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Lawmakers' plan to create a chiropractic college gives Florida State U. a pain in the neck
From The Chronicle on Higher Education
By KATHERINE S. MANGAN
A proposal to open the country's first chiropractic college at a public university has professors at Florida State University bent out of shape.
Hundreds -- including about 70 medical professors -- have reportedly signed petitions against the college, and eight part-time medical professors have threatened to quit if it opens. The controversy has opened an angry debate between chiropractors and more-traditional doctors and raised questions about how higher-education decisions are made in Florida.
Ultimately, the battle is about legitimacy. Supporters hope that a public chiropractic college would give the profession respect, but opponents say such respect isn't deserved.
Last year the State Legislature, led by a well-connected chiropractor, approved $9-million a year for the chiropractic college before either the university or the state's Board of Governors had determined it was needed. Lawmakers have estimated that it will cost more than $60-million over the next five years to build the college. Now professors who view chiropractic medicine as "pseudoscience" are feeling manipulated, and they're fighting back.
They launched an aggressive media campaign to pressure the university's trustees to pull the plug on the proposed college. But instead of voting yes or no, the trustees opted this month to toss the political hot potato to the Board of Governors, which is scheduled to vote on the matter on January 27. The board could, in turn, vote to kill the college, or it could toss the matter back to the university for further review, and ultimately a vote. That could delay a decision for months, or even years.
The college's foes called the trustees "cowardly" for sidestepping the decision, while frustrated trustees said the board was giving them mixed messages about who was supposed to act first: the university or the Board of Governors.
Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, jumped into the debate on Tuesday, criticizing Florida State's handling of the matter and suggesting that the Legislature slash the $9-million appropriation for the chiropractic college to $1.9-million. He said that faculty members had been cut out of the debate, and that the university's trustees should have taken a stand on the college rather than turning to the Board of Governors.
The university's provost, Lawrence G. Abele, defended the trustees' action. "I don't think it's fair to ask our faculty to go through a long debate if the Board of Governors has no intention of approving it," he said.
Some of those board members have expressed strong reservations about the college, and there is widespread speculation that they will vote to kill the chiropractic college on January 27. If the board does vote in favor of the college, "the normal university processes would kick in, including a full debate by the faculty," Mr. Abele said.
Alien Studies Next?
Critics say a public university is no place for a chiropractic college, and they have been circulating a campus map that pokes fun at the proposal by suggesting that schools of extraterrestrial or past-life studies might come next.
Professors at the four-year-old College of Medicine -- the nation's youngest -- are particularly sensitive about the addition of an alternative-health-care college at a university whose medical school is not yet accredited. The two colleges would be separate, but medical professors who oppose the chiropractic school argue that it would taint the reputation of the entire university.
"Most of the faculty I speak to are saying this is absolutely ludicrous, and we'd be the laughingstock of the academic world," said Raymond E. Bellamy, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant professor of medicine who is leading the charge against the proposal. "Chiropractic is not science-based. Not one major university in North America has a connection with a chiropractic school. There's a reason for that."
This is not the first time that traditional medical and chiropractic educators have clashed over a proposed school. In 2001 York University, in Toronto, decided against affiliating with the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College after faculty members objected.
At Florida State, supporters counter that doctors and medical professors are feeling threatened by a practice that is growing in popularity and could cut into their business. Lawmakers who approved the money for the college say it could attract millions of dollars in federal support for alternative medicine and be the nation's pre-eminent chiropractic college.
The Florida chiropractor who has championed the new school in the Legislature, Sen. Dennis L. Jones, has accused professors who oppose the college of fomenting rebellion on the campus by misleading their colleagues about the chiropractic profession. The professors have been joined in their protests by prominent critics of chiropractic medicine from outside of Florida -- doctors who, Senator Jones said, have a bone to pick with the profession.
"I have no problem with these people quitting," said Senator Jones, a Republican, referring to the eight part-time Florida State professors. "If they're spreading professional bigotry, they shouldn't be teaching students anyway."
Despite opponents' claims that manipulating necks and spines can injure patients, he argues that chiropractic care is safer than other forms of medicine, in part because it allows some patients to avoid risky surgery or potentially debilitating medications.
He pointed out that chiropractors are provided on 44 military bases in the United States, as well as in a growing number of Veterans Affairs hospitals. Some 15 million people in the country regularly visit chiropractors, according to the National Institutes of Health's Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
"If it's good enough for the U.S. military, you'd think it would be good enough for FSU," the senator said.
Another Florida chiropractor is more conciliatory. "I have so much respect for those medical professors," said Lance Armstrong, a chiropractor in Cocoa Beach, Fla., who serves as president of the Florida Chiropractic Association. "To lose one of them over this issue would be tragic."
