WFC President Laurie Tassal Resigns Amid Scandal at Organization's Berlin Convention

The World Federation of Chiropractic (WFC) announced today that Dr. Laurie Tassell had resigned as President on May 2, 2019 despite the current term of office for Executive Officers doesn't expire until May 2020. The WFC said it wished to put on record its thanks to Dr. Tassell for his service as President over the past 14 months.

Tassell's resignation follows what the International Chiropractor's Association described in a complaint to the WFC as "blatant offensive behavior on a public stage" that "speaks for itself" and "cannot be excused under any circumstances."

The ICA's complaint follows an embarrassing display of unprofessional and disruptive behavior of presenters and attendees at the WFC Conference in Berlin in March of this year. The behavior involved attacks on practitioners who focus on the management of vertebral subluxation. It included the throwing of water bottles onto the stage and clapping and cheering as the management of subluxation was denigrated.

Instead of denouncing the WFC for sanctioning such behavior along with the WFC's decades long attacks on subluxation and those who practice it, in his letter, ICA President Stephen Welsh demanded that:

1. The current Chair of the WFC Research Council be immediately removed from his current position and denied future participation in any activities on behalf of the WFC.
2. An additional member of the WFC Research Council be publicly reprimanded and sanctioned and prohibited from the opportunity to serve in any leadership role at the WFC for at least 5 years.
3. That the sponsoring organization that coordinated, reviewed and permitted the alleged questionable presentations be sanctioned for conduct not reflecting the professional, inclusive and collegial respect for the values embedded in the WFC Strategic Plan, Governing Documents and the WFC Official Policy Statements.

According to Welsh, and others who attended, the Chair of the WFC Research Council, Greg Kawchuk DC, Ph.D, compared bringing a child to a vitalistic chiropractor to bringing them to a Catholic priest at a children’s school.

According to Welsh this was:

" . . . so offensive, to so many people, that this behavior alone should be sufficient to immediately take the action recommended by the ICA. The demonstrated religious intolerance and blatant offensive behavior on a public stage speaks for itself. This behavior cannot be excused under any circumstances."

In addition to comparing chiropractors who practice in this model to child molestors, Kawchuk is also a co-author on a recently published paper titled: “Chiropractic, one big unhappy family: better together or apart”.

His co-authors include fellow subluxation deniers Charlotte Leboeuf-Yde, Stanley I. Innes, Kenneth J. Young, and Jan Hartvigsen. The paper which denigrates the practice of chiropractic in a vitalistic salutogenic, subluxation model was promoted from the WFC platform.

In a separate presentation, Hartvigsen suggested that subluxation was imaginary and the practice of using x-rays to identify subluxation and outcomes of care was "absolutely rubbish".

CLICK HERE for that story

Leboeuf-Yde and her colleagues have been attacking subluxation management and the chiropractors who practice that way for some time. Yet never a word has been spoken about it by the ICA until now.

CLICK HERE for more on Leboef-Yde

The WFC's Press Release also announced the appointment of Vivian Kil DC as Interim President to take over after Tassel's abrupt resignation.

Kil is a graduate of AECC University College in the United Kingdom, full-time clinician and the owner of a multidisciplinary clinic in the Netherlands.

AECC is a signatory to the anti-subluxation hate group the International Chiropractic Education Collaboration. The Collaboration has developed a "Clinical and Professional Chiropractic Education Position Statement" that renounces the practice of managing vertebral subluxation in vitalistic, salutogenic manner.

CLICK HERE for more on this group

Kil is an advocate for chiropractors as practitioners of so called "primary spine care" which has developed a cult like following amongst Subluxation Deniers.

"Primary spine care" was described in a seminal paper on the topic by Nelson et al in 2005.

The paper written by leaders of the anti-subluxation, anit-vitalistic movement in the profession (Craig F Nelson, Dana J Lawrence, John J Triano, Gert Bronfort, Stephen M Perle, R Douglas Metz, Kurt Hegetschweiler and Thomas LaBrot. Chiropractic as spine care: a model for the profession. Chiropractic & Osteopathy 200 513:9) created quite a stir when it was originally published but most chiropractors have long since forgotten about it while some factions of the Chiropractic Cartel have been slowly but surely implementing the model.

One of the contentions by Nelson et al in the paper is that:

"The argument that the public can be persuaded to understand and accept the subluxation model of chiropractic has been tested and it has failed."

In fact, the paper by Nelson and his team contains a series of derogatory comments regarding chiropractors who embrace a clinical model focused on subluxation. They attack vitalism, the use of x-ray, long term management plans and even "Palmer's Postulates".

CLICK HERE for a Powerpoint Presentation on the Paper.

CLICK HERE for more on Vivian Kil