Latest post of the previous page:
New website launched!The British Organisation for the Greater Understanding of the Spine
Latest post of the previous page:
New website launched!Well...OK so far as it goes. But it begs the question what they've been doing since the duty to properly regulate them was given to the General Chiropractic Council (GCC) under the 1994 Chiropractors Act. The GCC themselves say one of their duties is to:an online reporting and learning forum that enables chiropractors to share and comment on patient safety incidents.
If this is the first proper system for reporting 'incidents', WTF have they been doing???protect the public
Whew! At least incidents will still be reported to the proper authorities, who will take appropriate action. Won't they?Please note that reporting to CPiRLS is NOT a substitute for the reporting of patient safety incidents to your professional association and/or indemnity insurers.
Sadly, that's not the case.protect the public
They emphasise anonymity:CPiRLS is secure and anonymous. There is no known way that anyone reporting can be identified, nor do those running the system seek to identify you. For this security to be effective, you require a password to participate.
So, there is no way whatsoever any incident [---][/---] minor or serious [---][/---] can ever be traced back to the perpetrator. Encouraging for chiroquacktors, but doesn't do much toAnonymity
When a report is submitted to CPiRLS, the website stores the information provided as fields within an underlying database. The website and the underlying database are hosted on a remote commercial server. The IP address of the computer from which the report was submitted is not stored to disk and the contents of the RAM cache that could carry this information is transient and rapidly flushed. Because of these measures, it is not possible for anyone to identify the individual who has submitted a report. This means chiropractors can feel confident in sharing incidents openly through the CPiRLS website.
protect the public
They even thought about that. Any chiroquacktor can report an incident, in the sure knowledge there can be no comeback.All chiropractors are provided with the same (regularly changed) username and password which helps to ensure that individual users cannot be identified.
Not much of a clue as to what they consider an incident or its severity. Wait! Hover over the three levels of severity and a popup gives an example of each:An “incident” is defined as any type of patient safety event, error, accident or deviation from the norm that either:
actually happened – represented by CPiRLS as a red traffic light, or
nearly happened (‘near miss’) – represented by CPiRLS as an amber traffic light, or
has the potential to happen – represented by CPiRLS as a green traffic light,
regardless of whether it is considered minor or major, results in significant patient harm or leads to a patient complaint.
A trigger list has been designed to help you participate in CPiRLS by providing examples of incidents that you might come across and should report. Some may be fairly common and some extremely rare; the list is not exhaustive. The list provides categories/sub-categories of incident that match those provided in the electronic reporting form.
WTF! Shouldn't they be considering such incidents as part of normal Health and Safety duties?actually happened: E.g. Patient tripped over a trailing cable
nearly happened (‘near miss’): E.g. Patient was stopped before tripping over a cable.
has the potential to happen: E.g. Trailing cable noticed and remedied before it became a risk to patients.
The GCC is based in London. The domain name (cpirls.org) is registered to a website company called Typeline, who are responsible for the websites of several chiroquacktors (eg here, here and here, all virtually identical).protect the public
The system for the public is anonymous, encouraging them to report incidents, but the staff reporting system is not, so that incidents can be properly followed up to ensure that appropriate actions are taken to minimise recurrence.We improve patient safety by enabling the NHS to learn from patient safety incidents.
Pity this doesn't apply to all claims, particularly to chiroquacktors' subluxations.The use of extravagant language should be avoided, as should bogus and confusing scientific terms. If it is necessary to use a scientific expression, its meaning should be clear.
I should have given the whole story here about what I found out about the BCA, the GCC and the ASA:Alan C. wrote:The latest Jack of Kent's blog post...the one in which yours truly gets a mention!As the truly excellent Alan Henness ("Zeno") of ThinkHumanism pointed out to me,
A bit of detail to what Jack of Kent was talking about...here's the information I passed to him:
I made a complaint to the GCC and Trading Standards on Tuesday about a local chiro who was using the title 'Dr' on his website. When I looked further into what chiros are allowed to claim and what they are not allowed to claim, I discovered something I don't think I've seen mentioned elsewhere (although I may just have missed it).
The GCC's Code of Practice and Standards of Proficiency explicitly says at C1.6:
[Chiropractors] may publicise their practices or permit another person to do so
consistent with the law and the guidance issued by the Advertising
Standards Authority. If chiropractors, or others on their behalf, do
publicise, the information used must be factual and verifiable. The
information must not be misleading or inaccurate in any way. It must
not, in any way, abuse the trust of members of the public nor exploit
their lack of experience or knowledge about either health or
chiropractic matters. It must not put pressure on people to
use chiropractic.
