by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Chiropractors—practitioners of an esoteric form of healing that involves manipulation of the spine—will be trying to manipulate the favours of judges this fall as two cases determine the status of the practice in Quebec.

In one case, the Canadian Chiropractic Association is challenging one of their long-time detractors, Dr. Murray Katz. The group has persuaded the Collège des médecins du Québec to call Katz—a harsh critic of the movement since 1971—onto the carpet on November 28, where they will try to persuade the authorities to remove his medical license.

Dr. Katz, a West Island-based pediatrician, says that it’s the fourth time that chiropractors have laid complaints against him. None have yet made it to the disciplinary committee. Katz considers the chiropractors’ aggressive tactics a reaction to his criticism of the practice. “What we are talking about is taking a joint and moving it,” says Katz. “All the latest studies I’ve seen indicate that there are no proven benefits offered by the practice in curing headaches or asthma for kids and any of the conditions they say they can stop. They take two bones in the back and make them pop, that’s all that their manipulation is.”

Normand Danis, president of the Quebec Order of Chiropractors, vigorously disagrees with Katz. “First of all, in some instances, he’s lying,” Danis says. “That I know for sure, because he gave a conference a few months ago and said the chiropractic program in Trois-Rivières wasn’t a real university program. That’s totally wrong and false. When he’s speaking of chiropractic, he usually says that it’s very, very dangerous. He was up to saying it led to one death or paralysis per 5,000 treatments, which is total nonsense. Our stats say it’s about one problem per six-million treatments. Many medications are much more dangerous than that.”

In the second case, which could have devastating consequences for the practice in the province, the chiropractors are fighting the provincial government’s Office des professions for the right to continue to offer medical diagnoses. Last Thursday, Quebec’s beleaguered chiropractors finished nine days of testimony before the Office, which has ordered the province’s 1,000 chiros to stop performing diagnoses. The chiropractors have obtained an injunction against the ban and are prepared to fight a long court battle against the decree.

“If the judge rules against us, it would mean that Quebec’s chiropractors would be the only ones in the world who didn’t have the right to diagnose,” says Richard Giguère, president of the Quebec Chiropractic Association. “Offering diagnoses has been part of our practice for 100 years, not only to treat the patient but to see if the patient would benefit from chiropractic care.”

Giguère says that chiropractors never perform the work of conventional doctors and that their brand of diagnosis is unlike those employed by MDs. “We do what’s often called a chiropractic diagnosis,” he says. “When we see there is a pathology that could create problems to a patient’s health, we’ll refer him to a medical doctor.” :