Chiropractic Board of Australia accused of failing to act on misleading claims.

By Angela Lavoipierre

The national health regulator and Australia’s health ministers are being lobbied to either sack or overhaul the Chiropractic Board of Australia.

The board is accused of failing to sanction practitioners who have broken advertising laws by making false claims about the benefits of their treatments, such as the ability to cure asthma, or to stop crying in babies.

Dr Ken Harvey from Monash University has made a case for the unprecedented step of a dismissal in the Medical Journal of Australia.

He said the board had had five years to bring chiropractors under their jurisdiction into line.

“In the sense of desisting from making claims and advertisements that lack any scientific basis,” Dr Harvey said.

“They need to do more, they haven’t, I think we need a different chiropractic board.”

The Health Practitioners Act states that advertisements by health professionals must not mislead or deceive. It also states that advertisements shouldn’t contain testimonials, encourage unnecessary treatments, or create an unreasonable expectation of a beneficial treatment.

Dr Harvey said those rules are frequently flouted by some chiropractors, who are then ignored by the board, instead of punished.

“My colleagues and I did a survey and found at least 200 chiropractic websites that we believe were making claims that breached the national law,” he said.

Over a four-month period where there were 10 formal complaints and about 67 separate claims. Dr Harvey said only one website had become fully compliant.

Claims some chiropractors told parents to not vaccinate their kids

Erin Turner from the consumer advocacy organisation Choice said she shared Dr Harvey’s view that misleading claims were widespread in the industry.

“Things like claims that you shouldn’t be vaccinating your children, or recommendations for treatments that have no scientific evidence,” Ms Turner said.

“We need to make sure that when we see a misleading claim, that a body’s able to act and take it down to make sure that no one’s harmed.”

The decision about whether or not to sack the board ultimately rests with state and federal health ministers.

They, along with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), will be lobbied by a range of organisations and academics to either sack or make dramatic changes to the board and its processes.

“This is definitely an escalation to the ongoing problem of misleading claims made by some chiropractors, and it’s a necessary one,” Mr Turner said.

The regulator has denied the industry has a widespread advertising problem, or that the board needs to be replaced.

AHPRA CEO Martin Fletcher said he did not think there was any need for the board to be sacked.

He said health regulators were dealing very effectively with the vast majority of advertising complaints, and that three of Dr Harvey’s complaints had been referred to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

“We recognised that there’s a small number of chiropractors with hardline views, we’ve referred three of these matters to the ACCC, who have different powers under Australian consumer law, and where our powers are enough, we are using them to initiate disciplinary action,” Mr Fletcher said.

“I don’t believe there is a widespread problem, and as I say, our experience has been that in the vast majority of cases, when we draw the attention of the chiropractor to something that may be in breach of the advertising requirements, they take the steps to amend that advertising.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.

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