numbers were with this 1 in 20,000 piece. Bottom line was they really weren't interested in the discussion.
Dr. Hoffman:
Dr. Clum, let me ask you first, when did you even make a decision to even approach them on this and what were we actually looking for as a result of that? The decision to pursue it was based upon the fact that Vanderbilt was running with this number, as I said before, in a promo piece for their own facility. It was members of the chiropractor community in Tennessee who were really being at risk and being disadvantaged by the fact that a very prominent and major university in their area was promoting inaccurate data. In an attempt, naively thinking on some level, that if we put the right numbers in front of them, obviously, they'll default to the right numbers. That wasn't the case. They backed up, and they said, "Well, this came from Baylor." Once I got on the track of it, it kind of became, I don't want to go as far as to say an obsession, but I became irritated about the way they were approaching it and just stayed on it to try to run it to ground to get it corrected. Quite honestly, I talked with a number of people that are active in this area in and around the discipline, and they all laughed and said, "Well, don't expect it to change." I said, "Well, it's a Don Quixote moment. We'll [inaudible 00:09:25] at the window a little bit and hope that we can change the course of the culture in that regard." In the final analysis, we didn't, but the point of this discussion today is for our colleagues and your listeners to understand how a bad number that's based on nothing but opinion can grow legs, get embedded into the literature, and move forward and, if they know how and where that number came from, they can undermine conclusions that are drawn on that number, or based on that number, and set the record straight and put the potential risk, potential risk, not verified risk, but potential risk in context in relationship to other activities in healthcare. This became a process of, if we could change the hearts and the minds of the authors, great. If we could change the record, even better. If we could come to an agreement, fantastic. None of those things happened, but it's a great opportunity to point out to the practicing chiropractor how this stuff gets started, how it gets sustained, and what they can do to deal with it. I think that something that you said is really important, but I want to shift it a little bit. I know that you've gone back and forth with them, on numerous occasions at this point and, to date, nothing has mattered. You won't ever say it, but I will. We have to assume that's a professional/political agenda because why would you ignore all of the overwhelming documentation that you recited in terms of what's been going on in this stroke awareness over the last 15-20 years.
Dr. Clum:
Dr. Hoffman:
Made with FlippingBook HTML5