Time and time again we naive, loving, trusting chiropractors have believed that despite our different objectives we could work together. Every time we have come out the worse for it. Any attempts whether on a state, local, or national level to work with the mixers can only meet with the same fate and destroy the great strides we have made in the last five years. The question of terminology, semantics, and definitions constantly creates discussion, dissension, and division within our profession. I will not waste time and space duplicating the editor's response, which was quite good, but address a few other points in the guest editorial by quoting a nineteenth century British Historian Thomas Carlyle.
Words are important.
Every one of us practices chiropractic by a law which defines in words what we do. I am forever amazed how the same people who say we are quibbling over words such as diagnosis and analysis, treatment and adjustment, misalignment and subluxation can be so interested in changing the wording of our state laws. We all realize that wording is important. Even if we agree that there are areas of gray, we must agree that they are not white and they are not black. If you choose to practice in the gray that does not ignore the existence of other areas.