By Tim O’Shea, D.C.
Now there’s a scary title. An audible inbreath from those bastions of chiropractic academia who are trying so hard to maintain the obsequious appearance of cooperation and subservience… Please let us play doctor too… we’ll be good… we’ll be a drugless profession, but you guys are the real masters of the universe… So would you mind referring us your back pain cases, please?
Don’t worry. We all know there is no chiropractic position on vaccines. Even though certain schools and certain national organizations have come out overtly in favor of orthodox vaccine policy, so far such pronouncements are arbitrary and unilateral, and reflect only the opinions of those in a position to expound them.
What do chiropractors really think about vaccines? Although it’s impossible to know the exact numbers, it’s more than likely that the majority of DCs are in favor of the standard immunization schedule for their own patients and their own children. How could it be otherwise? Our education was created in the image and likeness of the medical model. Do you remember any questions about the inborn healing capabilities of the human body on state or national boards? Did we ever have to buy any textbooks written by Mendelsohn, E.D. Hume, Scheibner, Richard Moskowitz, Deepak Chopra, Laurie Garrett, Hans Ruesch, Harris Coulter, Antoine Bechamp, Alexis Carrel, Sir MacFarlane Burnet, or even BJ Palmer?
Adrift in the real world, what is the actual value of all that hoop-jumping? What is it that we know that no other profession knows that will make people walk through the front door? Is it the nine pathognomic symptoms of AIDS? Is it the correct antibiotic protocol for bronchial pneumonia? Or when to administer the Mantoux test? Or refer for prednisone?
Well, no. There are other specialists for all that. OK, but what about us? What do we stand for? Crumbs from the musculoskeletal table? Many are grateful for just that. Beyond these types of cases we better refer out, right? Just to be on the safe side. Will we ever get in trouble thinking of chiropractic as a subspecialty of medicine? How about a subspecialty of massage?
So, having learned nothing that would antagonize our duly accredited medicaloid taskmasters throughout the entire course of our education, we think we’re cool now. Only we’re not. Something got lost – something essential: our uniqueness. Our specialty, our worldview, our knowledge – something that BJ knew all about.
To discover this Something, we have to take an active interest outside the medical model. Along the way, somehow we must get that first glimpse of the parallel hidden universe that coexists right beside the medical universe. We have to hear it or see it, firsthand. Can the body really heal itself, or is it born with a deficiency of experimental manmade chemicals which it needs in order to attain homeostasis and survival? Is the cause and cure of disease really within the body, or is that just something those fanatics made us memorize? Is natural health, is chiropractic really a stand-alone health model that can take us through life without invasive procedures or potions, except in the case of trauma or life-threatening infection? A heavy question. How do our leaders answer it in public? I don’t hear many of them even address it these days. No wonder we’re on our own to discover our own secret.
There are basically 3 kinds of people: lazy people, stupid people, and people who seek out their own answers. The first category is by far the largest. In his new book Trust Us We’re Experts, Jim Stauber explains in great detail how conventional wisdom on practically all subjects these days is programmed into our brains through the assiduous scientific efforts of the most sophisticated PR firms in history. These East Coast spin doctors specialize in the installation of the opinions and values of their clients into the public hard drive: they create public opinion. Their clients? The multinationals. The guys who really run things; the people with the money, enough money for five years of full page ads in every glossy magazine. Enough money to control the content of articles printed in newspapers, popular magazines and in professional journals, and to make paid advertisements look like hard news stories. Enough money to bring about new legislation. Enough money to discredit a universal environmental concern. Enough money to control peer review. Enough money to control medical education. Enough money to make rational discourse obsolete. Enough money to do all this and more and still be invisible. Conspiracy theory? Hardly. It’s just the way the world works.
This set-up easily controls the first two groups – the Lazy and the Stupid. There are enough people in these two groups to maintain status quo in education, healthcare, and the retail market by their predictable programmed choices. The first group is too lazy to research beyond what everybody thinks, what everybody is told in the magazines. The second group is too stupid to know there is any other point of view. Only the third group has a chance of finding the truth, after overcoming immense inertia.
Vaccines. What are we taught? That vaccines came on the scene just in time to save civilization from the ravages of infectious diseases. That vaccines are scientifically formulated to confer immunity to certain diseases; that they are safe and effective. That if we stop vaccinating, epidemics will return. That children must be vaccinated in order to get into school. You can have 10 years of university education and still be in the Lazy group and accept everything that is presented about immunity in all your science courses, and think you understand the importance of vaccines. After all, this is real scientific, medical education here, right?