He became a chiropractor after a rough landing in a B-52 left him with severe neck pain that medication did not relieve. A chiropractor helped him resume his first career, as a flight instructor, he said.
"I work closely with the medical profession," he continued, "but I strongly believe that there are some issues of musculoskeletal injury where the medical world doesn't know as much as we wish they did."
Scientific Debate
If approved, Florida State's chiropractic college would open at the university's Tallahassee campus in 2007 and eventually enroll up to 500 students, who would be required to already have a bachelor's degree. They would spend five years in the program, earning both a chiropractic degree and one of five public-health master's degrees -- in aging studies, food and nutrition, health-policy research, movement science, and public health -- currently offered at the university.
Graduates would be at least as qualified as their counterparts in the medical school to treat patients with nagging backaches, chiropractors argue.
Donald J. Krippendorf, president of the American Chiropractic Association, accuses the profession's critics of playing politics and putting the financial interests of doctors ahead of the best interests of patients.
"Doctors of chiropractic are specifically and uniquely qualified to diagnose and treat problems of the musculoskeletal system, with an education that includes more than 2,000 hours of study devoted to the human spine and nervous system," he wrote in a December 16 letter to the St. Petersburg Times. "Conversely, a 2002 study published in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery found that 78 percent of medical doctors failed to demonstrate basic competency in musculoskeletal medicine and that medical-school preparation in musculoskeletal medicine is inadequate."
Alan H. Adams, an administrator overseeing the development of chiropractic education at Florida State, said critics are misleading the public when they say that chiropractic medicine is not scientific or rigorous. But critics say a research university is no place for chiropractors because the field is not based on science.
"That argument doesn't hold water today," said Mr. Adams, a longtime chiropractic educator at the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic who was hired to oversee curriculum development at the new school. "The profession has been active in research for nearly 30 years," he said. "Chiropractors have been publishing articles in more than 70 medical and scientific peer-reviewed journals."
He said a public chiropractic college would provide an affordable and accessible education for Florida residents, who now have to pay private-school tuition if they want to become chiropractors. Florida has one private chiropractic school, a branch of Palmer College of Chiropractic, in Port Orange. It is one of 16 accredited chiropractic schools in the United States that enroll a total of about 10,000 students. Many more graduate from unaccredited colleges.
--Con't Next Post--
From The Chronicle on Higher Education
By KATHERINE S. MANGAN
A proposal to open the country's first chiropractic college at a public university has professors at Florida State University bent out of shape.
Hundreds -- including about 70 medical professors -- have reportedly signed petitions against the college, and eight part-time medical professors have threatened to quit if it opens. The controversy has opened an angry debate between chiropractors and more-traditional doctors and raised questions about how higher-education decisions are made in Florida.
Ultimately, the battle is about legitimacy. Supporters hope that a public chiropractic college would give the profession respect, but opponents say such respect isn't deserved.
Last year the State Legislature, led by a well-connected chiropractor, approved $9-million a year for the chiropractic college before either the university or the state's Board of Governors had determined it was needed. Lawmakers have estimated that it will cost more than $60-million over the next five years to build the college. Now professors who view chiropractic medicine as "pseudoscience" are feeling manipulated, and they're fighting back.
They launched an aggressive media campaign to pressure the university's trustees to pull the plug on the proposed college. But instead of voting yes or no, the trustees opted this month to toss the political hot potato to the Board of Governors, which is scheduled to vote on the matter on January 27. The board could, in turn, vote to kill the college, or it could toss the matter back to the university for further review, and ultimately a vote. That could delay a decision for months, or even years.
The college's foes called the trustees "cowardly" for sidestepping the decision, while frustrated trustees said the board was giving them mixed messages about who was supposed to act first: the university or the Board of Governors.
Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, jumped into the debate on Tuesday, criticizing Florida State's handling of the matter and suggesting that the Legislature slash the $9-million appropriation for the chiropractic college to $1.9-million. He said that faculty members had been cut out of the debate, and that the university's trustees should have taken a stand on the college rather than turning to the Board of Governors.
The university's provost, Lawrence G. Abele, defended the trustees' action. "I don't think it's fair to ask our faculty to go through a long debate if the Board of Governors has no intention of approving it," he said.
Some of those board members have expressed strong reservations about the college, and there is widespread speculation that they will vote to kill the chiropractic college on January 27. If the board does vote in favor of the college, "the normal university processes would kick in, including a full debate by the faculty," Mr. Abele said.
Alien Studies Next?
Critics say a public university is no place for a chiropractic college, and they have been circulating a campus map that pokes fun at the proposal by suggesting that schools of extraterrestrial or past-life studies might come next.
