National Association For Chiropractic Medicine - Background

Background

Representing a minority viewpoint among chiropractors that is shared by those known as reform chiropractors, the NACM advocated a highly limited use of spinal manipulative procedures "only for the treatment of some neuromusculoskeletal conditions of musculoskeletal origin," for example the treatment of "sore backs and other musculo-skeletal problems." By openly rejecting some of the more controversial aspects of chiropractic, including a basic concept of chiropractic, vertebral subluxations as the cause of all diseases. NACM members claimed to receive mainstream approval more so than practitioners of straight or mixing chiropractic.

The NACM was a private organization that accepted members by invitation only and did not release membership data, however the neutral Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the antagonistic ICA estimated its membership to be in the low hundreds or less.

Groupings within the chiropractic profession have been studied and categorized in various ways and the placement of the NACM within that spectrum has been mentioned in the literature. A 2005 study made with support from the chiropractic community had this to say:

"At the risk of oversimplification, chiropractors can be viewed as falling into three groups based on their usage of evidence, diagnosis, and philosophy: evidence based chiropractors, traditional straight chiropractors, and super straight chiropractors. Evidence based chiropractors make use of the best available scientific literature and accumulated clinical knowledge to establish diagnosis, refer or co-manage when necessary, devise and revise treatment plans. The evidence based chiropractor would most closely align with the AACP."

That statement referenced the NACM as a subgroup of evidence-based chiropractors:

"Another subgroup represented by the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine (NACM) takes a more narrow view. Whereas the AACP believes in a wide variety of treatment measures, the NACM restricts members to NMS conditions and manipulation by hand only."

In 1998, the AMA's Council on Scientific Affairs used communications from NACM's vice-president as a basis for some of the content in their "Report 12".

In 2002, the Journal of Controversial Medical Claims published a paper submitted by the NACM entitled "NACM and its argument with mainstream chiropractic health care." In 2005, chiropractic leader Anthony Rosner had some strong words for the paper:

"The history of anti-chiropractic invectives labeling the profession as "unscientific" unfortunately fills volumes, from the days of Morris Fischbein's crusades against chiropractic as editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, to a mind-numbing invective published in 2002 by Timothy Mirtz which I have rebutted in considerable detail elsewhere."