Drop that shoulder. ( crack ) There we go. We have a patient here-- Paul. Hello,
Paul. Hello. And... what's your complaint today? Oh, my neck hurts. Okay, very 
good. ALDA: John Badanes is conducting a chiropractic examination. He compares 
the lengths of Paul's legs, and finds a difference. Next, he makes adjustments 
in the alignment of Paul's skeleton. According to the theory, Paul's leg 
lengths should become even, with his neck pain cured. ( device clicks ) John 
Badanes is a fully trained, experienced chiropractor, but he left the business 
after seven years when he realized he had to face up to the fact that his 
profession made no sense to him. BADANES: This is an activator. ALDA: Yeah. It 
doesn't involve bone cracking or joint-popping. If I activate it, there is a... 
( device clicks ) It's just a little tap. That's a little tap. In fact, I can 
adjust that down to... I can't even feel that. That's correct. ALDA: 
Chiropractors adjust "subluxations." A subluxation-- is that some kind of 
displacement of bones in the spine? A subluxation is what a chiropractor 
defines as a problem. In other words, it's a term that's used in many, many 
different ways. Correct. Now, historically, when Palmer invented this, 
introduced this term... Right. ...he was talking, was he, about some kind of 
blockage of some life force that was coming in from the universe? Correct, what 
he called "nerve interference." It was a life force expressed through the 
nerves and, uh... that was blocked-- what he called nerve interference-- and 
usually by a bony displacement. ALDA: Chiropractic-- which literally means 
"done by hand"-- was invented by Daniel Palmer in Davenport, Iowa, in 1895. 
READER: Do you want the cause of your disease removed, and get permanently 
cured in the quickest possible time? Chiropractic relieves pressure on nerves, 
the cause is removed, and perfect health established. ALDA: Palmer, a 
spiritualist and magnetic healer, said that chiropractic was revealed when he 
cured his office janitor of deafness. The janitor said his deafness had started 
when something gave way in his back. Palmer takes up the story. Palmer ( 
dramatized ): An examination showed a vertebra racked from its normal position. 
I reasoned that if the vertebra was replaced, the man's hearing should be 
restored. With this object in view, I racked it into position and soon the man 
could hear as before. In that adjustment originated the art of replacing 
vertebrae. ALDA: Subsequently a large theoreticastructure and industry have 
been built on the basic idea that pressure on spinal nerves causes disease. 
Palmer believed the pressure interrupts the flow of what he called "innate 
intelligence" or "life power" from the brain. Nowadays the language may be a 
little different, but the basic idea is the same. That's your contact point, 
okay? We are concerned about the relationship or the ability of the nervous 
system to express itself fully throughout the body as it particularly can be 
interfered with at the spinal level. The chiropractor is concerned about 
aberrations in the spine, minor misalignments that may not seem consequential 
to other providers that have profound impact, from our experience as 
chiropractors, on the health and well-being of the patient. ALDA: 30 years ago, 
an anatomist tried twisting cadaver spines around, but couldn't figure out how 
to obstruct the nerves short of actually breaking something. In fact, our 
vertebrae give the spinal nerves plenty of room. So now chiropractors say the 
effect is indirect. The pressure may not be on a spinal nerve route, or the 
pressure may not be on a spinal cord, but it may be a disturbance that changes 
the musculature, that changes the pattern of cerebro-spinal fluid movement. It 
may be a change in the positioning of a vertebra that begins to compromise and 
swell... excuse me, compromise a joint level, produces swelling that, in turn, 
produces pressure on a nerve route. So the early concepts of chiropractic of 
being direct nerve pressure have given way to concepts of indirect pressure. Hi,
 Kimberley. Hi, Doctor Rowe. Nice to see you again today. So tell me, how did 
you respond to our last visit? Really good, actually. I was feeling really good 
after, thank you. And since then, you've been feeling... I've been a little 
sick for about the past week. You've been sick? Tell me about that. I've got 
sinus congestion, a little headaches, and fatigue. And how are you feeling now? 
About the same, I've still got some sinus congestion, and I'm still tired. It's 
not getting any worse or any better. It's staying the same. Okay, I'm glad 
you're here. We'll take a look at your spine and see how you're really doing. 
