AECC Researcher Calls for European Declaration Against Subluxation

In a PowerPoint presentation and related Facebook posts recently circulated on the internet, Dave Newell - a non-chiropractic “researcher” and Senior Lecturer at the Anglo-European Chiropractic College tells vitalistic chiropractors in Europe to keep their vitalistic views “private” because such views are “at odds with mainstream medicine”.

In his presentation Newell castigates chiropractors for “judicious use of the adjustment” and states that the “subluxation theory is unnecessary and divisive”. Newel further asserts that such beliefs are the stuff of religion and urges his European counterparts to “publicly eschew vitalism and energy flow”.

Newell urges focusing on musculoskeletal pain syndromes using a “common, mainstream approach and a common understandable language.”

Newel then states:

“This CANNOT include, the S word, vitalism or an insistence that all we do is adjust. NONE of that will help, in fact it will continue to exclude us. And with that exclusion will increasingly be the risk that we become a profession on the margins, in the wastelands, ignored and pilloried by mainstream health care and increasingly the media, and hence the public.”

Newell further states:

“For me hanging on to these ideas as the way we PUBLICLY portray ourselves is a road to hell in a hand cart.”

Newell has been garnering attention lately after being confronted for embarrassing comments he made that suggested he did not have an understanding of the intertwining roles of the nervous and immune systems. Newell has also recently thrown his support behind the Subluxation Denier movement and the efforts by some disillusioned and desperate chiropractors to add prescriptive drug rights to their practice acts.     

The rhetoric from anti-vitalistic, subluxation denialists in Europe has been heating up as the faction of chiropractic that considers vertebral subluxation to be an important public health issue has become increasingly effective at getting their message across.

In addition to rankling those practitioners who focus on analysis and correction of subluxation, this has also led to a growing outrage by students across Europe who feel they receive a subpar education due to the propaganda from instructors such as Newell.

Vitalistic practitioners are urged to support those organizations that reflect their values such as the International Federation of Chiropractors and Organizations and students are urged to enroll in schools that do not endorse or teach outdated, mechanistic dogma.