivation for. What’s infuriating is that chiropractors exploit the confirmation bias in parents and the Floreani’s are prime examples.

Parents who believe these nonsense manipulations cure everything report that yes treatment keeps children healthy. They also report inaccurately that lapses in treatment lead to poor health. Knowing this, chiropractors are famous for setting treatment frequencies, with some even insisting on treatment contracts. That the locus lies with parental bias has been shown splendidly in trials on colic.

As we know, chiropractors claim they can “successfully treat” colic or – in their lingo – Irritable Baby Syndrome. Trials show that if parents believed their baby received chiropractic care, whether they did or did not, they reported improvement. If they believed that no chiropractic care was applied – even when it was – they reported a worsening of colic. You can catch up with Simon Floreani admitting no proper trials exist here on Lateline back in July 2009.

He’s caught out claiming injuries from neck manipulation are one in 5.85 million cases when in fact they are gauged at 1.3-5 per 100,000 manipulations, by insurer Kaiser Permanente, who refuse to cover the practice. In short Floreani is claiming instance of vertebral injury is 60 – 300 times less than it is.

On August 21st this year, a video entitled “Homeopathy evidence and research” filmed by Simon Floreani and featuring homeopath and fraud Isaac Golden, appeared on YouTube. The video below looks initially at the rise of the Mystical Chiropractors and then picks through Golden’s claims of Cuban “homeopathic immunisation” and his own so-called PhD on “homeopathic immunisation”.

When used to defend against a complaint to the TGA about homeoprophylaxis, Golden’s PhD actually helped uphold the CRP decision of misleading claims by fellow crook, Fran Sheffield. This is because even Golden admits in his thesis text that his sample was flawed in size and there was no chance of contracting infection. In short he showed nothing.

Enjoy…

Newtown Community Chiropractic: referencing rubbish

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Chiropractic, Denialism, Health by

I’m good at knowing how to read a research article, and knowing whether it’s viable or not. I’m also good at collecting a lot of research. This vaccine topic I update every single week. So what we’re looking at is new as of yesterday morning.

Nimrod Weiner. Antivaccination Presentation recorded by AMA

Nimrod Weiner, anti-vaccination lobbyist and chiropractor from Newtown Community Chiropractic went into overdrive deleting and editing his online rubbish last week.

This followed a report in The Australian expressing valid concerns that a so-called health professional would be actively spreading demonstrable untruths about the safety of vaccination. In the opening of his talk on the audio recorded by AMA members, Weiner talks of his unique skill and superior position due to his reading of research. I’ll get to that. Yet, he also talks of the presentation “being about the best possible result” for participants. He’s going to challenge long held paradigms and “help you get through that”. To “look at the science…”.

The Nimroddery that Weiner presented is indeed due to his unique reading habits. Thanks to intrepid observers* of recent developments his ancient, cobwebbed “bibliography” of long debunked hysteria is below. Unwittingly accepting the advice I often give to all antivaccination advocates and general enemies of health science –  If it’s peer review, it’s not for you – Weiner has cobbled together some beauties. Exactly how anyone who makes money from government subsidies, Medicare and insurance underwriters can knowingly go forth and spread this tripe is simply outrageous.

What I’ve done for your reading ease dear easygoing reader, is highlight in yellow all the references we may quaintly label as pure garbage. Some of these such as Every second child and How to raise a healthy child in spite of your doctor are well known crackpot bibles. Not only antivaccination but anti-medicine and/or medical practice. That magnet for all things ridiculous, and creator of its own law, Whale.to lists Every Second Child. In part we read;

His experience showed that after being immunized, some of the animals died suddenly within 24 hours.  These deaths had been attributed to anaphylaxis…. I suggested that vitamin C deficiency was the cause.  Like primates they required it in their diet. […]

The importance of this discovery can hardly be stressed.  In Australia and all over the world, infants were being immunised.  Those whose vitamin C status was low were at risk.  here, at last, was experimental evidence that supported my claims that stepping up immunisation campaigns among Aboriginal infants increased the death rate.

You may know of the book. Cited often as proving vaccination seeks to purposely kill, it resurfaced recently here and there in defence of Viera Scheibner following a 60 Minutes episode espousing her wisdom, Getting the point. Of course we should remember Scopie’s law when we speak of whale.to. From Rational Wiki;

In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately …and gets you laughed out of the room.

