Chiropractor harassed for being pro-vaccine

• May 26, 2023 • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

This story from Manitoba, Canada, is truly bonkers. The extremely oversimplified version: a chiropractor’s license hung in the balance for many long, expensive months because •gasp• she was publicly pro-vaccine!

Carolyn Weiss didn’t give it much thought when she posted a news article that spoke positively about vaccines on her personal Facebook.

It was January 2021 and COVID-19 vaccines were beginning to be administered across the country, sparking fierce public debate.

Little did the chiropractor … know that post would be the start of an 18-month ordeal — one that put her career in jeopardy and led to a public inquiry that cost her thousands of dollars in legal fees before she was cleared of all wrongdoing.

This is at least partly as bad as it sounds, but I am not really sharing it as an example of chiropractic nonsense, even though there certainly is that angle. It’s more complicated than that.

The regulator has a rule: chiropractors shouldn’t air any views about vaccines, pro or con, because it’s out of their scope of practice: “keep your vaccine views to yourself, whatever they are.” It’s possible that is actually a good rule, and it’s what makes the story a bit tricky.

But one could also argue that it’s very world-gone-mad to censure any healthcare professional for harmonizing with public health policy! And it does seem like this rule was effectively weaponized by this professional’s anti-vax colleagues. In fact, it’s possible the rule was actually intended to muzzle anti-vaccine chiropractors, and this script flip was a what-could-possibly-go-wrong surprise.

Regardless, it’s yet another example of how even just the threat of censure from a regulator, no matter how absurd, can turn into an expensive nightmare… and how this is now happening for ideological reasons. 😬 Long-time readers already know that I am all-too-familiar with that tune, but if you’re new around here… I was once harassed in much the same way, over similar ideology. See Why I Quit My Massage Therapy Career over on ScienceBasedMedicine.org.