A ruling against one complaint became a shield for another
In 2011 the College of Chiropractors of Ontario decided that treating children with autism and ADHD falls within the chiropractic scope of practice, because the practitioner is said to be treating the symptoms rather than the disorder. That decision came out of a complaint filed by Dr. Terry Polevoy.
Seven years later, in April 2018, lawyers acting for a chiropractor facing his own complaint before the same regulator filed documents citing that 2011 ruling in his defence. The chiropractor was B.J. Hardick, son of Clifford Hardick, who was president of the College. The firm was Henein Hutchison.
This is how a regulator's tolerance compounds. A complaint is dismissed on a reasoning that should never have been accepted. The reasoning becomes precedent. The precedent is then available to every practitioner who follows — including, eventually, the family of the College's own president.
The Turner method
The method is named for Roger Turner, a Barrie, Ontario chiropractor. It involves manipulating the joints of the skull to affect a range of disorders. Turner says he has taught it to a thousand chiropractors around the world.
Speaking to the Globe and Mail in 2018 at the age of 73, he said he had used the method for 26 years and treated between four and five thousand children. He claimed 92 non-verbal children spoke after his treatment. He treats children with neurological disorders and cerebral palsy, and describes his work on Down syndrome as a personal research project.
His defence of the practice was that they are there to help the children, that nobody gets results with everybody, and that if a change can be made by positioning the bones of the skull, that benefits the child and the parents.
Turner has published no scientific research supporting his claims. Neither has anyone else. There is no evidence connecting the bones of the skull to any aspect of autism.
The complaint
Dr. Terry Polevoy complained to the College of Chiropractors of Ontario about two Ottawa-area chiropractors using the Turner method to treat children with ADD, ADHD and autism.
The complaint was straightforward. Cranial manipulation does not treat neurodevelopmental disorders, these are not conditions of the spine, and children were being treated for them by practitioners with no training in their diagnosis or management.
What the regulator ruled
The College found these disorders to be within the chiropractic scope of practice. Its reasoning was that the chiropractors were not treating autism or ADHD at all. They were treating the symptoms of those disorders, by removing spinal or cranial subluxations said to interfere with the optimal functioning of the body.
Follow the logic. A practitioner may not treat autism, because that lies outside the scope. But he may treat the symptoms of autism by removing subluxations, and that lies inside it. Since a disorder is only ever observed through its symptoms, the distinction permits the treatment while denying the claim.
It also rests entirely on subluxations being real. Chiropractors have never been able to detect them consistently in controlled trials, and no evidence-based health profession accepts that they exist.
HPARB upholds it
Dr. Polevoy appealed to the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board, the body overseeing regulated health professionals in Ontario.
The Board accepted the College's argument — that the traditional chiropractic perspective holds that removing vertebral or cranial subluxations contributes to the optimal functioning of the body as a whole. It found that conclusion reasonable, given the expertise and experience of the members of the Complaints Committee.
Note what the Board deferred to. Not evidence, and not an independent assessment of whether cranial subluxations exist — but the expertise of the committee that had just told them the traditional perspective was sufficient. The appeal body checked the regulator's reasoning against the regulator's own authority.
That ruling left Roger Turner free to continue treating children with neurological disorders, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome.
The precedent, put to work
Ryan Armstrong filed a complaint against Clifford Hardick on 3 December 2017, alleging that Hardick claimed to treat verbal ataxia, attention deficit disorder, ADHD, asthma, infertility and diabetes, and had made public statements showing a profound disrespect for medicine and public health. Armstrong went on to file complaints against nine further Ontario chiropractors.
In a response filed with the regulator, Hardick's lawyers told the complaints committee that their client was not diagnosing ADHD or autism, but using chiropractic adjustments to address the symptoms of those disorders — which they argued fell within the scope of practice.
That is the 2011 formula, word for word in substance. And in legal documents filed in April 2018, Henein Hutchison cited the 2011 ruling directly as part of the defence.
The chain, stated plainly. A complaint about cranial manipulation of autistic children was dismissed in 2011. The dismissal was upheld on appeal. In 2018 the reasoning was produced in defence of the president's son, by one of the country's best-known criminal defence firms.
Samuel Homola, the retired chiropractor and author of Inside Chiropractic: A Patient's Guide, told the Globe that there is no evidence manipulating cranial bones to free restricted movement treats brain disorders or helps special-needs children, and that tolerating such nonsense by chiropractic regulatory boards amounts to endorsing it.
Christopher
In 2010, Sandy Hart-Lehmann of Innisfil, Ontario took her nine-year-old son Christopher to Roger Turner, who claimed he could correct autism and make silent children verbal.
Turner told her the treatments would take six months. Sessions cost about $50. The family kept going for a year and a half, until Christopher himself refused to continue. By then they had spent at least $5,000.
She never filed a complaint. She told the Globe she had been trying everything possible to help her son, acting out of sheer, terrifying desperation. Looking back, she said she felt she had been duped.
She is one family who spoke to a national newspaper. Turner says he has treated four to five thousand children. The regulator has no record of the rest, because the complaints process only sees the people who complain — and a parent who blames herself does not complain.
What the autism specialists say
Margaret Spoelstra, executive director of Autism Ontario, told the Globe her first reaction was that it is quackery.
Stelios Georgiades, co-director of the McMaster Autism Research Team and a world leader in autism treatment, said what Turner is doing is unfair and unethical, and lacks scientific evidence.
Neither assessment was available to the Complaints Committee in 2011, because nobody asked for one. The committee relied on its own expertise, and the Board deferred to the committee.
Source documents
- Chiropractors at a crossroads: The fight for evidence-based treatment and a profession's reputation Paul Benedetti and Wayne MacPhail · The Globe and Mail · November 2018 — the investigation that documented the 2011 ruling's reuse. The authors wrote Spin Doctors: The Chiropractic Industry Under Examination.
- The Regulator and the Vitalists ChiroWatch — the same investigation on the leadership of the College
- The College That Watched Its Critics ChiroWatch — the CCO's monitoring of Ryan Armstrong and others
- Chiropractors and Children ChiroWatch — the paediatric claims, the evidence, and the CCA's own concessions
File a complaint — provincial directory Browse the Bad Chiro Files