APil 09/04 0052 Chiropractor-Victory
By JEFF HOLYFIELD Associated Press Writer
LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- The American Medical Association's
"disgraceful plot" to destroy the chiropractic profession has
been ended by a federal court victory, which boosted the concept
of free choice in health care, says the Michigan chiropractor who
led a 13-year legal battle.
Dr. Clair O'Dell, of Southgate, said Thursday that he and
four other chiropractors formed a committee to pursue anti-trust
legal action in 1974 even though "at that time, noby believed the
AMA could be whipped."
"At that time, we had nothing to go on, but a dream and the
knowledge that our cause was right," said O'Dell, chairman of the
panel.
"We were not mad at anyone. We just felt that everybody had a
right to exist. All we wanted was to have our democratic rights
protected."
In a 101-page opinion issued last week, U.S. District Judge
Susan Getzendanner ruled that the AMA and several other medical
groups conspired to destroy the chiropractic profession in the
United States.
O'Dell said that before the lawsuit was filed, he'd been
practicing for 37 years "and I had spent about 50 percent of
those 37 years washing out the poison that had been inserted into
the minds of people by the propaganda of the AMA that
chiropractic was unscientific, was a cult and was bad."
O'Dell said that throughout the chiropractic profession's
92-year history, the medical establishment sought to eradicate it
and in 1962 a "quackery conference" of the AMA adopted an
18-point program to do that.
The program aimed to do that by failing to recognize
chiropractic as a profession, making it unethical for medical
doctors to associate with chiropractors, making it impossible for
chiropractors to get hospital privileges and fighting their
recognition and payment by insurance companies.
Someone sent the chiropractors' lawyers a copy of the
document, boosting their case, O'Dell said, adding that
Getzendanner planned to issue injunctions halting any further
efforts.
The bottom line of the decision, he said, was a big boost to
Americans' freedom of choice for health care and options to
standard medical practices.
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