This includes patients with cancer, heart disease, or any illness in which innate cannot be reasonably expected to induce recovery. These questions should be covered in every chiropractic school's ethics coursework, but cannot be satisfied in the course of this discussion. The second issue raised by the third criterion pertains to the actual value of chiropractic care during terminal illness. Terminal illnesses are, by definition, hopeless and the most that can be done is to comfort the patient until death. The chiropractic concept, that innate intelligence enables the body to sufficiently adapt to its needs, applies to terminal conditions just as it does to other conditions.
Death is a natural process that can be managed within the chiropractor's scope of care.
By helping the patient to accommodate the body's increasingly limited function, the chiropractor provides the patient with comforting insight and natural solutions without the use of morphine sulfate and other drugs that may interfere with the patient's perception of life's end. These chiropractic criteria are the invisible guidelines our profession has followed since its inception. Most importantly, these guidelines are in harmony with both the early chiropractic philosophy and the modern chiropractic applications of science. Science is a tool like philosophy. You need both science and philosophy to practice the art of chiropractic.