The key point here is the reference to the ASA's guidance. I take this to mean the current Code of Advertising Practice and any and all other guidance issued by them. This paragraph, since the GCC's CoP is the legally binding contract the chiros have to comply with as a condition of their registration (without which they cannot legally practice), binds them to only making claims the ASA would accept.
I'll post the reference later, but we know that the ASA will accept nothing less than good scientific evidence when examining the acceptability of any claims made. (Indeed, I've made extensive use of this in several successful complaints to the ASA.)
This means that chiros should not be making any claims that they cannot scientifically substantiate. Edzard Ernst, as he has been an expert consulted by the ASA, may be able to give further insight into this.
Currently, some of us are complaining to Trading Standards about the claims made on the websites of chiros because that falls within their remit. However, although I've very limited experience of them, I believe their standards are considerably below that required by the ASA.
What this all means is that we should be able to complain to the GCC about what any member claims on their website (and there are many that could be complained about!). This is far easier than trying to find advertising literature issued by the chiro, which falls withing the ASA's direct remit! Such claims, made to the GCC, citing the ASA's guidance, should succeed, possibly even for claims about about lower back pain, but certainly for the conditions that there really is no scientific evidence in favour of or for conditions where there is no scientific evidence one way or the other.
Now, many chiros will make no claims whatsoever on their websites and someone on Bad Science Forum has already found this, but there are some who do. I compiled a complete list of the chiros on the BCA's register who have a website and published it on Think Humanism. What we can do is to look at them all (300-odd, IIRC) and make one huge complaint to the GCC. We could certainly broaden this to include all GCC members, but just doing this for BCA members may be more than enough to make the point and throw them into complete apoplexy! I suspect this could gain considerable press attention as well: "Vast numbers of chiros make bogus claims!", etc (or perhaps something a bit more pithy!).
It does beg the question about whether what the ASA considers bogus can have any bearing on Simon's predicament. Ideally, the ASA would consider that even claims about lower back pain could not be sufficiently substantiated, and it may well be that any upheld complaint can be described as bogus.
The fact that the ASA would not actually be involved in any way with such a complaint to the GCC is not a problem. The GCC actually seem to be very good at pursuing complaints against their registered chiros and they publish the full details of hearings on their website. These seem to be conducted entirely rigorously and properly. (Of course, they've not been good at keeping on top of bogus claims, though!)
One case, after they found against a chiro, was appealed to the High Court - DR. WARREN GAGE v GENERAL CHIROPRACTIC COUNCIL, Neutral Citation Number: [2004] EWHC 2762 (Admin). Although this refers to a paragraph in a previous issue of the BCC's CoP, it is similar. Mr Justice Jackson said:
This says that it does not take an expert to understand what the ASA's CAP means, but that it can easily be interpreted by 'the professions and committees such as the PCC' (the GCC's Professional Conduct Committee).As to the first line of attack it should be noted that the CAP Code is a clear and simple
code of guidance. It is intended to be readily understood both by the professions and by
committees such as the PCC of the General Chiropractic Council. In my judgment, the
panel did not need either expert evidence or a ruling from the Advertising Standards
Agency in order to understand and apply the CAP Code in the present case. There is
however a further point. The panel did in fact hear expert evidence, both from Dr.
Brown and from Dr. Stick upon matters relating to the CAP Code.
This gives us huge potential to create a massive amount of mischief for ths GCC and BCA, but I want some input from David (and perhaps Simon) before proceeding. If it is decided this is a good course of action, I'd like your help in compiling a list of claims made by BCA members. This just needs to be a very simple list for each chiro and I'll work out the details later.
Now, what JoK realised was that what the BCA were doing by claiming chiropractic could 'cure' conditions like colic was putting their own members in an impossible situation (if they had any integrity, that is!): the BCA were saying that these conditions could be helped, but a chiro could not make these very same claims without being in breach of their statutory GCC Code of Conduct! As JoK put it:
....................Whatever else it may be, for any chiropractor to happily promote chiropractic for colic would now seem to place them in breach of their own professional obligations.
JoK's argument is that the BCA now have no reputation to defend because they were effectively encouraging their members to breach their legally binding Code of Conduct. (Hopefully, therefore, Simon wins!...but I suspect it may be a bit more complicated than that.)
