'This. Hurts. Babies': Doctors alarmed at weekend courses teaching chiropractors how to adjust newborn spines

In Australia, their own regulators have banned chiropractors — temporarily at least — from manipulating the spines of babies after viral videos of a chiropractor dangling a newborn by its heels and applying spinal and skull pressure sparked a public uproar.

In Canada, however, chiropractors are only expanding their practices into pediatrics, planning upcoming weekend introductory courses on the “essentials” of adjusting newborns and children.

Most babies need adjusting to unblock nervous system “interference” caused by the trauma of passing through the birth canal, according to conference instructors.

Attendees will be practising on baby dolls. “Any type of baby doll, other than Barbie (too small) or Cabbage Patch Kid (no neck) is acceptable,” according to the conference website. Mon Bébé is the preferred choice.

The two-day, 12-hour courses — scheduled for Toronto in July, and Ottawa in November — are drawing fresh alarm from medical doctors and consumer health advocates, who say the notion that newborns need adjusting for misaligned vertebrae within days, or even hours, after birth is scaremongering and that no reliable scientific evidence exists to support the practice.

“Charlatans,” Dr. Moira Stilwell, a physician and former B.C. MLA said in a recent Twitter thread about the weekend seminar. “This. Hurts. Babies,” she tweeted.

“Imagine one of us intubating/ventilating, inserting a chest tube, and central lines in kiddos with a 2-day ‘demonstration,’” added Ontario pediatrician Dr. Rick MacDonald.

The International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, which has falsely claimed that mercury in vaccines causes autism, is organizing the weekend courses.

These programs are effectively teaching chiropractors how to … take advantage of parents who may need legitimate medical care for their children

Part one — an introduction to low force “pediatric adjusting” — will be delivered by Armand Rossi, a South Carolina chiropractor who promotes the controversial theory that newborns acquire “vertebral subluxations” of the spine during the tiring and tumultuous birth process, whether the baby is delivered naturally or via caesarean section.

Subluxations are said to occur when one or more tiny bones in the spine or pelvis are misaligned, or pushed out of place, pinching the spinal nerves and disrupting a kind of “vital energy” flowing between brain and body that keeps the body functioning properly. Pulling, twisting, forceps or suction, chiropractors say, can all cause further stress on the baby’s spine. The sooner the “subluxations” are found and corrected, the better. Rossi adjusted his own children when the umbilical cord was still attached.

There are no scary cracks or popping with chiropractic adjustments, parents are reassured. Rather, gentle pressure is applied to a baby’s specific vertebrae using about the same amount of force used to check a tomato for ripeness.

Rossi did not respond to requests for an interview. However, in a presentation to chiropractors posted to YouTube earlier this year, he said newborns with subluxations should be seen every other day, or every day — “whatever you need to, until they hold the adjustment.”

Rossi said infants should not be adjusted if they are “clear, obviously” of subluxations. He added that, before any touching occurs, babies should be visually assessed to make certain they are not in distress and need medical or emergency care.

The ICPA, organizer of the weekend courses, declined to comment. However, in a rebuttal published last year in response to a Post article, the group said more than 80 per cent of newborns will require a spinal adjustment after birth and that the forces applied during chiropractic adjustments of babies “are not capable of causing fractures or dislocations of the spine and extremities of newborns and infants.”

Set aside whether a 12-hour weekend course is even sufficient to start adjusting babies, said consumer health advocate Ryan Armstrong. “Training time is irrelevant; babies do not need to be adjusted and they should not have their spines manipulated.”

Armstrong, who holds a PhD in biomedical engineering, said chiropractic adjustments of infants offers no known benefits but potential risks.

There isn’t just a lack of evidence, but a lack of plausibility, he added. “For all conditions that chiropractors claim to treat in infants, there is no known physiological mechanism to explain how spinal manipulations would benefit.”

On websites, chiropractors promote spinal adjustments to treat all manner of disease, including colic, constipation, ear infections, digestive disorders, ADHD, food and other allergies and dyslexia.

However, vertebral subluxation— as defined by chiropractors — has been “thoroughly debunked,” Armstrong said. “Not only is it not recognized by any other health profession, but even contemporary chiropractors recognize that it is pseudoscience from the profession’s past.”

“These programs are effectively teaching chiropractors how to … take advantage of parents who may need legitimate medical care for their children,” Armstrong said.

As the National Post reported in March, chiropractors are one of the largest primary-contact health professions in the country, with about 4.5 million Canadians visiting the country’s 9,000 licensed chiropractors each year.

However, concerns have been mounting that some chiropractors are referring to themselves as specialists in pediatrics, which, in fact, is a medical specialty requiring a medical degree, followed by a lengthy residency program. Chiropractors have even posted photos of themselves on Twitter sneaking into hospitals to adjust newborns and babies, including an Ottawa-area chiropractor who visited the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario to adjust the spine of a two-month-old suffering a viral infection. (The hospital doesn’t permit chiropractic practice within its hospital.)

According to the Canadian Paediatric Society no studies have been published on chiropractic treatment of back pain in children.

One Cochrane review (considered the gold standard in medical research) looked at the suggestion gentle (low velocity, low amplitude) manipulative techniques might help with colic, or excessive crying. It concluded there was insufficient evidence to draw any confident conclusions around safety or efficacy.

In Australia, where alarming videos of chiropractors adjusting newborns have pushed health authorities to launch an expert independent review of spinal manipulations of children under 12, the Chiropractic Board of Australia has acknowledged “there is no current clinical guideline, or peer-reviewed publication to guide chiropractors with respect to the care of infants and young children, and the use of spinal manipulation in particular.”

Rossi, in the video lecture to chiropractors, encourages only “gentle” and “loving” adjustments. There’s no dangling of newborns upside down, a manoeuvre pediatricians called “incredibly stupid.”

The College of Chiropractors of Ontario said it does not approve, endorse or sponsor any continuing education programs other than those created by the college itself. The Ontario Chiropractic Association, meanwhile, said pediatric care is within the regulated scope of practice granted through legislation in Ontario. “The OCA position is that infants should be under the care of a pediatrician, family doctor or nurse practitioner, and we support chiropractors collaborating and communicating with an infant’s entire health care provider,” spokesman Miguel Pacheco said.