Whale.to is a website run by Herefordshire pig farmer John Scudamore. It is a notorious dumping ground for all things pseudoscientific… as well as a few other things. Like the complete text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, documentations of Illuminati mind control plots, and articles about the Catholic world conspiracy. It contains every (and we do mean every) half-baked pseudoscientific theory ever concocted.

Shockingly, it was used as a source by the plaintiffs in the Autism omnibus trial, and it has seen increasing use as a “source” by anti-vaccinationists and propagators of the vaccine-autism connection.

Again Scopie’s Law is shown to be valid. Weiner indeed loses on many levels and should really have been laughed out of the room. I’ve popped a red square over the number signifying an Australian Vaccination Network publication offered as a reference. The circle around number 11 is a special award for Wilson’s Vaccination and Behavioural Disorders: a review of the controversy, just for emerging from Lismore and being in disgraceful company.

You can find this nonsense along with other “related books” that Weiner has on his exceptionally biased bibliography. All on the one page of conspiracy and hysterically themed books on the internet. I think we can guess at Weiner’s researching skills and professional objectivity just from this one observation. As for updated information?

  • Every Second Child was published in 1981
  • How to raise your child… in 1983.
  • A shot in the dark, by Barbara Loe Fisher and Harris Coulter – 1991
  • Vaccination, social violence and criminality: The Medical Assault on the American Brain, by harris Coulter – 1990
  • Vaccination: 100 years of orthodox research shows that vaccines represent a medical assault on the immune system, by Viera Scheibner – 1993

There’s also In the wake of vaccines, by Barbara Loe Fisher and cited on whale.to by Nimrod Weiner – 2004. Yet the real herp derp kicks in with the citing of Informed Choice magazine, Wellbeing magazine, International Wellbeing and of course citations from Chiropractic Leadership Alliance.

Most of this misinformation is over a decade old, with some up to thirty. The AVN now push Living Wisdom. Before that it was Informed Voice and before that Informed Choice (the latter change in August 2006). Weiner only quotes from Informed Choice – defunct seven years ago.

Just how long has Weiner been sabotaging community health one may wonder? Without even updating his woo? Yet he begins his attack on vaccination efficacy and safety by telling his audience how well read he is. He sits on two boards – so it’s his business to read huge amounts of information.

“I sit on the spinal research foundation board. What that means is, everyday I’m reading a lot of research articles”. Weiner argues that he’s been “studying vaccination for hundreds of hours”. Whilst this makes him a lazy hobbyist, it’s worse to find he’s not studying at all. It’s like a psychologist boasting of research only to be found out reading New Idea.

Wellbeing magazine is another depository for anything irrational, non toxic and “natural”. Ditto International Wellbeing. He only cites antivaccination material. One stunner is the thrice listed AVN’s 1998 offence entitled, Vaccination Roulette; Experiences, Risks and Alternatives. 

All up we have;

  • 26 yellow highlights of discredited and dangerous misinformation, including…
  • 11 direct AVN references from non proven or reviewed magazine articles aiming to provoke fear, ignorance and hysteria
  • “Wellbeing” magazine articles
  • 2 Viera Scheibner references discredited across the globe
  • 6 notably unscientific book references of conspiracy theory proportion
  • whale.to
  • Mercola
  • Super Baby: Boost your Babyʼ s Potential from Conception to Year 1, 1998
  • And more…

Certainly Weiner does list a handful of actual journal articles but these have not been selected as balance to the insulting rubbish from the AVN, or to defend vaccination. Calmly exploiting the reality that vaccine science is not perfect, and that unlike chiropractic, medical professionals do report, research and strive to overcome adverse reactions. Australian government publications are there to back up his misinformation that they try to hide vaccine reactions.

His advice, in this era of pertussis epidemics and rising measles cases resulting in death and disability? Slide 82 from Weiner’s presentation, suggests;

Delay starting the vaccinations for as long as you can. A minimum of 12 months is favourable while a minimum of two or more years may be more beneficial… Ask for mercury free vaccines (they will still contain other toxic chemicals: formaldehyde, aluminium, antibiotics)

Nimrod Weiners bibliography for Vaccinations: An Informed Choice

*Thanks to @DrRachie for finding the references.

