In the 2012 draft of the Council on Chiropractic Education’s Accreditation Standards one of the bullet points in their mission statement reads, “Serving as a unifying body for the chiropractic profession.”

In a September 1st, 2010 document to interested parties on the Life West Chiropractic College website titled “A discussion of a limited number of changes in the CCE’s 2007 version of the Standards for Doctor of Chiropractic programs and proposed revisions to the same”, college president Dr. Gerald Clum seems to disagree with that statement. He summarizes his concerns thusly,

Concern: The items outlined above indicate an attempt to move the profession:

  • Toward the Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine perspective
  • Away from any use of the term subluxation
  • Toward the inclusion of drug therapy
  • Away from being a drugless discipline
  • Toward a generalized common definition of primary care as used in primary care medicine
  • Away from any definition of chiropractic and what a chiropractor does

And so, the thorny issue of unity never goes away. Do we move forward into a world that knows only “chiropractic medicine” or do we maintain that chiropractic is and always should be “separate and distinct”? Or, can we have it both ways? One thing is sure. If we continue to confound the public as to our identity we will never see the numbers of patients to which we believe we are entitled.

Relevant documents…

    • BTW, you can make comments on the draft using a form on the

CCE home page

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