Rosen M, "SOTO-USA Attends World Chiropractic Alliance Symposium"
On March 2, 2001, Dr. Marty Rosen, SOTO-USA’s Director of Research and Chairman of Pediatrics, represented SOTO-USA and SOT at the first annual World Chiropractic Alliance International Symposium in Washington, DC. The mission of this Council was to “support and encourage the exploration and development of the clinical application of chiropractic philosophy, science and art” and help chiropractic to provide a “non-duplicating, separate and distinct form of health care focused on the detection, arrest, reduction and prevention of vertebral subluxation.”
Of the more than 100 techniques present at this symposium, it was significant that only two techniques were asked to actually address those in attendance, SOT being one. SOTO-USA is working hard to support and represent SOT worldwide, and we are proud to have been recognized for this honor. The following is a portion of Dr. Rosen’s address to the Council on Chiropractic Clinical Science:
“Our organization (SOTO-USA) seeks to create a working understanding between our various chiropractic techniques and the world of chiropractic research.” It is time that the chiropractic technique world step up to the plate and stand behind their various claims and promises while at the same time the research world become willing to reevaluate its research protocols in order to take into consideration the distinct vitalistic nature of chiropractic. We must be willing to put to the test the parameters by which we analyze and adjust patients. If our claims are such that we profess to restore the spine to its “normal” biomechanical patterns, reduce meningeal irritation, correct the primary sacro- respiratory mechanism or increase the expression of the human potential by removing “interference” to the nervous system, we must be willing to put these precepts to the test. It is no longer beneficial to the chiropractic profession to make philosophically based claims without supportive empirical evidence.
On the research end it is their duty to reevaluate the current “scientific” methods of research and be willing to redesign them to better fit the chiropractic paradigm. The uniqueness of the chiropractic profession and its adherence to the vitalistic principle must be taken into account when designing research protocols. Dr. Dossey, in an article in the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine expresses it this way: “I have long suspected that many alternative advocates bear a grudge against double-blind testing because this method not only devalues consciousness, it ignores ‘spirit’ and ‘the spiritual’. Research methods of investigation must be employed that do not preclude a vitalistic factor. At the same time it is still possible for empirical research to be done on the effects of a chiropractic adjustment but the next step must be taken to validate what the overall, neurophysiological, social, emotional, spiritual and potentially evolutionary effect of that correction will result in.”