Newtown Community Chiropractic present Weiner… Nimrod Weiner

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Chiropractic, Health by

Weiner. Nimrod Weiner. Shaken and stirred. We’ve met Nimrod before, whilst taking a look at chiropractors and their brave observations on vaccination. Including it being “the biggest sham since bloodletting”. 64% of The Australian (anti) Vaccination Network‘s members are chiropractors – a damning statistic indeed.

Nimrod Weiner: Prominent Anti-vaccination lobbyist

Weiner, as I noted before is from Newtown Community Chiropractic and is prone to run anti-vaccination seminars. Exactly why Newtown Community Chiropractic would want to run anti-vaccination seminars and use slides with Newtown Community Chiropractic emblazoned on each one is a mystery perhaps known only to Newtown Community Chiropractic. I can’t find out because visiting their vaccination events page seems to yield a hastily emptied office.

Nimrod thinks vaccines are nasty things because when you look at humans we’re sick. Sick dear reader, very, very sick. The sort of sick only Newtown Community Chiropractic can fix. Because as Nimrod Weiner says, you don’t see animals with diseases and cancers. No Sir!

Those horses with Hendra virus – dying and killing people due to the lack of a vaccine and those Tasmanian Devils with incurable cancer with a 100% fatality rate aren’t as sick as we are. In fact you don’t see cancers in animals Nimrod Weiner from Newtown Community Chiropractic tells us. This must be bemusing news to those at The Australian Animal Cancer Association or the scientists that documented the many variations of the four primary animal cancers.

Australia’s list of 93 notifiable animal diseases is clearly just taking up valuable internet space. Not to mention the many non notifiable diseases that just distract us from our own sickening sickness. What with our living longer than ever before, beating diseases more than ever before, curing disease during gestation, preventing disability from birth, rehabilitating post illness and injury and of course having almost wiped out vaccine preventable diseases that killed our ancestors we’re obviously so very, very sick.

Could vaccines be doing this? You can talk about vaccines without any qualifications for 2 1/2 hours, “But that’s nothing, let me tell you”. Obesity, lack of exercise and predicted consequent cardiovascular disease are just some of the problems that effect children but not animals Nimrod from Newtown Community Chiropractic intones. Todays children could be the first generation to not live longer than their parents he warns ominously dangling the “V word” but giving absolutely no evidence as to why. So, why?

This is certainly due to the fact life expectancy has sky rocketed in recent decades with medical advances, improvements in safe living and the big one – vaccination. Children born over the last couple of decades were born into a world of scientific achievement allowing sedentary lifestyles and buffets of junk food. This explains why they may not live notably longer life spans than their parents. Gradually we’ve been getting more sedentary in recreational pursuits, spending less time doing physical labour, enjoying wonderful advances in labour saving devices and worshipping the silicon chip.

It isn’t that children are “sick” at all – they’re not. It is true that their parents were particularly healthy, active and enjoyed largely unpolluted environments. The younger the parent the more sedentary their lifestyle also. In fact today a child’s potential for longevity at birth and for the first few years remains higher than ever before. It is lifestyle habits and how long one maintains them that dictates. But anti-vaxxers love to use these fake scare tactics to claim children are sicker than ever before. Simply put: sedentary lifestyle, changing familial habits, processed food often due to time constraints, affluence in eating and rising obesity. From here we have predicted a slightly shorter lifespan.

The lie of an autism epidemic continues even though we know it’s down to entirely different diagnostic criteria. Some children on the ASD spectrum are indistinguishable from other children until critiqued via diagnosis. Using todays criteria we find adults present at a rate of 9.8/1000 and children at a rate of 10/1000. In a UK survey, none of the “new cases” discovered knew they had autism. This speaks volumes as to how wide the spectrum now is. Strong arguments suggest the 2% difference is due to learned skills, and may likely be more – increasing the adult rate above children. Which ultimately suggests we have less autistic cases today provided we stick with today’s diagnostic criteria across generations.

