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The medical profession has been caught conspiring to stop you from visiting chiropractors. the most trusted members of our society. Trust is the foundation of a doctor-patient relationship and, in a broader perspective, the relationship between medical associa- tions and government. Trust is exchanged upon the understanding that politicians; practi- tioners and their associations will place patient and public interest before their own econom- ic concems. . Conflicts of interest are common because medicine, that other arm of government, is ide- ally placed, in many countries, to arrange the provision of health care in such a way as to preclude competing health professions. From a marketing perspective, international medicine is extremely powerful. Medical associations may adopt policies controlling availability, price, its own work and the work of others. Within departments of health, medical personnel play key roles in determining legis- lation that influences multibillion dollar expenditures throughout the global illness industry. Although medical practitioners are claimed to be in oversupply, the limited intakes in medical schools, the limits on registration of medical primary contact providers, and the exclusive place of specialised service providers, all help to maintain costs of services. Laws, regulations and 'ethics' create a virtual monopoly to the medical model of treatment within public health care facilities and programmes to the total exclusion of ‘alternative’ options. This is based upon the false exclusive premise that health problems are, in the main, medical conditions that require medical treatment and/or referral by medical ‘gate- keepers’. From a global perspective, this gives a multibillion dollar marketing advantage for medical interests. A contrived health care market place and intense opposition to the registration of other health professions excludes a level playing field within health care. The place of chiroprac- tic within health care is a fine example of an exiled profession subjected to containment and discrimination. Consumers should benefit from free enterprise competition but they are denied the liberty to consult the registered practitioner of their choice, and so may not receive the most effec- tive, cost-effective and safe method of care (hereafter called ‘the more beneficial therapeutic approach’). This article is about the international struggle to establish the liberty of patients to consult a chiropractor in genuine free enterprise health care market-places. If such markets existed, the patient who needs chiropractic care could: (1) be informed through public health education programmes about subluxation-related disorders, the role and limitations of chiropractic and when to, and when not to, consult a chiropractor. (In supersimplistic patient terms, a subluxation is vertebral joint malfunction that interferes with the nervous system.) (2) be encouraged by health planners, insurers, professional associations and medical practitioners to use the more beneficial therapeutic approach. (3) find that medical practitioners were not restrained from referring patients to and accepting patients from chiropractors. Laws and ethics could be framed so as to permit chi- Topractors to obtain access to hospital diagnostic services and membership on the hospital medical staffs, to encourage medical physicians to teach at chiropractic colleges and to engage in collaborative research, and to encourage cooperation between the two groups in the delivery of health services. (In the USA, the intent of the medical boycott of chiroprac- tors was opposite to this.') The history of chiropractic includes widespread jailings, fines and prosecution of thou- sands of its pioneers. In more recent decades, similar anti-competitive arrangements appeared in state and federal health care systems across the USA and in other countries, including Australia and New Zealand. As chiropractors from different states and from dif- ferent countries compared restraints, it became obvious that these almost identical anti-com- petitive practices could not arise spontaneously. Later, the USA served as the proof that a conspiracy is necessary to create, implement and maintain a nationwide ‘ethics'-based boycott and the restraints that flow from it. Court evi- dence eventually exposed what is now referred to as “the central conspiracy of the AMA in A fragile pedestal of faith upholds modern medicine whose practitioners rank among Whilst the Chiropractors' Association of Australia is not the originator of this article, it is our recommended source for further information. The Chiropractors' Assoc. of Australia PO Box 241, Springwood NSW 2777 Tel: (047) 51 5644 NEXUS © 39 OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 1993