Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto my Manipulations

"It's often an 'us' against 'them' perspective and I don't think it needs to be."
"But when they overstate what is outside of their realm [of medical expertise], quite honestly that borders on the fraudulent."
Dr. Douglas Mack, assistant clinical professor, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario

"There's lots of anecdotal reports and scary memes where they show the obstetrician or midwife pulling the baby out by the neck."
"But there's no legitimate evidence that any appreciable percent of babies suffer subluxations to the spinal bones or any injury that would be amenable to adjustments ... They're just scare tactics."
Dr. Clay Travis Jones, pediatrician, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Boston

"[The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends that] parents should be made aware that there is a lack of substantiated evidence for the theory of subluxated vertebrae as the causality for illness in children."
Canadian Paediatric Society statement

"Any attempt to manipulation the immature, cartilaginous spine of a neonate or a small child to correct a putative chiropractic subluxation should be regarded as dangerous and unnecessary."
Samuel Homola, retired chiropractor, journal Bioethics

"The single most worrying thing I find is just this complete disregard for evidence and scientific truth."
"There are a lot of good practitioners [chiropractic] out there, a lot of responsible ones who are very different from their radical counterparts."
Ryan Armstrong, doctor of biomedical engineering

Newborns experience “nerve interference” or a misaligned cervical spine from the birthing process, even when delivered via Cesarean section, and should get treatment as soon as possible, some chiropractors say.   Getty Images

Parents are very vulnerable to suggestion from reputable medical practitioners, since they are utterly focused on the health status and overall well-being of their children, particularly new parents with newborns and infants. And many have been listening to claims some chiropractors make disreputably, promoting spinal manipulation for babies and children. Such adjustments, say these chiropractors, are gentle when applied on newborns; no popping, cracking or crunching.

Parents are assured that a specific vertebra is identified and pressure applied similar to the gentle fingers of a housewife probing a tomato for ripeness. Conventional medicine looks upon these chiropractic inroads into medical science with alarm, viewing the issue as applications of "scare tactics", in claiming that up to 80 percent of newborns require spinal adjustment in treatment of the "trauma" of childbirth.

According to these unscrupulous worry-mongers, "nerve interference" or a misaligned cervical spine results from the process of birthing; a situation that occurs even through Cesarean section. It is imperative, they stress, that corrective treatment take place swiftly to enable chiropractic manipulation to "peel away" the inevitable symptoms of autism as well as aiding toddlers who are non-verbal to overcome whatever constrains their ability to speak.

And while spinal manipulations in adults can be of assistance in alleviating acute low back and neck pain -- according to studies -- some chiropractors extend claims toward childhood; recommending manipulations in children to treat many childhood problems: colic, constipation, ear infections, digestive disorders, hyperactivity and bed wetting. Children, so the claims attest, receiving chiropractic care have "superior" health compared to those who do not.

Furthermore, spinal adjustments can be useful in aiding with learning disorders and dyslexia, along with the alleviation of food and related allergies in children. Dr. Mack, a pediatric allergy specialist, sees the results of gullible parents exposing their children to the false claims of chiropractors who assure parents that manipulation can help straighten their children's misaligned spine or vertebrae, and at the same time help them "outgrow their nut allergies" with treatment.

"They go and try the nuts, and they end up having a severe reaction", he explained.

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A warning was issued by the American Academy of Paediatrics, that children exposed to spinal manipulation may be at risk of rare, serious complications. Researchers at University of Alberta in 2007 reviewed 13 published studies to discover 14 injuries to children after receiving chiropractic treatment, nine of them serious, two fatal with one child dying from a brain hemorrhage, the other of a suspected neck fracture. Ten of those injuries attributed to chiropractic care.

In the annals of the Canadian Paediatric Society, a 2007 study revealed that two children, receiving chiropractic treatment, failed to receive medical treatment by a medical doctor, the end result being that they both died as a result of delayed treatment for meningitis. The CPS  emphasizes that "parents should be made aware that there is a lack of substantiated evidence for the theory of subluxated vertebrae as the causality for illness in children".

In Canada, 8,500 licensed chiropractors practise their profession under provincial regulators. The College of Chiropractors of Ontario explains that its members are not constrained from treating patients of any single age, and that "many can and do treat children"; their advertising must meet certain criteria, and must not be misleading or false. Evidently there are some among their members who fail to meet those critical criteria, with little intervention on the part of the regulators.

Petri Oeschger/Getty Images

A chiropractor adjusts a one-month-old baby.