The Australian reports that the Australian Medical Association condemned as “outrageous” claims made by Weiner. One has to agree;

In a public talk, the Sydney chiropractor linked vaccines to asbestos, thalidomide and cigarettes, and said they contained bits of aborted fetus. The chiropractor backed the debunked research of deregistered British doctor Andrew Wakefield – which suggested the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine might cause autism – as “scientifically good”.

The parents and pregnant women who attended the talk in March were told “homeopathic vaccines” – which are regarded as scientific nonsense by most experts – were safer than conventional vaccines. [….]

Adelaide chiropractor Phillip Donato, chairman of the Chiropractic Board of Australia – one of the 10 national registration boards that are part of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency – said chiropractors were expected to offer advice that was “absolutely balanced, non-biased and evidence-based”.

“It appears at the very least that he (Mr Weiner) is misinformed, and at the worst may be providing misleading information,” Mr Donato said.

“We would encourage people to put in a notification (to the board), and we would deal with it.”

Weiner made Radio National today:

Or download audio here.

Newtown Community Chiropractic slides include:


The Australian had more on the bizarre, ignorant anti-vaccination fear mongering standards and Nimroddery from Newtown Community Chiropractic;

In his talk, Mr Weiner said vaccine makers grew germs such as the chicken pox virus “on human fetus, because it’s the best medium to grow it on”.
“What happens is they take a scraping of that aborted fetus with the virus on it, and put that into the vaccine itself,” he said.

In fact, a federal government guide says while fetal cells are used to make some vaccines, these are the lab-grown descendants of cells taken from three fetuses aborted for medical reasons more than 40 years ago, since when no further fetuses have been used.

What these cowboys of new age mumbo jumbo are doing discussing immunology is patently clear. Creating a market based on fear. Weiner’s product is ignorance and fear and we’d all be wise to have nothing to do with his ilk. They are even keen to blame the Australian Skeptics for reasons I can not begin to comprehend.

When it comes to vaccines speak only to a real doctor.

Chiropractors adjust vaccine truths

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Big Placebo, Chiropractic, Health, Scam by

The World Chiropractic Alliance (WCA) have a “journal”, available for free subscription. It doesn’t actually have any peer reviewed studies, but is more a collection of industry positive, competitor negative and hokery pokery articles that deny credibility. Such as Energy Medicine: Futuristic Healing with ancient roots, by Dana Ullman. We know Dana from Twitter as @homeopathicdana

Today I had an article brought to my attention by New Zealand skeptic and critic of anti-vaccination nonsense, @SkepticalSkotty. He’d had the article brought to his attention by a friend. Like many in the developed world outside Sth. Korea, where it’s illegal to practice the scam, the friend had given chiropractic credence. Quite understandable. Unless one’s in a clinical setting or prone to keep an eye on non evidence based trends, chiropractors are the other “doctors” who work on backs and necks and are subsidised by insurance companies and governments.

The September 2010 article Several nations banning flu shots for babies, provides unique insight into bias, deceptiveness and unprofessional standards. Supposedly having no position on vaccination I was intrigued at the effort to mislead readers into forming a negative view of both seasonal influenza and H1N1 vaccination. The article opens with an accurate observation of a QLD infant death following influenza vaccination, but almost immediately begins to blur the lines. Let’s do some housekeeping, remembering that fifteen children in QLD had an adverse reaction to the vaccine.

In WA where babies were given Fluvax – a combination H1N1 and seasonal ‘flu vaccine – febrile convulsions effected 60 and another 200 presented with higher than normal temperatures post vaccination. Well tolerated in teens and adults Fluvax was certainly not tolerated in babies and small children. One small child, Saba Button, fell into a coma and is now struggling with brain damage. It is the type of tragedy health authorities dread. Soon after the reactions WA suspended administering the vaccine to children under 5 and this was also taken up nationally. The TGA had made some noises toward CSL who manufactured Fluvax. However it wasn’t until FDA officials from the USA turned up investigate CSL’s standards of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) this year, that one could realistically defend Australian influenza vaccination regimes against quite justified criticism.

These two events were tragic and widespread fevers in vaccinated babies is a huge blow to public confidence. However suggesting that health authorities intend to suppress the truth at the expense of public health is a frequent unsubstantiated claim. Worse is the use of these tragedies by groups like the Australian Vaccination Network – the anti-vax darling of Australian chiropractors – to smear their critics. The day The Australian published Natasha Bita’s article on young Saba Button (May 28th), Meryl Dorey exploited this family to muster anti-vaccination support and to also make false claims about skeptics and Stop the AVN.

