When will Chiropractic be Mainstream Medicine?

This comment is rather cynical, in that most EBM enthusiasts think Chiropractic must retire it's sublaxation theory basis before ever being accepted among "legitimate" medical disciplines. -N

I do think it's possible that chiropractic has a chance at mainstream medicine. But, it will not be chiropractic that will change so much as it will be what our society accepts as "Medicine." The fact that someone can go into a chiro office with a bad back and come out feeling fine makes it, in a sense, Medicine, as defined by our culture. And that, really, is all a reformist chiropractor has to prove to whoever is the audience. Isn't It because the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of our lives are a part of our medical well-being that perhaps MD's don't discourage sCAM modalities? When we accept such ideas of emotional, social, and spiritual well-being as epic in importance to our health, we can accept as "Medicine" any myriad of human ritualistic behaviors on the mere premise that it is healthy or curative.

Chiropractic only has to succeed in creating the idea that chiropractic can be among the accepted medical disciplines. That "evidence-based" means chiropractic is methodically trying to discover what within chiropractic is working the best. That chiropractic is "Medicine" because we can't dispute the fact that people walk out of chiropractic offices feeling better.

Our mainstream medicine only has to change a little more toward a more subjective approach to medical care and chiropractic will be accepted as mainstream. Unfortunately, we risk losing valuable lessons in objective discovery, and I predict our overall health, and pocketbook, will be much less well-off.