Okay, now we're just going to feel how your spine is moving, so I'm just going 
to arch. You can just let me feel the motion here. There we go. I'm feeling for 
her spine to have a free, even motion between each segment. And if I get to a 
segment like that one right there that's not moving freely... It's tender. And 
then I'm going to ask her if it's tender. Well, she just volunteered that, but 
that would indicate to me that that's very likely subluxated. ALDA: Stephen 
Rowe now confirms the subluxation with his Nervo-Scope. It compares skin 
temperatures across the spine, and has a long history in chiropractic. ROWE: 
I'm looking for subtle differences at specific levels. ALDA: Palmer said 
disturbed nerves can show up as imbalances in heat. It's reminiscent of the 
Chinese concept of yin and yang, and has equally little basis in anatomy. 
Having located Kimberley's subluxation, Stephen Rowe now uses an X ray to plan 
the adjustment procedure. I'm looking for factors like whether she has a proper 
curve, proper neck curve, a proper thoracic curve, and a proper lumbar curve. 
Then I'm looking intersegmentally-- between each segment intersegmentally-- as 
to how they align. She has what's called a base posterior sacrum, where her 
sacrum is misaligned in relationship to the fifth lumbar. And that's what we'll 
be adjusting on her. BADANES: This, for a chiropractor, would be a curve that 
needs to be fixed. It needs to be straightened out. Now, is it possible to 
straighten it out with, with... With the methods that people do? With 
adjustments using people's hands? Well, like I say, I don't think that it is. I 
don't think that major changes, you know, in spinal configuration can be made. 
But that's not the point. The point is, is that it's never been demonstrated 
that the shape of the spine has anything to do with disease or health. ROWE: 
Good, just bring your pelvis a little... ALDA: Nevertheless, in a procedure 
repeated many times over in chiropractors' offices across the country, 
Kimberley gets her spine adjusted. ROWE: Okay, Kimberley, just relax, nice and 
easy. Let that belly go forward. ( crunch ) There we go. I feel great. ALDA: 
The popping noise that joints can make is often interpreted by chiropractors 
and patients to mean the bones have moved. In fact, it's just dissolved gas 
being released in the joint fluid. BADANES: These joints are similar to the 
joints in my finger. My finger is two little bones and is wrapped... there's a 
space between it, like this, and that's wrapped in a joint capsule with fluid. 
And when you pull them apart, as I did... ( snap ) there, it makes that popping 
sound. But, of course, my finger hasn't changed its position at all. Well, the 
same thing happens when you manipulate the spine. ( crunch ) BADANES: Patients 
believe that the bone was out of place, and that noise signals... ALDA: It 
snapped back into place... ...back into alignment. Yeah, into alignment. 
Exactly, because that's what the chiropractor... But you're saying you really 
can't change the position of the bone by this procedure that results in a 
crack. Not by that, not by that. Otherwise, you know, every time you cracked it 
you might be in danger of... of, you know, of coming apart. Lift up your right 
arm, please. ALDA: Kimberley gets a second adjustment. Okay, just right there, 
there you go. Drop that shoulder. ( crunch ) Excellent. ROWE: As a result of 
this, I would expect some of the symptoms that she initially talked about-- her 
congestive sinuses, the heaviness in her neck and in her head-- to be reduced. 
Chiropractic is a regular way to stay healthy. I get adjusted on a regular 
basis, approximately every two weeks to three weeks, depending on how I feel 
and how everything's going. If my adjustments are holding well, then we can 
make the time between adjustments last a little bit longer. ALDA: Robert Baratz 
is a physician who believes, with Wally Sampson, that patients like Kimberley 
are confusing cause and effect. The treatment is unconnected to health, he says,
 and chiropractic bears no relation to reality. BARATZ: The chiropractic theory 
of manipulation as being curative of disease, or in terms of diagnosing disease,
 is based on a false premise. The premise is that there's some kind of vital 
force flowing around the body, as yet undefined and unquantified and 
undetectable, that they claim they can manipulate by manipulating the spine. 