Professors at the four-year-old College of Medicine -- the nation's youngest -- are particularly sensitive about the addition of an alternative-health-care college at a university whose medical school is not yet accredited. The two colleges would be separate, but medical professors who oppose the chiropractic school argue that it would taint the reputation of the entire university.
"Most of the faculty I speak to are saying this is absolutely ludicrous, and we'd be the laughingstock of the academic world," said Raymond E. Bellamy, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant professor of medicine who is leading the charge against the proposal. "Chiropractic is not science-based. Not one major university in North America has a connection with a chiropractic school. There's a reason for that."
This is not the first time that traditional medical and chiropractic educators have clashed over a proposed school. In 2001 York University, in Toronto, decided against affiliating with the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College after faculty members objected.
At Florida State, supporters counter that doctors and medical professors are feeling threatened by a practice that is growing in popularity and could cut into their business. Lawmakers who approved the money for the college say it could attract millions of dollars in federal support for alternative medicine and be the nation's pre-eminent chiropractic college.
The Florida chiropractor who has championed the new school in the Legislature, Sen. Dennis L. Jones, has accused professors who oppose the college of fomenting rebellion on the campus by misleading their colleagues about the chiropractic profession. The professors have been joined in their protests by prominent critics of chiropractic medicine from outside of Florida -- doctors who, Senator Jones said, have a bone to pick with the profession.
"I have no problem with these people quitting," said Senator Jones, a Republican, referring to the eight part-time Florida State professors. "If they're spreading professional bigotry, they shouldn't be teaching students anyway."
Despite opponents' claims that manipulating necks and spines can injure patients, he argues that chiropractic care is safer than other forms of medicine, in part because it allows some patients to avoid risky surgery or potentially debilitating medications.
He pointed out that chiropractors are provided on 44 military bases in the United States, as well as in a growing number of Veterans Affairs hospitals. Some 15 million people in the country regularly visit chiropractors, according to the National Institutes of Health's Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
"If it's good enough for the U.S. military, you'd think it would be good enough for FSU," the senator said.
Another Florida chiropractor is more conciliatory. "I have so much respect for those medical professors," said Lance Armstrong, a chiropractor in Cocoa Beach, Fla., who serves as president of the Florida Chiropractic Association. "To lose one of them over this issue would be tragic."
He became a chiropractor after a rough landing in a B-52 left him with severe neck pain that medication did not relieve. A chiropractor helped him resume his first career, as a flight instructor, he said.
"I work closely with the medical profession," he continued, "but I strongly believe that there are some issues of musculoskeletal injury where the medical world doesn't know as much as we wish they did."
Scientific Debate
If approved, Florida State's chiropractic college would open at the university's Tallahassee campus in 2007 and eventually enroll up to 500 students, who would be required to already have a bachelor's degree. They would spend five years in the program, earning both a chiropractic degree and one of five public-health master's degrees -- in aging studies, food and nutrition, health-policy research, movement science, and public health -- currently offered at the university.
Graduates would be at least as qualified as their counterparts in the medical school to treat patients with nagging backaches, chiropractors argue.
Donald J. Krippendorf, president of the American Chiropractic Association, accuses the profession's critics of playing politics and putting the financial interests of doctors ahead of the best interests of patients.
"Doctors of chiropractic are specifically and uniquely qualified to diagnose and treat problems of the musculoskeletal system, with an education that includes more than 2,000 hours of study devoted to the human spine and nervous system," he wrote in a December 16 letter to the St. Petersburg Times. "Conversely, a 2002 study published in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery found that 78 percent of medical doctors failed to demonstrate basic competency in musculoskeletal medicine and that medical-school preparation in musculoskeletal medicine is inadequate."
Alan H. Adams, an administrator overseeing the development of chiropractic education at Florida State, said critics are misleading the public when they say that chiropractic medicine is not scientific or rigorous. But critics say a research university is no place for chiropractors because the field is not based on science.
"That argument doesn't hold water today," said Mr. Adams, a longtime chiropractic educator at the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic who was hired to oversee curriculum development at the new school. "The profession has been active in research for nearly 30 years," he said. "Chiropractors have been publishing articles in more than 70 medical and scientific peer-reviewed journals."
He said a public chiropractic college would provide an affordable and accessible education for Florida residents, who now have to pay private-school tuition if they want to become chiropractors. Florida has one private chiropractic school, a branch of Palmer College of Chiropractic, in Port Orange. It is one of 16 accredited chiropractic schools in the United States that enroll a total of about 10,000 students. Many more graduate from unaccredited colleges.
--Con't Next Post--
