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ChiroWatch responds to anti-vaccine letters - revision as requested by John Roe
Terry Polevoy, MD The Record has published two anti-vaccine letters to the editor in the last two months. The first one represented the views of a fringe group of chiropractors known as CAC (Chiropractic Awareness Council). Their headquarters in in Guelph, and one of their members was recently named the Chiropractor of the Year by a fringe group of chiropractors based in the U.S. known as the WCA (World Chiropractic Alliance). That member recently addressed a meeting at the Hospital for Sick Children along with myself and several pediatric specialists. The subject was oddly enough, pediatric chiropractic. She never identified herself as a member of the CAC. If that had been known, I am sure that the anti-vaccine positions of that group would have been discussed. Chiropractors in this area have rarely stood up to oppose the views of the CAC. Even during the depth and dispare of the meningitis epidemic in 1997-98 took the lives of two young high school students, the chiropractors took months to speak publicly on the subject. We are dealing with a crisis of misinformation here. When it comes from uninformed people like Greg Weir, who admitted in his letter on December 9th, that he has no medical background, and yet says one might actually die from getting the flu shot, the average reader can see through this charade. However, when it comes from a member of a licensed health profession, such as chiropractic or naturopathy, this is inexcusable. The College of Chiropractors of Ontario has a "proposed" code of ethics that prohibits their members from anti-vaccine activity outside their own offices. Those policies as well that clearly discuss what chiropractors can say, and can't say. Perhaps CAC members, most of them who live in this area, have their own set of guidelines. The Record needs to ask the CAC why they believe what they do, and why. To speak as an expert in epidemiology and infectious disease is not the role of the CAC. Their members are almost all totally brainwashed by a cult of anti-medical, anti-vaccine activists around the world. Their personal communications to me have often been filled with more than just misinformation, they have been filled with vile and lascivious descriptions of what I do as a doctor. Why anyone would trust their child's health to licensed health professionals who distort scientific facts is clearly a puzzle without an answer. Do anti-vaccine doctors hold other strange beliefs? Why do they blame autism on vaccines, when it is clearly not so? Why do they blame ADHD on vaccines, when it is clearly not so? I challenge your readers to ask their chiropractor or naturopath how many hours of basic science in the areas of immunology, virology, and public health that they have had in their training. Ask them to explain the worldwide disappearance of smallpox, or the elimination of measles, or polio from most of the civilized world. Ask the chiropractors and naturopaths how much research money that they spend on the elimination of those diseases, and how many studies they have published that states that their subluxation reduction treatments, or treatments based on fraudulent Vega meter readings, will kill one virus, or modify the immune response to any disease. If they can't answer those questions, they should not be allowed to treat infants or children. They should not be paid by OHIP or insurance plans. It is not a matter of just ethics here. Chiropractors are paid by our tax dollars to treat newborn infants and to give anti-vaccine advice to pregnant women.
That privelege should be taken away from them as a reminder that the public's health comes first, before a distorted belief system that relies on philosophy, not pathophysiology to treat newborns and to render opinions in public.
Dr. Terry Polevoy, MD, FRCP(C)
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