Co-authored by Dr Roxanne Sweney, Sunflower Wellness Center

You spent 4 years earning a difficult college degree, focusing on the sciences.  You then put in another 4,200 hours of classroom, laboratory, and clinical study to earn a doctorate degree.  Then you take a mandatory internship, serve 900 hours in a clinic, and pass 4 national board exams to obtain your license.  You also chose a post graduate speciality board certification with another 500 hours of practice and study and pass another board speciality exam. You take the risk to open your practice with no guarantee of paying your bills.  You insure yourself so that people don’t sue you for everything you have.  You treat patients every day understanding that if you make a mistake your reputation may be irreparably harmed.

You are a Chiropractor.  But you are not a “Doctor”, not an MD.  That is what the American Medical Association (AMA) says.  It is also what the laws of Texas say.

I do not defend fraud.  If I told you I was a “Doctor” and that I can be trusted to fix your heart or perform brain surgery, that would be fraudulent and it should be illegal.  You might not survive my treatment.  

I am also a Libertarian, and that is not a fraud.  I take the radical position that you should not need a license to be a chiropractor, doctor, engineer, or anything else. I am a licensed professional engineer in Texas, but I know of licensed engineers that I would never hire to do a job.  The same with doctors.  Having a government issued license is no guarantee of quality.  

However, let’s just presume that the licensing laws remain in place.  What problems do chiropractors face?

Imagine a patient comes to you with severe, debilitating pain.  You have been trained with as many hours as an MD “Doctor” to recognize the symptoms and diagnose the problem.  However, the laws of Texas don’t allow you to diagnose the problem.  You must send the patient to someone that the AMA recognizes as a “Doctor” and have that person diagnose the problem.  Most likely the “Doctor” prescribes a treatment that they have a legal monopoly to provide and you never see that patient again. Just maybe the patient comes back to you to be treated as the “Doctor” has prescribed.  You know that the “Doctor” cannot diagnose the real problem because they do not have your experience and training.  However, the government does not allow you to treat the patient properly, and therefore you cannot restore function and relieve their pain.

This is not hypothetical.  The AMA filed a lawsuit in Texas challenging the ability for chiropractors to diagnose their patients.  The court ruling was that chiropractors can diagnose within limits, but also stated that the word “diagnose” is not currently mentioned in state law.  That opens the door wide for AMA lobbyists to push state legislators to lock out chiropractors with new laws preventing Chiropractors from diagnosing their patients.

Why would the AMA do this?  It is obvious.  What better way to put you competition out of work than to make their practice illegal?  It would not be the first time that politicians created a legal monopoly for wealthy and powerful friends that put them in office.

OK, so some poor chiropractors lose their jobs and have to toss all their study and experience in the trash can.  How does this effect you?

Consider 5 Americans who were working in Zimbabwe treating AIDS patients.  They were arrested.  Why?  They didn’t have a license.  Do you think the AIDS patients in Zimbabwe are better served by having unlicensed people treating them or by having nobody treat them?

The fact is that the traditional medical practices of MD “Doctors” don’t work for lots of people.  The principles of chiropractic go back to ancient times and have been proven affective over time.  Today you see chiropractic offices everywhere.  Why?  That would not be the case if patients were not getting successful treatment.  The AMA would like to effectively kill the chiropractic profession to drive all of these patients to their office.  That only means we will have to endure more pain.

Should there be any laws restricting what doctors can do and what chiropractors cannot do?  What if chiropractors could not perform invasive procedures that go below the skin, like surgery?  Many chiropractors use acupuncture.  What if chiropractors could not prescribe medication?  Chiropractors routinely prescribe neutraceutical medicine as part of their treatment.  As soon as you pass a law listing which procedures are allowed or prohibitted, medical advances and new procedures appear that render these lists useless.  It is hard to imagine a reasonable basis for prohibiting patients from making choices and prohibiting well trained practicioners from providing the best treatment for their patients.

Let's also look at this from another angle. What if you were no longer allowed to choose the type of healthcare you desire? What if you were mandated to go directly to an MD “Doctor” before you we allowed to seek any other treatment? When laws limit the rights of well educated practitioners like Chiropractors to serve their patients in order to give political favors to the AMA, that is exactly where we are headed. Shouldn't you be free to choose?

Let’s let patients receive the care and treatment they want.  Let’s keep the AMA and politicians from screwing with us. Let chiropractors be doctors.