Finally, you lucky people receive your second post!
*gasp*
I wouldn’t hold your breath too much mind…
What has prompted this particular post is actually a rather unfortunate story regarding the suing for libel of Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association.
For those of you unaware, Simon Singh is a science writer, who has published quite a few interesting, and well written, books on such subjects as Fermats last Theorem and cryptography among others.
So, what has this cheeky little scamp been up to then?
Well, Simon wrote a piece in the comment pages of the Gruniad in April 2008 that criticised the British Chiropractic Association (BCA), stating that:
“This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.”
And this has led to the BCA suing him for libel. I wasn’t too sure what libel meant exactly so I looked it up 🙂
The legal definition of libel is a published false statement that exposes someone to hatred, ridicule or contempt, causes them to be shunned or avoided, lowers them in the estimation of ‘right thinking’ members of society or disparages them in their office, profession or trade.
(slander, as I understand it, is basically the same, but spoken fyi)
So, on the surface of it, this may seem to be the case, however, he said this in to relation to claims which do in fact have no, or little, scientific merit, with particular reference to its use in the treatment of chronic conditions such as asthma. Gimpys blog has the full article for your viewing pleasure, and has done an expert job of annotating it for you too. Phew! Saves me a job…that I was probably too lazy to do…
I can think of no scientific reason why spinal manipulations would help or relieve such a condition, but, hey, I’m buggered if I know exactly how aspirin works off the top of my head. But I can look that up, and explain it in terms of mechanism of action, evidence and so forth, thanks to the work of a man called John Robert Vane.
Just because we don’t know how something works doesn’t mean we can’t prove that it does work with some nice clever experiments and trials.
Oh, look at me, I’m getting well ahead of myself. I’m sorry. Do stop me when I do this. I haven’t even told you what chiropractic is yet have I?!
Basically (some may say this is slightly misleading, but I don’t think it is, so naff off 😉 chiropractic involves the manipulation of the spine, and other joints, in order to produce a therapeutic effect for a given condition, usually of a musculo-skeletal nature, that is to say involving the bones and muscles. Mmm muscles…
Anyway, I digest.
The BCA are are quite aggressively, in my opinion, suing Simon about this, as they feel it is libelous. I can’t find any information on their website that mentions its use in the treatment of some of the conditions Simon mentions in his article, however, it doesn’t mention any specific conditions. Oops! Hold on whats this?
A cochrane review of the data on manual therapies for treatment of asthma concluded:
“Currently, there is insufficient evidence to support or refute the use of manual therapy for patients with asthma.”
Those Cochrane fellas and lasses are pretty good at what they do. Really. They’re pretty reliable, and have the knowledge. I imagine them wandering around, with their heads full of knowledge, eating data and shitting facts. What a pleasant image…
So in short, I think the BCA are wrong to refute Simon’s piece. This whole thing would be solved if they produced some evidence that use of chiropractic treatments did treat these conditions mentioned, but instead, now Simon is probably faced with having to prove that they were bogus claims (bogus meaning deliberately and/or wilfully misleading or fraudulent).
Though I’m not sure I think the BCA are bogus, I think, or would like to think, they genuinely believe that they can help people and what they do works, but with the best will in the world they would still be being willfully ignorant of an evidence based approach. If they aren’t willing to address Simon’s criticism, they should dismiss it, not litigate. People should seek proven effective treatments for chronic conditions like asthma, not, what could very well be, sham treatments.
All that being said, I do genuinely believe this to be a free speech issue, if they can’t back up their claims and their practices with proven, well thought out trials and data (i.e evidence), they leave themselves open to criticism, and if criticism makes them look bad they should address their critics, not in the courts, but with reason.
Evidence based medicine has saved more lives, and improved the quality of life for more people, than you could believe, from my mothers shiny new hips, to people with chronic lymphocytic leaukemia.
So after all this ranting and rambling, what’s the point?
In short, if anything I have said made any sense, I’d like you to take a look at the BCA’s take on this whole thing on their website, then I’d like you to have a look at the Sense About Science website, where Simon explains his take on the whole thing and who have set up a petition to change the libel laws to try and prevent this kind of, in my view, frivolous law suit.
To be honest, I think this whole thing is going to turn into something of an own goal for the BCA, but I think they fear backing down now would look like an admission they were wrong to try to get an retraction or apology. Still, will it be worse if they lose? I hope they do, as, in my view this really would be a win for law and quackery over reason and evidence based medicine.
Kudos to Simon for what he is doing in my opinion.
Hey-ho. Still, at least the weathers been nice…how are you anyway? That rash cleared up yet?
Gavin
Edit: Something tells me I need to edit this mo-fo of a post down…well done for keeping up to the end though!
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