So often I'm asked "Doc, why doesn't my Md do anything but give me drugs?" This question is often followed with "And why does he seem to dislike you so much?" I have to be careful how I answer these questions because my answers would otherwise be flippant, obnoxious and egotistic if I wasn't. The answer to these questions lies primarily in a series of events that took place between 1850 and 1910-13 respectively.
In 1850 the American Medical Association (AMA) formed as a trade association to protect the interests of the medical doctor with a stated intention of creating a monopoly in health care. In 1850 this was the accepted business model because the population density of the USA was much less than it is today and there were almost zero regulations for the conduct of business and no way to effectively enforce the regulations that did exist at the time.
Around this period we also have the emergence of pharmaceutical companies who were selling cocaine, opium and morphine out of the backs of wagons in the newly developing populations centers spreading across the land. As mentioned before there were no regulations for the sale of these items and as they were highly addictive narcotics it was an easy seller once you got the population of a town hooked. Their methods of marketing were very similar to the drug dealer today. They'd give free samples of the purest form of their product to get the customer hooked and sell the next batch for whatever they wanted and the customer would come up with the money one way or the other. A very profitable sales tactic if not quite ethical.
Following the Civil war cocaine and opium addiction became a very serious problem for many veterans of the Civil war due to the horrific wounds many of them suffered. Then came the industrial revolution and with it the influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants seeking a better life for themselves in America. Few of these individuals had an education and were of, forgive the terminology, peasant mentality. In which the idea that if and illness didn't kill you it made you stronger, or if a little bit makes you feel better a lot will cure you.
It was the latter thought that lead to the mass overdosing of entire families when they'd come down with an illness due to the close quarters in which they were living, often sharing an apartment with two or three other families to afford the rent. Legislation to control the sale of Cocaine and Opium was first attempted in 1885 but the pharmaceutical lobby...yes they were there then to...were able to defeat that first and subsequent attempts over the next 30 years. Then in 1910 when the problem grew to epidemic proportions the Harrison Act was passed in 1910 making Cocaine and opium controlled substances requiring a prescription to obtain. In 1913 it was amended making cocaine and opium in their original forms illegal for sale.
Before the Harrison Act was passed the pharmaceutical industry was courting the AMA which was reeling from the fact that their profession was suffering severe economic distress in the shadow of Osteopaths, naturopaths and...yes even that new fangled weirdo...the chiropractor. All three non-medical practices of health care were doing far better than the medical doctor of the era...big time. In fact the medical profession between 1900 and 1910 had the highest suicide rate of any profession of the time, including prostitution. The AMA was eager to ally itself with the deep pockets of the pharmaceutical industry (which had been measuring its profits in the billions in 1900...yes billion with a B) as a result. Since that first alliance was formed the original competitors of the md have taken massive hits and almost went completely extinct over the course of the next century.
The Md is extremely jealous of his top dog status, though it was bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry rather than earned by their own merits. The advent of the internet has created a problem for the md by publishing the fact that the American Md has become the leading cause of preventable death in the USA and beats out heart disease and cancer by a significant margin.
This is why a competent md has no problem with chiropractors and the less than competent Md views anything outside his or her realm of expertise with fear and disdain.
Hope this helps.
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