The American Medical Association's Road To Chiropractic Acceptance

by Long Island Attorney Paul A. Lauto, Esq.

Prior to 1983, the American Medical Association (AMA) maintained an unfavorable view of the Chiropractic profession, to say the least.  During that time period, the AMA’s ethical rules dictated that it was unethical for medical doctors to associate with an “unscientific practitioner” and labeled Chiropractic as “an unscientific cult”.  In 1990 after a 14 year long battle, the US court of Appeals in Wilk v. American Medical Association (895 F.2d 352), found that the AMA violated the Sherman Act for their unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade against the Chiropractic profession.

Wilk, compelled the AMA to abandon their “dark age” and in part greed driven beliefs, and accept the invaluable practice of Chiropractic.  Today the AMA’s ethical rules now more appropriately provide that a medical doctor is “free to choose whom to serve, with whom to associate and the environment in which to provide medical service”.  Although the AMA was painfully slow to realize the error of its ways, as it was with their longstanding subjugation of women, today the alliance between physician and chiropractor is undeniably beneficial to the patient.

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