Meryl Dorey’s Yahoo! Twitter and Facebook libellous claims

Dorey published an “Action Alert” on Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo! claiming supporters of vaccination were “mobilising” and “organising their forces” to write letters of complaint to The Australian, and thus writing in support was vital. “They do NOT want newspapers or any media outlets to be covering this from a freeedom of choice point of view”, she lied on Yahoo!

Freedom of choice point of view? Since when are facts or a parent’s choice to speak to the media linked to whacky anti-vax lingo’? Dorey was seizing ownership of Saba’s tragedy and using it to engender disgust toward those who criticise her already extensive dossier of lies and deceit. Little wonder many believe she manufactures stories of personal threats.

Not only is this offensive to Saba, her parent’s and those maligned but one must surely question her grasp on reality, not to mention the ethical issues surrounding vaccination, to see a grown woman manipulate her members as pawns in her own delusional neocon’ fantasy. I wrote to Natasha Bita and her colleagues seeking confirmation and on June 21st she confirmed that whilst she had been on holidays no “complaints” had been received, or could be found.

Back to the WCA journal. They failed to stress the vaccine was “suspended” not banned or that other strains would be considered. Onto the second paragraph;

A short time later, Finland also suspended the H1N1 vaccines due to six reports of narcolepsy in children and teens immediately following vaccination. According to The Helsinki Times, “Medical reports suggest that over 750 of those who have been vaccinated have experienced harmful effects.”

Firstly, QLD ADR’s were due to seasonal influenza vaccine. WA’s ADR’s were due to a combination of seasonal and H1N1 vaccines. The vaccine used in Finland was GSK’s H1N1 vaccine Pandemrix. No Australians have been administered Pandemrix and Australia has had no reports of narcolepsy. This distinction wasn’t made by the WCA article. What about those “750 harmful effects” that they quoted. If we read the Helsinki Times piece we see that 2.5 million doses were given. That’s a 0.003% ADR rate. I do rush to add this is not to be dismissed as trivial, but does indicate the risk/benefit ratio. The WCA seems to think that’s an excessively high level for narcolepsy – falling asleep unexpectedly. More so, as we’ll see there are unique Finnish genetic components to this problem that are related to the vaccine.

Yet if we’re talking about removal of insurance coverage for cervical manipulation by chiropractors because of the risk of vertebral/carotid artery tears, stroke and traumatic death – as in the case of Jeremy Youngblood – then an incidence rate of up to 0.005% is a trivial matter. WCA were upset that this brought “…applause from critics who still maintain that chiropractic is linked to strokes”. Chiropractors maintain it’s “a myth”. I hope you got that. Vaccine induced narcolepsy due to genetic predisposition: bad. Higher risk of tearing of the vertebral artery and dying slowly, whilst well documented: is a myth. They write with mind blowing arrogance;

The World Chiropractic Alliance responded by sending the company a copy of its position paper on chiropractic and strokes, and a vast amount of scientifically documented information that dispels the notion that chiropractic is in any way linked to carotid and vertebral artery dissection. “The WCA has been distributing this information ever since the myth about chiropractic and stroke began, and we’ll continue to make sure we counter this campaign of misinformation,” stated WCA founder and CEO Terry A. Rondberg, DC.

Kaiser Permanente, whom I now admire greatly wrote;

Chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine is associated with vertebral artery dissection and stroke. The incidence is estimated at 1.3-5 events per 100,000 manipulations. Given the paucity of data related to beneficial effects of chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine and the real potential for catastrophic adverse events, it was decided to exclude chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine from coverage.

“Paucity of data related to beneficial effects of chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine and the real potential for catastrophic adverse events”. Damn that reads well. Are chiropractors going to suspend this potentially lethal practice? Hell no – they’ll call it a myth and back that claim with bad science. Are they worried about patient health or patient access to a manipulation that takes seconds? No, they’re upset that they can’t get the big bucks.

