Neck911: What It Was and What Became of It

What Neck911 was

ChiroWatch's own Neck911 page described a voluntary, non-profit group of individuals that would review the records of people who believed they had been hurt by upper-neck manipulation, usually by chiropractors, and could suggest medical follow-up or referral to a lawyer. The page remains online as an archive: the original Neck911 page. It gave an email address as the way to reach the group. It is kept for the record and is not a current service.

The man a trade magazine named

In August 2005, Dynamic Chiropractic, a trade magazine for chiropractors, published a staff profile titled “Chiropractic Enemy #1? John W. Kinsinger, MD — The Man Behind Neck911USA.com.” It identified Dr. Kinsinger, an anesthesiologist in Edmond, Oklahoma, as the person responsible for the Neck911USA.com website, and it named him its “Chiropractic Enemy #1” for that site and for his 2005 opposition to a proposed chiropractic school at Florida State University.

The profile is an opponent's account and should be read as one. It reports that Dr. Kinsinger was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune, Miami Herald and Associated Press in January 2005, and it quotes him on his purpose: “The point of the site is to bring attention to this issue … The site is intended to point out the dangers which we are sincerely concerned about.” The magazine, for its part, called the site designed to instill fear and said it listed only one victim in its database at that time. Those are the magazine's characterizations. ChiroWatch is not reproducing the article; the citation is below so readers can read it and judge for themselves.

Stephen Barrett's Chirobase page “Chiropractors Angry about Bus Ad” says much the same. It describes Neck911 as a network of professionals who provide consultations on complications of neck manipulation, and says its website was operated by Dr. Kinsinger. It also says he told the author that neither he nor Neck911 had anything to do with the content or placement of the ads in question.

His own account

The Dynamic Chiropractic profile says Dr. Kinsinger presented a “report” on Stephen Barrett's ChiroBase site. That is “My Experiences with Nine Chiropractors,” which Dr. Kinsinger signed and which is dated 25 December 2003. In it he reports five telephone calls, made in 1990, and six office visits to nine chiropractors in all. He says he described conditions that chiropractic cannot treat, some of them invented, to see whether the chiropractor would recommend care or refer him to a physician. He writes that all five offices he telephoned in 1990 encouraged him to come in, and that in four later visits where he described the classic symptoms of a serious medical problem, the chiropractor “missed the diagnosis and failed to make an appropriate referral.”

It is a first-person, anecdotal report. It names none of the chiropractors, it used made-up complaints, and ChiroWatch cannot check any of it independently, so it is cited here as what he said he found, not as a finding.

In print in Canada, 2005 and 2007

On Thursday, 17 February 2005, the National Post ran Dr. Kinsinger's article “Deadly quacks” on page A23, in its Ideas section. It was one half of a two-writer feature headed “The Value of Chiropractic Care: A Debate” and asking, “Should chiropractic be funded by the provinces?” Opposite it was “Needed healers,” by Dr. Dean Wright, president of the Ontario Chiropractic Association. Dr. Kinsinger argued that Ontario's decision to stop public funding of chiropractic care was justified on medical and ethical grounds, and he criticized upper-neck manipulation. The paper described him as an American physician and a member of a professional group monitoring government support for alternative medicine.

On Tuesday, 22 February 2005, the Letters page (page A19) carried a further letter from Dr. Wright, headed “Chiropractic care benefits Canadians” and written in response to “Deadly quacks.” He called the article “fallacious jabs,” said the line Dr. Kinsinger attributed to the OCA about children and “dangerous chemical drugs” was not an official position of the association, and cited studies in the British Medical Journal and the Archives of Internal Medicine as support for chiropractic care. ChiroWatch includes both so readers can see both sides.

On Friday, 18 May 2007, the National Post ran a second piece in its Ideas section, “Chiropractors must follow the scientific standard,” signed by Dr. Kinsinger, Marvin Levant, Judy Ford and Sharon Mathiason, with www.neck911.com printed under the byline. It appeared on page A17 of the Toronto edition. It described Dr. Levant as a retired Alberta radiologist, Ms. Ford as the sister of Lana Dale Lewis, and Ms. Mathiason as the mother of Laurie Jean Mathiason. It argued that upper-neck manipulation should not be performed on infants and children, on people with no neck pain, or as part of a philosophy that claims to prevent or treat organic illness, and it said copies of the proposed standard could be had by writing to stroke@neck911.com. That is the web address now parked; see below.

In his own words: a 2008 talk to physical therapists

A video exists of a talk Dr. Kinsinger gave in 2008 to an audience of physical therapists, in three parts of roughly 14, 15 and 13 minutes. He sent a copy to Dr. Terry Polevoy, who transcribed it. The talk is undated beyond the year he gives in it, and ChiroWatch does not know where it was given. The excerpts below are his statements, quoted from the transcript, and are his opinions and claims, not findings by ChiroWatch.

On his own standing, he told the audience: “I am not in any way, shape or form an expert in manipulative therapy or the treatment of musculoskeletal disease. In fact, I’m not even an amateur.”

On what chiropractic is, he said it is “nothing more than a philosophical belief system,” one that in his view “much more closely resembles a religion or a cult than it does a healthcare profession.” He said the ideas behind chiropractic in 2008 were “virtually unchanged” from those of D. D. Palmer in 1895.

