The last election for members of the College of Chiropractors of British Columbia was a contentious one. As described by Jennifer Forbes DC, Vice Chair of the Western States Chiropractic College Board of Trustees and Board Member of the College of Chiropractors of BC, the vote was essentially between good and evil.
Watch her doom and gloom video here
Forbes' predictions of doom and gloom for chiropractic manifesting if Johnny Suchdev DC did not get voted onto the BC board were obviously heeded by chiropractors in BC since Suchdev was put on the Board and made the Chair.
CLICK HERE for more on the Board vote tally
And according to sources, they did so by contriving a scenario that there were complaints against chiropractors coming into the board for issues related to x ray that the board simply had to deal with and put a stop to.
But how?
Simple - the CCBC would just provide the funding for a so called "Rapid Review" of the literature on: The clinical utility of routine spinal radiographs by chiropractors.
And the CCBC would get a bunch of well known Subluxation Deniers to write it and then get it published in the main journal controlled by the Subluxation Deniers.
It was a masterful plan - and they succeeded.
Melissa Corso, Carol Cancelliere, Silvano Mior, Varsha Kumar, Ali Smith & Pierre Côté, the hired gun "researchers" who conducted the "Rapid Review", came to this conclusion:
"We found no evidence that the use of routine or repeat radiographs to assess the function or structure of the spine, in the absence of red flags, improves clinical outcomes and benefits patients. Given the inherent risks of ionizing radiation, we recommend that chiropractors do not use radiographs for the routine and repeat evaluation of the structure and function of the spine."
Of course they ignored any and all literature, practice guidelines and standards of care in support of the evaluation of the biomechanical intergity of the spine related to vertebral subluxation - because it would negate the narrative and muddy the water.
And you would not want to muddy the water for the three lay persons on the board considering we are talking about an estate attorney, a social worker and a retired accountant.
They needed those lay people to vote their way.
The money trail in this debacle will prove to be interesting and appears as though a real scandal has developed between the CCBC Board, Ontario Tech University, the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation, the World Federation of Chiropractic and the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC).
The funding for the sham study was provided by the College of Chiropractors of British Columbia to Ontario Tech. Additional funding came from the Canada Research Chairs program and the Canadian Chiropractic Research Foundation.
The use of public money for this clearly agenda driven debacle will no doubt be the subject of the lawsuit that is being widely discussed among chiropractors in Canada.
The rest of the tangled web of deception surrounding this scandal are the connections between the authors of the Rapid Review and the World Federation of Chiropractic (WFC) and the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC).
For example, Carol Cancelliere serves on the Disability and Rehabilitation Committee of the WFC and is also faculty at the UOIT-CMCC Centre for Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation.
Anne Taylor-Vaisey is an Adjunct Professor at CMCC and also works at the Ontario Tech - CMCC Centre for Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation. Taylor-Vaisey designed the flawed search strategy for the Rapid Review.
The contact author for the paper that the CCBC used is Pierre Cote who is a CMCC faculty member and as of 2019 was Chair of the WFC's Disability and Rehabilitation Committee.
Silvano Mior is a co-author along with Cote of a framework for rehabilitation competency conducted by the World Federation of Chiropractic and he is a CMCC faculty member.
Varsha Kumar DC is also a DACBR and faculty and Diagnostic Imaging Program Coordinator at CMCC.
Ali Smith DC is a Chiropractor and Diagnostic Imaging Resident at Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.
The lead author of the flawed Rapid Review is Melissa Corso DC who is a graduate of CMCC and also works as a research associate at the Centre for Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation at Ontario Tech and CMCC. In 2020, she was awarded the Young Investigator of the Year by the Canadian Chiropractic Association.
So even a cursory review of the tentacles emanating from this scheme reveals the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, World Federation of Chiropractic, Ontario Tech and those members of the CCBC who voted for the ban - all at the center of it.
Canadian Memorial has long been known to disparage the practice of managing vertebral subluxation. In fact, so deep is the hatred that CMCC has for those who focus their practice on subluxation that the President of CMCC referred to anyone practicing in a subluxation, vitalistic model as "the gangrenous arm of the profession that needs to be cut off".
CLICK HERE for a complete list
That one of their member institutions was involved in essentially wiping out the ability for their graduates in BC to practice what they preach seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
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