...her back would go out so bad that you could see the hips moved 3 inches out of alignment from the center, compared to her torso.
She worked at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, and went to a back specialist there.
He told her he'd have to either put her in traction or operate, and the outcome wasn't guaranteed. His advice was to see a chiropractor, and he referred her to one.
Worked like a charm.
Anecdotal, yes. I personally know it happened as she recounted the story to me, and I did see the out-of-alignment visibly before she was treated.
There is no need to dismiss all possible, non-Western treatments with one fell swoop. Sure there are charlatans out there, and yes, the scientific method is valuable -- invaluable, actually. But wholistic approaches have their place too. Chinese and Indian traditional treatments may not be a scientifically-vetted; on the other hand, they benefit from centuries of empirical testing, which is really another form of the scientific method.
Also, many of our Western medicines have their origin in folk treatments. Aspirin is purified from willow bark; willow bark tea was a Native American remedy for headaches.
There has been an ongoing dispute between traditional practices in India vs. patents claimed by W.R. Grace, and American company, concerning use of neem tree extracts as a natural pesticide. Here are two references:
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/pir-ch.htm
http://www1.american.edu/ted/neemtree.htm
Basically, the Indian practitioners view these patents as simply an attempt to steal their knowledge and processes they have been using for thousands of years.
There really are different, useful approaches. Not everything can be reduced to a single, pinpointed, scientifically-proven item, especially when we are talking about living systems. Please note, I am not rejecting scientifically-proven treatments, either: modern Western medicine is indeed a marvel, although I would argue it seems to have taken a wrong turn with the over-reliance on a pill for every ailment, real or imagined. But trying to dismiss hundreds or thousands of years of empirical usage seems ridiculous to me, even if there are some people who may be charlatans. There are charlatans in every field of endeavor: we have in the last 15 years seen more than a few cases of scientific malpractice as well -- as in outright lying about results. Yet we don't dismiss science as a result of that.
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