But there's something else. As I pointed out to JoK, instead of complaining to Trading Standards about a chiro - and I'm not sure about their rules and how tough they would be - we can simply complain to the GCC! Now, this may have seemed like a poor choice, but, in light of the above, we now know they effectively enforce whatever the ASA have issued as guidance (see my later post on the details of this). They have to enforce this because that what the contract of every registered chiro says!
I think we can very quickly gather up the claims from all BCA members (those who have websites, anyway) - I posted a link to the list a few days ago - and make one massive complaint to the BCA. The actual complaint only needs to be very simple - just like an ASA complaint: "I doubt they can substantiate these claims." Of the 300-odd who have websites, I'm sure we can find more than a few who are making bogus claims! All we need to do is copy and past quotes wherever they say stuff like "...chiro may/can help with...".
As I see it (and as JoK agrees), they can only allow claims that the ASA would allow. This would hopefully set the cat amongst the pigeons!
This does obviously depend on the GCC taking any complaint seriously. However, from what I've read, they do seem to rigorously enforce their CoP: they even publish the results of their hearings on their website. So, I think we have a very good chance of shaking them up considerably and getting them to rap the knuckles of the BCA members.
(Later, we could follow this up by considering other GCC members who are not BCA members.)
Of course, we have to wonder why the GCC have not been regulating chiro claims properly before now...
Anyone with me? Anyone want to help in compiling the list of chiro claims?
Oh really? I'd like to see the research.Research has shown that chiropractic treatment is often more effective than conventional surgical methods
Aberdeen Chiropractic.Some common complaints that may be helped by chiropractic care:
* headaches
* accidents & Injuries
* neck pain
* sciatica
* pregnancy........................WTF!.....Pregnancy is a common complaint?
I have read the training manual and completed all the puzzles exams. I got 100% rightAlan H wrote:Latest chiroquacktor training manual uncovered.
You don't say! Human evolution must have made a big boo-boo there then.Following the trauma of birth a baby’s spine can need treatment to ensure healthy development.
This is seriously worrying. Young children? I am horrified that these people feed on the fears of parents and spread myths and misinformation to boost their business.Chiropractic treatment can correct spinal malfunctions in children at an early stage.
Alan C. wrote:And has incorperated (among many other things) Imelda's shoe repairs, if they can't do anything for your soul, at least they can repair your soles (Imelda's has closed down.)
Yes there should! ..........Unfortunately........... There isn't!getreal
There should be a law against this.
They've just commented on* and republished a blog post (actually, I think it may be his last two posts) from the Cargo Cult Science blog and it was Tristan (from the Bad Science forum) who wrote the piece and linked to Skepticat and others.Alan H wrote:There are a few of us working on various things. Watch this space.
Could the chiropractic sceptics bankrupt the GCC. : Chiropracticlive.com
Skepticat gets a mention and I've now got one or two chiroquacktors following me on Twitter!
I think they all do it (call themselves Dr) I have complained to the ASA L L regarding two that advertise in the Shetland Times. So far I've only had acknowledgment of my complaint.Lemonade Lilly
Wondered what we can do as individuals to make a difference and hassle this along abit - like complaining to ASA when we find chiropractors using the title Dr
Me
How about this "gang of four" from the Aberdeen Chiropractic Clinic?
Dr Eline Pedersen MSc DC Chiropractic
Dr Kenneth Bramberg DC MCSc (Paeds)
Dr Richard Gliddon M Chiro
Dr Joanne Middleton MSc DC Chiropractic
Some newsLemonade Lily wrote:Hi Alan
I've been away on hols so just catching up with threads - esp. with the BCA saga
Wondered what we can do as individuals to make a difference and hassle this along abit - like complaining to ASA when we find chiropractors using the title Dr (such as http://www.hampsteadchiropractic.co.uk/ ... people.htm) which seems a pretty common occurence.
Pardon if this been asked before
Lily
Thank you for your enquiry. The relevant part of the Code of Practice for chiropractors states that
“Chiropractors must not use any title or qualification in such a way that the public may be misled as to its mean or significance. In particular, chiropractors who use the title of ‘doctor’ and who are not registered medical practitioners must ensure that they make it clear they are registered chiropractors and not registered medical practitioners.”
Do please let me know if from your perspective the information provided on his website is sufficiently clear. If not, I will draw to his attention any issues that you are able to identify, with a view to remedying any problem.