And then one day you’ll be shocked to discover that thousands of medical doctors and scientists throughout the world no longer agree that vaccines are safe and effective. That your “medical” point of view is unscientific, according to many of the world’s top researchers and scientists. That many state and national legislatures all over the world are now passing laws to exclude compulsory vaccines. And the ludicrous position we’ll be in of trying to be more medical than the medical doctors by insisting on this outmoded scientific view of immunization. Opposition to vaccines today is not coming from the chiropractic arena; it’s coming from mainstream science, medicine, and politics. The least we can do is find out about it.
Chiropractic. What are we taught? That chiropractic is an interesting system of cracking the neck and back joints to bring relief from pain. That the real obstacle to total health is some unresolved childhood conflict that resides somewhere in the meninges. Or that if we hook up the right machines to people and find the right ICD code, we may be able to pay off our student loans. That we really don’t need X-rays to analyze the spine – we can just sense the misalignments. That the real power of chiropractic is simply the laying on of hands – general human contact. That our low tech cosmology is inherently inferior to the high tech medical science world of pharmaceuticals and sophisticated diagnostic machines. That physical therapists should be taught to incorporate spinal manipulation into their routine, because after all, it can’t hurt.
And then one day, if you’re extremely lucky, you’ll discover that for thousands of patients out there, chiropractic has literally saved their lives, or at least has given them a new life. And that for thousands of people, after all else failed, chiropractic has been their only hope in life, and their faith in what we do is much stronger than our own. And that chiropractic has brought something to the world that it has not seen before: namely the confidence that the body is a self-healing organism that can solve most of its problems if given the opportunity to operate without restriction.
Is there another profession founded on the idea that in matters of health, people should first trust their body’s own powers? Is there another profession that was originally focused on promoting a person’s full health potential? No one thinks like this today; almost no one. Fear is the tool of the clever that keeps the weak in line – fear of disease, fear of microorganisms, fear of the unknown. Fear is the golden button, polished to perfection by the East Coast PR pushers. They’ve made it politically incorrect to disagree, and we all know which is the most PC state in the Union.
But just because we read something a million times a day doesn’t make it true. And just because our leaders follow along still doesn’t make it true. Physical reality is not really affected. The body is still a self-healing organism; human blood is still sacred. So for those of us who imagine ourselves as members of that third group, the seekers, what can we do? Stop watching TV. Stop reading the homogenized sheep-dip Matrix-scripted media. Check sources. Follow the money. At every turn, question integrity. Look at the agenda of the speaker. Come to a rational conclusion. That’s what everyone is looking for today.
I don’t want to hear who thinks vaccines are safe and effective. I already know that. What do you think? Where did you get the information? I don’t want to hear who says chiropractic makes extravagant therapeutic claims. I already know that too. What do you think? Where did you get the information?
This is not really the Age of Information, like they say it is. This is the Age of Too Much Information. The problem is that 99% of it is self-generated, recycling the same spin in endless combinations of interchangeable data. I think it’s an evolutionary product of the ability to Cut and Paste. All this information obviously hasn’t made us smarter, and it sure as hell hasn’t made us healthier or happier. This is a giant Glass Bead Game, a giant Gameboy, an immense Barnum & Bailey smoke and mirrors production designed to steal our money, steal our time, burn away our precious life, and give us unnatural values.
Our only hope for escape is independent study, boring as that may sound. We are losing the ability to formulate ideas – 5 minutes of listening to any radio station pretty much clinches that idea. That’s just it – we have to tune out – we have to stop listening to the Matrix. It’s all the same and it’s everywhere – you know what I’m talking about. We have to find ways to tune back into the universal, and steal our time back for ourselves. Time is our total capital; why waste it being told what to think or how to act by some mass panderers?
Our original blood was good enough. What a thing to say about one of the most sublime substances in the universe. Our original professional philosophy was also good enough. What a thing to say about the most evolved healing concept since we crawled out of the ocean. Perhaps we can arrive at a position of profound gratitude if we could finally appreciate the identity, the oneness, the nobility of an uncontaminated unrestricted nervous system and an inviolate bloodstream. In such a place, is not the chiropractic position on vaccines self-evident, crystal clear, and as plain as the sun in the sky?
Dr. Tim O’Shea is the author of the book The Sanctity of Human Blood: Vaccination is Not Immunization. The book is a must-read for any parents who are beginning to wonder about the safety of childhood vaccines, and even more important for those who aren’t.
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