At the recent CEE Stakeholders meeting in Scottsdale Arizona, Dr. Mike Simone from the American Chiropractic Association stated that the ACA represents 15,000 members, 3,500 of which are students.

ACA ’s claimed membership numbers are in doubt and many believe that the ACA provided false testimony on this to National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity during hearings on renewal of recognition of the CCE. The ACA has strongly and publicly supported the CCE in their efforts to remove the phrase “without drugs and surgery” as well as marginalize subluxation in the Standards. While the ACA stated that they have 15,000 members -according to calculations derived from IRS 990 forms the ACA may have only an estimated 6000 full dues paying members. Further evidence for this are reports by Dr. Gerry Clum, Past President of the World Federation of Chiropractic that the membership dues in the WFC are based on membership numbers and that this is consistent with 6000 members in the ACA.

There is also discussion occurring amongst the conservative faction of the profession regarding reports that some chiropractic institutions provide automatic membership in the ACA for their students which leads to inflated membership numbers. Beyond the ethical issues such practices raise, others have further questioned the legal nature of this if Federal student loan money is being used for this purpose. Organizations opposed to the Chiropractic Cartel have asked the ACA to provide proof of their membership numbers but this has not been forthcoming.

In addition to reporting on the inflated membership numbers, Dr. Simone stated the ACA would like to see higher standards imposed on chiropractic education.