On subluxation, he said it has “never been demonstrated during surgery, … never been identified at autopsy, … never been visualized with any type of imaging,” and contrasted definitions from the chiropractic colleges, the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners’ Job Analysis of Chiropractic 2005, and the World Chiropractic Alliance. He also said he knew of good chiropractors, and cited the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine as an organization for them.

On neck manipulation, he said upper-neck manipulation is “a relatively rare but well-documented cause of vertebral or carotid artery dissection and stroke,” and that most victims are “less than 45 years of age, mostly female and otherwise healthy.” He said he works as a victim’s advocate with families. He claimed that he and colleagues in Canada kept personal databases of “hundreds of victims of stroke following neck manipulation” and that, to his knowledge, none in those databases was caused by a physical therapist. That is his claim about his own records, which ChiroWatch has not seen. He acknowledged that such cases have occurred with physical therapists, medical doctors and osteopaths.

On Neck911, he described it as “a volunteer organization that I’m a member of,” made up of “a few physicians, some attorneys, journalists, and mainly victims,” and said its work included “grassroots advocacy,” including two buses in Connecticut. He praised the chiropractic profession’s 2005 monograph on cervical artery incidents (“Very scientific, very well done”) and said he would like to think pressure from the group had led to it. He also told the audience that Dynamic Chiropractic named him “chiropractic enemy number one” in August 2005, which matches the profile cited above.

On Florida, he described the 2004 law requiring a chiropractic school at Florida State University and the campaign against it, which he said ended on 27 January with the Florida Board of Governors voting to kill the program. He named Dr. Ray Bellamy, an orthopedic surgeon and FSU alumnus, as a colleague who joined the effort in November 2004.

He closed by quoting two chiropractors on the profession’s future: Samuel Homola, in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (2006), and Craig Liebenson, in Dynamic Chiropractic (2006). Their words are theirs; readers should consult the originals.

The talk in pictures

These are AI-generated illustrations of points Dr. Kinsinger made in the talk. They are not photographs, they show no real person, and the signs and scenes are invented for the cartoons. Each caption says which statement of his it illustrates.

What became of him

According to news reports in January 2018, Dr. John William “Bill” Kinsinger, 55, an anesthesiologist at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, took off from Wiley Post Airport on the evening of 3 January 2018 in a Cirrus SR22T on a volunteer dog-rescue flight to Georgetown, Texas. The plane did not land. It continued over the Gulf of Mexico and was last seen on radar about 135 miles north of the Yucatan Peninsula. The U.S. Coast Guard, with Mexican naval ships, searched about 20,000 square miles over some 79 hours and ended the search on the night of 8 January 2018. It said it believed the aircraft had come down in water about 3,900 feet deep. No wreckage or person was reported found.

He had been appointed to the Oklahoma State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision in 2011 and later served as its president, according to The Oklahoman.

The web address today

On 7 November 2026, ChiroWatch found that neck911.com no longer carried any warning about neck manipulation. It showed a domain-registrar parking page (“This domain is registered at Dynadot.com. Website coming soon”) with advertising links headed “Related Searches,” such as neck pain relief and painkillers for shoulder pain. It is the address the group printed in 2007, but ChiroWatch does not know who now controls it. It is not the original site, and readers should not treat anything on it as coming from the people who ran Neck911. We have not checked neck911usa.com.

If you or someone you know was hurt

Neck911 is no longer there to take reports. If you think a neck adjustment caused a stroke or other injury, see Neck Manipulation and Stroke for what is known, and how to file a complaint with the regulator and the other agencies. Seek medical care first.

Sources

• “Chiropractic Enemy #1? John W. Kinsinger, MD — The Man Behind Neck911USA.com.” Dynamic Chiropractic staff. Dynamic Chiropractic, August 2005.
• Kinsinger JW. “My Experiences with Nine Chiropractors.” Quackwatch (Chirobase), 25 December 2003.
• “Chiropractors Angry about Bus Ad.” Chirobase (Quackwatch).
• Kinsinger JW. “Deadly quacks.” National Post, 17 February 2005, p. A23 (“The Value of Chiropractic Care: A Debate”). Opposite: Wright D. “Needed healers.”
• Wright D (President, Ontario Chiropractic Association). “Chiropractic care benefits Canadians.” Letters, National Post, 22 February 2005, p. A19.
• Kinsinger JW, Levant M, Ford J, Mathiason S. “Chiropractors must follow the scientific standard.” National Post, 18 May 2007, p. A17 (Toronto edition).
• “Search continues for missing OKC pilot.” Josh Dulaney and Robert Medley. The Oklahoman, 5 January 2018.
• “US Coast Guard ends search for missing OKC pilot, doctor.” The Oklahoman, 10 January 2018.
• “Coast Guard Calls off Search for Pilot Missing in GoM.” MarineLink, 9 January 2018.
• “US Coast Guard ends search for missing Oklahoma physician-pilot.” Becker's Hospital Review.
• Kinsinger JW. Video of a 2008 talk to physical therapists, parts 1–3. Transcribed by Terry Polevoy, November 2026.
• Page images of the three National Post items, from Newspapers.com, downloaded 7 November 2026.
• Screenshot of neck911.com taken by Dr. Terry Polevoy, 7 November 2026.

The Dynamic Chiropractic profile is an opponent's account, attributed as such. News facts are as reported in the sources listed. Contact ChiroWatch if you have a correction.