Vitalism Has Been Discredited for Decades According to ACA Leader

Michael Simone DC, the Immediate Past Chairman of the Board of the American Chiropractic Association, recently stated the following: 

“I think the adherence by some in our profession to vitalistic approaches is what has kept and keeps us from becoming respected members of the health care community. Vitalism has been discredited for decades. Ethical, evidenced based approaches are what we must embrace to move forward.” 

Simone is part of a growing number of chiropractors that support the Chiropractic Cartel and are seeking to marginalize the subluxation based faction of the profession. Just recently the American Chiropractic Association urged the profession to get rid of subluxation in Medicare and to expand Medicare to include all services within each states’ scope of practice. This move is supported by the Association of Chiropractic Colleges which is led by the Presidents of the chiropractic colleges in North America.

Simone’s statement regarding vitalism follows on the heels of another statement he made to the Florida Chiropractic Physicians Association which is seeking prescriptive drug rights for chiropractors throughout the United States. In their newsletter Simone stated: 

“The subluxation based DC’s have done everything in their power to hold our profession back. Until that group has matured, is marginalized or is eliminated, I’m not confident much will improve.” 

Simone practices in Colorado and is the Immediate Past Chairman of the Board of the Amercian Chiropractic Association and served on its Board of Governors--representing a nine-state region--for over 6 years. He is a former Executive Board member of the Colorado Chiropractic Association. In 2007, Dr. Simone was inducted into the International College of Chiropractors as a “Fellow”. He was honored as the 2015 Chiropractor of the Year by the American Chiropractic Association. 

Simone is a chiropractic orthopedist and a Certified Medical Examiner authorized by the US Department of Transportation to perform medical examinations for commercial drivers. 

According to his website he calls his clinic Simone Physical Medicine and also practices acupuncture and dry needling along with other methods including: Electrical Muscle Stimulation, Dry Needling, Ultrasound, Diathermy, Heat Packs, and Cold Packs. 

Simone must be asserting that these interventions are more evidence based than the location, analysis and correction of vertebral subluxation. In reality, there are thousands of peer reviewed studies supporting the practice of subluxation chiropractic. There are evidenced based standards of care documents accepted by the United States Federal Government outlining the standard of care for subluxation correction and radiographic procedures. There are objective, valid and reliable procedures for measuring the components of vertebral subluxation and assessing outcomes from care directed at reducing them. 

While Simone, who portrays himself as scientific and as a leader within chiropractic, is obviously not familiar with the scientific literature on the management of vertebral subluxation what is even more shocking is that he must not be familiar with the levels of evidence for the things he actually does in his own practice. 

This should not be surprising since the Chiropractic Cartel, led by the American Chiropractic Association, has repeatedly engaged in logical fallacies such as "vertebral subluxation care is not evidenced based" when in fact there is more evidence to support the subluxation model than what they are doing in their own practices. The Cartel’s hope is that chiropractors, legislators, plaintiff's attorneys and the public are not intelligent enough to figure that out.  

These groups, professional organizations and schools are referred to as the Chiropractic Cartel because they enjoy a monopoly on the educational and licensing functions of the entire chiropractic profession throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. 

The Chiropractic Cartel includes mostly members of the so-called “Chiropractic Summit” group which has as one of its goals the establishment of chiropractic as the practice of primary care as chiropractic physicians. 

Among the Cartel are key players who exert the actual control over licensing and education. For the most part one needs to graduate from a CCE accredited school and pass all parts of NBCE testing in order to get a license to practice anywhere in the world which gives them control over the entire chiropractic profession.