The Shit List #62

Welcome to another issue of The Shit List, the premium newsletter from the writers of Shit Towns of Australia and Shit Holidays. This week we review chiropractors and rank the top 10 doctors with more credibility than chiropractors.

Do you have muscle, bone or joint problems? Do you want to lie on a massage table while a cooker with no medical training folds you into a pretzel and cracks your vertebrae like a packet of two-minute noodles? If you answered yes, see a chiropractor today.

A pseudoscience created by an antivaxxer who claimed he was taught the technique by the ghost of a dead doctor and was later jailed for practising medicine without a licence, chiropractic is a bunch of bullshit for people whose brains are as fucked as their joints. Chiropractic is considered an alternative medicine (as in ‘alternative to actual medicine’). Call me old-fashioned, but when I need medical help I’m favouring a field that wasn’t founded by a phantom (as a side note, it is unclear how the ghost knew about chiro).

Chiro creator D. D. Palmer believed that all human ailments are caused by ‘subluxations’ — invisible spinal misalignments that only chiropractors can see — and that by adjusting the spine he could cure literally any illness. Prior to inventing chiropractic, Palmer believed magnets could suck all the sickness out.

The first recorded chiropractic session involved Palmer manually adjusting a shirtless janitor after he noticed his spine was misaligned while the man cleaned his office half-naked. It’s concerning when the origin story of your ‘medical’ field is the same as the setup to a low-budget gay porno. Chiropractic is what happens when you have to come up with a cover story for how you basically dry humped a deaf man so hard that he could hear again.

Despite Palmer’s batshit beliefs, there is no scientific evidence that chiropractic adjustment is effective for any condition, including lower back pain. On the plus side, side effects from having your spine messed with by a vaguely qualified masseuse include stroke, paralysis or even death.

The name ‘chiropractic’ comes from the Greek words ‘chiro’ (‘hand’) and ‘praktikos’ (‘action’). Chiropractic literally means wanking. Even the inventor was called ‘Palmer’. Like wanking, chiropractic involves large amounts of furious tugging and pulling, is not recommended for young children, and will not fix your back.

Many chiropractors call themselves ‘Doctor’ despite not holding a Doctor of Medicine degree, making them doctors in the same way that Dr. Dre or Dr. Pepper are doctors. They are essentially just violent osteopaths. Chiropractors are also notoriously litigious for a bunch of blatant quacks, so I guess we’ll see them in crybaby court.

1. Witch doctors

2. Dr. Phil

3. Dr. Dre