Now that I got the obligatory blame Canada joke out there...the truth is that Chiropractor's often overstep their bounds and these strokes occurred most likely after incorrect manipulation of the neck...If you go to one or know one make sure they don't touch anyones neck, they can definitely do wonder on the back, but stay the hell away from the neck.
Sometimes they overstep their bounds. This is how I would describe those who claim that high blood pressure and cancer can be cured by a spine adjustment.
The more pervasive danger is this. Chiropractors don't train in hospitals. They don't do residencies. Their training lightly touches on non-spinal pathology but they have never been responsible for diagnosing or treating really sick people. The effect is that they don't know what they don't know.
We say this alot about NPs and PAs, but it is even more true of Chiropractors. It's not that they don't want to refer their patients to real doctors, they just don't have the skill to recognize when a person is not having a spinal issue, and instead has a sarcoma, or an non-typical expression ectopic pregnancy, appendicitis, or some other disease that now will go untreated because the patient is "seeing her doctor".
I read a really interesting article by a DO calling for the practice of chiropractic medicine to get away from "alternative" medicine and move into the mainstream by:
1. adopting more rigorous acceptance and education standards and possibly residency training.
2. Schools become affiliated with universities, start doing research and adopting evidence based practice (no more mystical energy flowing through the nerves)
3. Following the podiatrists in focusing on on aspect of the body. Non-surgical spine care. There is enough of a demand for it that chiropracters would have enough business, and wouldn't have to get into applied kinesiology, vitamin regimens, and other hogwash.
In short, he said that Chiropracters need to stop trying to sell their own special lesion, and start working at the same level as Physicians, Podiatrists, etc.