Blood on Your Hands

I heard it said, “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those people that knew better but still refused to act.” If this is true than unfortunately there will be a large number of thirsty over heated chiropractors standing together in a very spacious warm room at the bottom floor of the universe. Second thought, they wont be standing together at all, they will be standing alone trying to tear each other apart as they most likely did in life, in practice and to our glorious profession.

A glorious profession in deed, and yet, far too many chiropractors have given up the fight for a small paycheck and a few so called friends, pandering to an allopathic model that perpetuates death disease and fear.

We chiropractors have been so beaten down over the past few generations we have become scared confused drones lacking any unified direction, self-confidence, clarity, or certainty. We merely exist as a misunderstood and tolerated group of healthcare providers who get no respect. Worst of all, are our chiropractic colleges that with the exception of two, have presidents with no leadership or vision and lack any conviction or understanding of chiropractic. The colleges continue to give birth to more graduates who are confused and empty with no real understanding of what chiropractic is. “With out vision people perish”, and we are perishing indeed! Just read Gary Null’s report, “Death by Medicine”. Yet with truth all around us it is still hard for chiropractors to get excited. I see far too many chiropractors packing a convention center attending a nutrition seminar, or an insurance conference or worse a seminar on integrative medicine and MD DC office structure.

Why? Because its easy to get excited over nutrition because they understand it’s principle! Why or how can they get excited over chiropractic when they themselves don’t even understand it?

When I speak at seminars and ask about studies on serum thiol levels, respiratory bursts in white blood cells, changes in cortisol levels, brain efficiency improvements, as well as population studies in chiropractic patients, and then the thousands of case studies, I am saddened on how many chiropractors still have no knowledge and for some lack any understanding of how this relates to spinal adjusting.

In every generation there exists the opportunity to change the world! I want to be part of that generation in chiropractic! The idea that healing comes from within is not a belief it is a fact, but a truth understood by only a few that carry the title, chiropractor. The concept of encouraging the bodies natural way by removing interference to what the universe has perfected in it’s infinite wisdom is all we need to practice for true health and healing. This is a chiropractic truth and if practiced will change the world! But, in order for these conceptual truths to be practiced we need leadership, conviction, clarity of principle, and above all vision. In the words of Dr James Parker, “A compassion to serve greater than our compulsion to survive”.

I recently read a local article telling the story of a young girl who died from an antibiotic she was given for recurrent ear infections. The reason for the article was not even about the girl’s death or the drug effect. No, the story was about whether an autopsy needed to be performed on the child. The details of the story or even the point the author was trying to make were drowned out by the thought and visual images of an autopsy being performed on a child. I mean just the thought of losing a child is unimaginable and then to lose a child from a side effect of an antibiotic for ear infections! Where is the outrage, the disgust, the silent majority standing up and shouting, No More! The sound of a child’s voice that is no more, the sounds of little footsteps as they dance up the hall are forever silenced. The smell of your child’s hair or the sweet innocence in their voice as they tell you they love you and kiss you good night are forever only a memory. When you as a chiropractor would have saved this child’s life with what you do and know, shame on us all!

When I look at the hands so well illustrated by our profession to represent a symbol of chiropractic, I see these hands covered in blood. The blood of all the millions of people who have died from our lack of vision! Just as we like to point out the dangers in medicine and count the numbers of deaths by a particular drug or procedure, it’s time we share in the responsibility and ownership of each one of these deaths. 

Until we do, I think there is a really warm place waiting for us when our time has come. 

- Dr Joe Borio