Yesterday I highlighted the fact that the BCA misrepresented the findings of a Cochrane Collaboration meta-study in their press release detailing the evidence for the efficacy of chiropractic in dealing with various childhood illnesses. I say evidence, but I actually mean 'evidence', in the same sense that Britain's Got Talent is a 'talent' show. Anyway, with this being quite a serious matter I thought I'd refer it to Britain's top chiropractic regulators, the GCC.

My complaint centred around the use of "quote-mining", the practice of selective quoting text to distort the original meaning. In their statement, the BCA quoted a Cochrane study on the use of various complentary therapries to prevent bed-wetting in young children as concluding:

"There was weak evidence to support
the use of [chiropractic]."

But in fact the original text from which this quote was mined reads rather differently:

"There was weak evidence to support the use of hypnosis, psychotherapy, acupuncture and chiropractic but it was provided in each case by single small trials, some of dubious methodological rigour."

In other words the original sentence had a clause explaining that the 'weak' evidence was unreliable, with the study going on to conclude that more research was needed to back up chiropractic claims. The BCA decided to remove that part of the text when they quoted it. That's a pretty crappy thing to do.

That brings us on to the GCC Code of Practice, and in particular section C1.6 which states:

"[Chiropractors] may publicise their practices or permit another person to do so consistent with the law and the guidance issued by the Advertising Standards Authority. If chiropractors, or others on their behalf, do publicise, the information used must be factual and verifiable. The information must not be misleading or inaccurate in any way. It must not, in any way, abuse the trust of members of the public nor exploit their lack of experience or knowledge about either health or chiropractic matters."

I felt that this was the most relevant part of the code. The information in the BCA statement regarding the Cochrane paper was clearly inaccurate and misleading, and members of the public generally wouldn't have the time, inclination or experience to go back and critically appraise the study. The other key words in this code are 'chiropractors' and 'publicise'. Now, I would argue that a press release about the benefits of chiropractic is publicising chiropractors, and I'd argue that the people at the BCA are themselves chiropractors, or at the very least acting on behalf of chiropractors.

So in theory it could apply, but I accept there might be technicalities here that make it difficult. Nonetheless, I would expect that a regulatory body as conscientious as the GCC would be concerned by the BCA press release, and at the very least offer some advice on how to move forwards.

So here's the response I got from them:

Thank you for your email.

The General Chiropractic Council was established by the Chiropractors Act 1994. The GCC regulates individual chiropractors and we have no role in the regulation of chiropractic associations, clinics or companies. We cannot, therefore, investigate a complaint against the British
Chiropractic Association.

Yours sincerely, etc etc

I'll just repeat that middle bit, in case you missed it:

"...we have no role in the regulation of chiropractic associations, clinics or companies."

This raises more questions than a virgin in a brothel. It's hard to know where to even start. If the GCC don't regulate chiropractic clinics, companies or associations that what the hell is there left to regulate? Individual chiropractors presumably, but then if you're a chiropractor who runs a company, and your company puts out a dodgy advertisement can the GCC do anything, or can you just claim "it was the company wot done it guv'nor"?

More to the point, if the GCC don't regulate chiropractic clinics, companies or associations, then who the hell does?

Let's take the British Chiropractic Association as a convenient example. They've issued a press release which makes highly dubious medical claims on behalf of the chiropractic industry, but you can't complain to the ASA because it's not an advert, you can't complain to Trading Standards because they're not selling anything, you can't take them to court because to the best of my knowledge there's no legislation against it, you can't complain to the GCC because they claim to have no jurisdiction.

I have no good answers, so I'll throw it open to you lot. It's absolutely farcical.