Joe: Dear BJ, what is the deal with subluxation? Was it a word the Palmers hung a tremendous amount of significance to? Was it meant to be controversial? Would you use it today?

BJ: consider the word "Amen", and all it represents. But what does it really mean?

BJ: One has to find a word. I don't think the phenomenon of upper cervical, with the positional analysis, with the vector formation, was ever in existenc before my father did what he did. Manipulation was fairly random. Nobody did it for the reasons we set in place. New concepts had to be communicated. People who shun subluxation (rightly or wrongly) have no idea of what context surrounded it when set into place.

People do not have any problem with reading blood pressure and deciding that it is the cause of a host of disorders. Subluxation is actually pretty clear, to me, and it must be researched in the context of learning, not dogma. Simply ask if it exists and find out. Don't assume that it does. Change the name if you wish, but don't throw out the possibility that disease can arise from spinal origin.

The problem only occurred with the claims we made. We cured this; we eradicated that...then when others tried it, it was a failure.
'The subluxation is bunk' they cried. We laid claim to curing all dis-ease...perhaps that was our mistake?

Joe: but you did cure with the adjustment

BJ: that is right. There was a time when we could find little else that some chiropractor had not helped cure at one time at any location in the USA.

Joe: So from one perspective, it did cure all disease. Perhaps not in all people?
And did you realise that it was going to be a fight to establish the theories? The evidence based literature still does this today: calls it chiropractic manipulation treating back pain, then you find it is just a study consisting of non-specific side-posture manipulation of the lumbo-pelvic area to treat pain. The opposite of everything you ever wrote or said!

BJ: Leach has done a nice job...Gatterman too, why the fuss? There will always be theory to explain phenomena.

Joe: it divides many

BJ: Yes, because they don't get the same results with what they are doing and then they want to eradicate its use. You can eradicate the hypodermic but people will still inject somehow.

I honestly do not care whether we use the word again. I am over it (largely because I am dead!). I just would rather you understand one thing. You already know what a subluxation can be, move on...and prove it.

Joe: what is the "one thing"?

BJ: you have studied Eastern thought. I know.

Joe: Right.

BJ: Just when man thinks he knows, he knows not. Just when we bother to prove that gravity is a constant truth, we walk on the moon. It is all so dynamic that the key to healing is not so much as understanding a law, but being in a moment. Solely in that moment. How do you capture that in research that is rampant with self interest, stock market interest....etc.

Joe: I had better pause right there.

BJ: so be it