Think of how many people around the world would get a cervical manipulation on any one day. At a rate of up to 5 per 100,000 catastrophic injuries and stroke, for no benefit, not to mention all the minor cervical vertebral insults and/or soft tissue injuries you have my permission to feel a little ill dear reader. So, it’s compelling how selective this group of pseudoscientific profiteers can be when it comes to understanding not only risk/benefit ratios but the size of the risk vs the evidence for any benefit.

The WCA article also mentions narcolepsy in Sweden. That also was a rate of 0.003% – a figure they seem intent on not publishing. According to the WHO last April 21st;

The only pandemic influenza vaccine used in Finland and Sweden was Pandemrix, an adjuvanted influenza A (H1N1) 2009 monovalent vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.

Narcolepsy is a condition that has a strong genetic linkage, being almost uniquely seen in persons who have the (HLA) DQB1*0602 genotype. Of the cases of narcolepsy tested so far in Finland (n=29), diagnosed during 2009-2010, all have that genotype. The National Institute for Health and Welfare of Finland considers it probable that the Pandemrix vaccine was a contributing factor to this observed increase, and has called for further investigation of other co-factors that may be associated with the increased risk. They consider it most likely that the vaccine increased the risk of narcolepsy in a joint effect in those genetically disposed with some other, still unknown, genetic and/or environmental factors. The final report from the Finnish National Narcolepsy Task Force is expected by 31 August 2011.

Apparently 30% of Finnish have this gene whist 15% of Europeans have it. This wasn’t dismissed as a genetic issue either. There is a nine fold risk in those vaccinated vs unvaccinated. So, GSK aren’t getting any special treatment. Nor does hysteria get to reign. As in Australia it is mainstream medical monitoring and national health responses that ultimately serve to protect the public. But it’ll be late August this year before final European reports are released.

The article goes on to quote a now missing article from the Bharat Chronicle;

The vaccines appear to be causing a pattern of neurological disorders affecting children and teens across the planet

Most facepalmingly, if you pop that sentence into your chosen search facility dear reader, you get over 2,000 hits ranging from Bible prophecy, to natural woo, to wellness, to infant chiropractic to… well you get the idea. Our WCA “journal” is running a junk piece that they probably scavenged from the depths of conspiracy central.

The piece finishes off claiming “Australian authorities” knew of the problem for “several weeks” but withheld the information whilst continuing to encourage vaccination. One assumes they’re referring to WA where ADR’s were reported for two weeks before Saba Button was injured which was around the time the number of ADR’s demanded state wide action. Far better for WCA to publish the insinuation that authorities remained silent about a free vaccine with perhaps the only motivation being to harm the public.

Then it’s back up to QLD for accusatory lies followed by some special pleading;

Health officials at first tried to convince the public that there was no “causal” relationship between the vaccine and the side effects but even the Australian coroner had to admit he couldn’t rule out that the flu shot was responsible for the death of two-year-old Brisbane toddler Ashley Jade Epapara.

Gosh. “Even” the coroner couldn’t rule it out. Appeal to authority also. The truth is no-one can rule it out or rule it in. Period.

Then back to WA with nonsense about attempting to “blame” a bad batch. In fact the possibility of a bad batch must be investigated just as the possibility of the vaccine ingredients and combination was investigated. “This is not a long-term safety issue with vaccines,” University of Western Australia School of Paediatrics and Child Health Associate Professor Peter Richmond told WA today, they add. Quite right. This is most certainly not a problem with vaccines as a long term safety issue. The only long term issue is the capitalisation by anti-vaccination groups.

All in all this is an appalling piece of junk writing that aims only to create the illusion of widespread – or “across the planet” – trends that somehow show vaccines are a health risk. They cant even manage to keep different Australian reports on two very different scenarios straight. Already this year in QLD influenza is back at six times the annual rate. Febrile convulsions and brain damage from vaccine preventable disease are constant realities. It is for this very reason the risk/benefit of vaccination is actually incredibly safe.

No doubt Australia had some serious issues with vaccine manufacture and management of ADR reporting in 2010. This is being dealt with by the proper authorities. The very last thing the present vaccine controversy needs is this band of chiropractic cowboys defending futile and dangerous treatments, whilst attacking sound evidence backed public health measures.

Ultimately there are not any nations “banning” flu shots for babies. Chiropractors have lied again.