Chiropractic doctors finally had their “day in court.” A lawsuit filed by four chiropractors in 1976 accused the American Medical Association and other medical groups of conspiring to prevent U.S. chiropractors from practicing, though they are licensed in all 50 states.

 

The chiropractic doctors sought no monetary damages. Instead, one of the lawsuit’s main thrusts challenged the medical establishment’s refusal to acknowledge the efficacy of chiropractic.

 

Federal Judge Found AMA Conspired Against Chiropractors Permanent Injunction Issued

 

DENOUNCED CHIROPRACTIC’S EFFECTIVENESS
For most of this century, the relatively small but lively chiropractic profession managed to grow and prosper despite being kicked from pillar to post by the medical establishment. The medical establishment was a powerful group which unreservedly praised “medicine” while denouncing or ignoring the effectiveness of other healing professions, particularly chiropractic.

 

TRIED TO DESTROY CHIROPRACTIC
On August 27, 1987, the kicking had to stop. That was the day Federal Judge Susan Getzendanner ruled in the antitrust lawsuit, that the American Medical Association (AMA) led a conspiracy characterized by “systematic, long-term wrongdoing and the long-term intent to destroy a licensed profession (chiropractic),”

 

The nation’s most powerful medical group, the ruling said, pushed for a medical physicians’ boycott designed “to contain and eliminate the chiropractic profession.”

 

CHIROPRACTORS BETTER TRAINED FOR MANY CONDITIONS
Judge Getzendanner also said that the function of the AMA’s Committee on Quackery was to destroy the chiropractic profession, though the committee knew that “some medical physicians believed chiropractic to be effective, and that chiropractors were better trained to deal with musculoskeletal problems than medical physicians.”

 

CALLED HORRIBLE NAMES
Furthermore, the ruling maintained that the AMA sought to destroy the chiropractic profession by continually calling chiropractors names such as “unscientific cultists,” or worse.

 

PERMANENT INJUNCTION AGAINST AMA
Just four weeks after the original landmark ruling, the U.S. District Court issued a permanent injunction to prevent the AMA from “restricting, regulating, or impeding” its doctor/members, or the hospitals where they work, from associating with chiropractic doctors.

 

The injunction finally resolved the 11-year legal battle in favor of chiropractors and ordered the AMA to furnish all its members a copy of the nine-page injunction and to publish it in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

Some medical physicians believed chiropractors to be effective and that chiropractors were better trained to deal with musculoskeletal problems than medical physicians.