ALDA: Here's the leg-measuring procedure again. MAN: By comparing the like 
surfaces here, I get a right short leg. That tells me that there's an imbalance 
in the system, and it's a go-ahead to keep analyzing the patient and I know 
where to go with that now. ALDA: The imbalance needs adjustment. DONALDSON: 
This is an Activator III. It's the third generation of development. And what 
we've done here is made an instrument that has an ultra-fast thrust. And we 
know that if we can activate the nervous system faster, then we don't have to 
push it as hard. We don't have to get the cracking noises that are often 
associated with the chiropractic adjustment. But we're accomplishing the same 
thing. ( device clicks ) And then I go ahead and check the leg length again, 
and the legs are now even. It tells me that I've made a good correction. 
BARATZ: If someone says they can measure leg lengths as being different, and 
that's the basis for their diagnosis, what is the diagnosis? First of all, it's 
normal to have leg lengths that are of different lengths. That's true in almost 
everyone. Lift your head up, back down. BARATZ: The length of the leg is not 
determined by the spine. It's determined by the bones of the leg. And by 
manipulating the spine or the back, you're not going to change that, because 
those bones aren't going to change their length by any form of manipulation, 
unless you break them. ALDA: It's easy not only for the patient to be fooled, 
but the chiropractor, too. BADANES: Small changes in this position like this 
can fool the practitioner if their expectation, if... It's longer over here 
than over there. Correct. ALDA: If patients feel relief, it's fair to ask if it 
really matters if chiropractic makes sense. But there is one problem: some 
forms of chiropractic involve violent manipulation. Many techniques concentrate 
on the nerves of the neck, including this one, called "toggle recoil." MAN: The 
upper cervical spine specifically, which is what this technique focuses on, is 
the only area of the body where you can directly access the nervous system. 
It's got-- and this is just physiology and neurology-- it's got 400 to 500 
times the amount of mechano-receptors, proprio-receptors, things of that nature,
 that go directly into and affect the way your brain stem functions. So if 
there's a problem in that area, we want to know about it. ALDA: The 
chiropractor believes this patient's neck bones are at the wrong angle and must 
be adjusted. BROWNING: You can see some lines drawn in here, and the number 
says 26 degrees. That's giving me an idea of the Atlas Plane Angle. ALDA: 
Chiropractors have always maintained that neck manipulation is safe, with maybe 
one in a million procedures causing injury-- no worse that many other health 
treatments. Scoot right in on my contact. I'm going to set the headpiece... And 
that's it. ALDA: But beginning in the mid-1990s with this book by an injured 
patient, the safety of neck manipulation has been increasingly questioned. 
BARATZ: Going to a chiropractor and having your neck manipulated is extremely 
dangerous. Now, can many people have it done and not have a bad outcome? Sure 
they can. Do you want to take that risk is the question. Do you want to be the 
one who gets the paralysis? Because every year there are hundreds of people who 
get their necks manipulated, have their vertebral arteries torn by 
chiropractors and end up paralyzed. Many chiropractic adjustments are made by 
first laterally flexing the head and turning it like this. ALDA: This 
manipulation puts a severe strain on one of the two vertebral arteries leading 
to the brain. When you move the neck suddenly, when you take it to tension and 
then move it suddenly, you're giving that little extra tension pull on the 
vertebral artery and you can create a little tear which repairs itself with a 
blood clot. And that blood clot can then dislodge and go up to the brain and 
deprive the brain of oxygen and that's called a stroke. ALDA: It's very hard to 
know how often this type of stroke is caused by chiropractors. Good statistics 
don't exist. But a recent Canadian study estimated that 20% of all strokes 
caused by artery damage could be a result of neck manipulation. That translates 
into more than 1,300 strokes a year in the U.S. There are many types of 
chiropractors with many different techniques, but they're all based on one 
idea. It's your position that it doesn't matter what kind of chiropractor you 
get-- what special way he or she might have of dealing with your problem-- none 
of them is going to work. It's my position that they're all self-referential. 
In other words, they define a particular problem that incidentally has never 
been verified to be a problem, and then they have their methods of locating 
that problem, and then they have their specific methods of fixing it. So it's 
like a closed loop, and so it always works, because you're just talking to 
yourself. There is no scientific basis for what chiropractors allege they are 
doing. It is totally based on a religious belief system. And as long as you 
call it that, fine, but don't call it health care, and don't call it a form of 
science, because it is not.