clinicians and scientists from several disciplines, including chiropractic, oste-opathy and mainstream medicine. The resulting monograph, The Research Status of Spinal Manipulative Therapy, evaluated the quantitative evidence for the effec-tiveness of spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) and though it concluded that the “scientific validity of manual thera-pies had yet to be established”. . . “the importance of controlled clinical trials of manual therapies was now officially brought to the wider profession’s con-sciousness.” 14 More fundamentally, how-ever, the conference monograph was the first scientific treatise from a multidisci-plinary perspective on manipulation re-sulting in a recognized authoritative text on this form of treatment. The assembly became a defining event for the science of chiropractic and one whose importance would be difficult to overstate. It had the effect of lightning-bolting the profession. CANADA’S ROLE AT NINDS At CMCC, there had also begun to co-alesce a small cadre of academically minded individuals who started to write scientific articles and to collect data in a more systematic way, similar to what the Swiss had done. Among the foremost were Drs. Ron Gitelman, Adrian Grice and David Drum. So, when chiroprac-tors where offered a place on the NINDS planning committee, a call went out to CMCC because it was regarded as an institution that had already established itself as a leader in the nascent years of North American chiropractic research. Consequently, three of four planning po-sitions for chiropractors were filled by individuals from CMCC. Their presence constituted a small but significant group of core individuals with the prerequisite skills to plan and contribute to a scien-tific conference and their participation broke through the academic barrier. In preparation for the NINDS confer-ence, CMCC undertook to collect all the supporting literature on chiropractic, not all of which was written by chiroprac-tors. Published as the Archives, it became the first extensive bibliography of the sci-entific literature on SMT. Abstracts were added later and published as the Chi-ropractic Research Abstracts Collection (CRAC). These pre-electronic-age publi-cations were the first indexed collections of chiropractic information presaging the 12 • CaNaDIaN CHIROPRaCTOR | DECEMBER 2010 later development of databases such as Chirolars and Mantis. Things began to happen quickly af-ter Bethesda. CMCC faculty “took the initiative to establish a scholarly society, the College of Chiropractic Sciences, for the explicit purpose of preparing future chiropractors for careers in research and education. In collaboration with CMCC, the new organization established a hospi-tal-based residency program in orthope-dics at the University of Saskatchewan, and many of its graduates subsequently became productive in chiropractic re-search.” 15 The program in Saskatchewan came about as a result of Gitelman and Grice’s efforts to form a collaboration with Dr. William Kirkaldy-Willis, head of ortho-pedic surgery at the University Hospital in Saskatoon – this enabled Gitelman’s associate, Dr. J.D. Cassidy, to establish a practice and work directly with hospital patients. The association with Kirkaldy-Willis was a coup. Kirkaldy-Willis was a major figure in the development of spine care and one of the few in mainstream medicine who recognized the potential of chiropractic at a time when such col-laborations were rare. “Working with Kirkaldy-Willis in a university-affiliated, hospital setting, Cassidy was one of the first chiropractors to develop in a truly scientific direction,” observes Dr. Ver-non. “This was a quantum leap different from what we had seen before. Finally, we had a chiropractic researcher who looked the part.” Dr. Vernon states that just prior to the developments in Saskatchewan, and equally important, CMCC had devel-oped a residency program in postgradu-ate studies. “Residents were all required to do research. They were university edu-cated for the most part because the tran-sition to requiring at least two years of university experience in order to be ac-cepted into CMCC occurred around the Continued on Page 39 The Post-NINDS Effect After NINDS, research accelerated at different rates within the various chiroprac-tic colleges. Some milestones of this progress: • CMCC: developing the collaboration effort in Saskatoon; further develop-ment of the Archives; residency program gaining strength. Within a few years, CMCC residents began to go to Saskatoon to work under Cassidy. • The first federally funded research in the United States was the “Suh” proj-ect (1976), which offered DCs the opportunity to be mentored in research skills. This lead to several biomechanics conferences on the spine at which CMCC was a prominent participant. • By the late ’70s: research efforts started to bloom. For a long time, research at the North American colleges was a story of what each of the colleges had done on their own to develop research programs. The colleges subsequently created various consortia under the aegis of the FCER, the recently defunct research funding and co-ordinating body. • Two more NINDS-type conferences brought chiropractors, osteopaths and neurophysiologists together to look at manipulation and the chiropractic approach to treatment. Monographs resulting from all three conferences marked the beginning of a body of evidence. • Scott Haldeman’s Modern Developments in the Principles and Practice of Chiro-practic came out in print in 1978. It was the first chiropractic text by a DC published by a recognized medical publishing house. • JMPT began publishing 1978 and was indexed in PubMed not long after. Inclusion of chiropractic research into the mainstream scientific literature marked a crossing of the Rubicon for the profession. • In 1983, the first research conference at which abstracts were elicited was organized by FCER. The proceedings were published and research now had the funding infrastructure for the formal exchange of information. In the years following, this became an annual event. The annual research meetings led to the Consortium for Chiropractic Research and now ACC/RAC. www.canadianchiropractor.ca
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