Recently, I had the privilege of testifying for the chiropractic physicians in New Mexico who currently have some prescriptive rights and wished to expand that scope to improve their ability to provide stronger, more complete primary care.

It should be clear that I was asked to appear in behalf of the chiropractic physicians there or I would not have been there. It is not my purpose, as president of National University of Health Sciences, to dictate the direction of the chiropractic profession, but to provide the education that is required by the profession.

In this instance, the request to provide advanced education in pharmacology came to the university several years ago, just as requests to provide education in acupuncture came to the university 41 years ago and requests to provide education in "over-the-counter" medications came from Florida some 20 years ago. Our institutional charter says that we will "provide education," which is what we have done in New Mexico, and which we intend to continue to do in New Mexico and elsewhere when asked.

Some members of the profession appeared before the New Mexico Senate Judiciary Committee and testified against the wishes of the New Mexico chiropractors – not as invited guests, but as intruders into state concerns. Some of the senators even received calls from out of the United States urging action against the wishes of the New Mexico DCs. I consider this kind of activity to be completely inappropriate and negative toward the profession. New Mexico DCs see a need that can be met with additional education and an expanded scope of practice. They, it appears, have a concern for the public, while their detractors have a fiercely held belief that the chiropractic profession must always remain what it was when formed by its originators.

What I heard from the detractors was not just negative, but actually derogatory toward the educational process of the New Mexico chiropractic physicians. Furthermore, what I heard was that the detractors are opposed to the concept that chiropractic physicians are educated to practice primary care, which according to Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE), is a clear requirement.

Is the Chiropractic Profession Determined Not to Progress?

I am disappointed that members of the chiropractic profession seem intent on interfering with their own colleagues, who wish to expand their education and their practice rights, based on the idea that "chiropractic must be what it has always been." Those who are opposed to the efforts of the New Mexico DCs suggest that if chiropractors have the right to use prescriptive substances, they will, like the osteopaths, become "quasi-allopaths," and in so doing, lose their identity as members of the chiropractic profession. In reality, however, I think that argument is specious.

Certainly the osteopathic profession is highly successful today and it continues to identify itself as "osteopathic medicine," not allopathic medicine. Despite the continually-heard derogatory comments made by those members of the chiropractic profession who suggest that "osteopathy" has gone the way of "allopathy," apparently the osteopathic profession does not see it that way. At the same time, osteopathic medicine has gained stature and social authority that far exceeds that of the profession in the 1950s, prior to its move toward the use of prescriptive rights.

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