IFCO Issues Position Statement on "Chiropractic Medicine"
According to the release by the IFCO chiropractic has a:
". . . separate and distinct licensure because of the way chiropractors think, study science and apply that knowledge. These attributes are each and all separate and distinct from similar attributes which take place in medicine."
As the chiropractic profession ages more chiropractors are graduating from schools under the influence of the Chiropractic Cartel with little if any philosophical grounding and those graduates increasingly veer from the fundamentals of the chiropractic profession in the hopes of gaining more acceptance, insurance reimbursements and social status by equating themselves with the practice of medicine which enjoys broad cultural authority despite the fact that medicine is the third leading cause of death.
According to the Position Statement from the IFCO:
"It is our position that, while we work with healthcare providers of all sorts, 'chiropractic' and 'medicine' are separate and distinct philosophies, sciences and arts and these terms should not be used together in tandem. Doing so would confuse the public we seek to serve, confuse the students of these programs and open the practitioner up to litigation and resentment from his/her professional peers in both medicine and chiropractic."
Despite the obvious silliness of joining the two terms together there are at least two schools that use the term in describing their programs that the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) has recognized. National University of Health Sciences (NUHS) was the first and Keiser University College of Chiropractic Medicine is the second.
According to the U.S. Department of Education web site, the Council on Chiropractic Education is recognized as a specialized accrediting agency. The scope of recognition is: “the accreditation of programs leading to the Doctor of Chiropractic degree and single-purpose institutions offering the Doctor of Chiropractic program.” No mention is made of a Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine degree or program.
The Council on Chiropractic Education
1974/2016/W2019-C
Scope of recognition: the accreditation of programs leading to the Doctor of Chiropractic degree and single-purpose institutions offering the Doctor of Chiropractic program.
Title IV Note: Only freestanding schools or colleges of chiropractic may use accreditation by this agency to establish eligibility to participate in Title IV programs.
The absurd argument that has been made to justify the violation of the US Department of Education's scope of recognition is that CCE accredits the Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine PROGRAM but not a DCM DEGREE.
This has apparently been enough to fool the USDE and everyone else since both Keiser and National's website and advertising go out of their way to promote chiropractic as the practice of medicine.
Even still, schools that don't use "medicine" in their marketing or missions are still using "physician" terminology such as University of Western States and even LIFE University which claims in its Mission to train chiropractors as "physicians".
CLICK HERE to review the complete IFCO Position Statement
