• Smith JC

• American Medical Association
• Chiropractic
• Drug Industry
• Fishbein, Morris, 1889-1976
• Open Access Document
• Tobacco Industry
• Wilk, Chester A.

Narrative: This paper reviews the adversarial nature of the American Medical Association and gives its origin as Morris Fishbein who, for a quarter of a Century (1924-1949) led a concerted attack on Chiropractors. This resulted in many being jailed allegedly for practicing medicine without a license. 

Fishbein got into bed with Big Tobacco, and raised millions for the AMA through allowing tobaccos companies to advertise their products in the Journal of the American Medical Association of which he was editor. He boasted about how much such advertising he ‘turned down’ and did not accept. 

The AMA’s Golden Goose of Big Tobacco was replaced by Big Pharma as governments woke up to the negative 
health effects associated with tobacco. 

Even today political medicine is behind scare campaigns against Chiropractic, most notably through trying to associate the risk of stroke with the skilled cervical adjustments provided by a trained Chiropractor. 

Not even the outcome of the Wilk v. AMA antitrust trial could restore the damage inflicted upon Chiropractors in conspiracy described as ‘systematic, long-term wrongdoing, and the long-term intent to destroy a licensed profession’.‘By labelling all chiropractors unscientific cultists, injury to reputation was assured by the AMA’s name-calling practice’, which was exactly the goal of the medical Goodfellas, to defame its main competition to invalidate
their expertise and to capture the healthcare marketplace. 

This paper is essential reading for all students of the profession, and indeed for those Chiropractors who may have forgotten the price paid by others before them to give them the freedoms they enjoy today in practice.

Author keywords: Chiropractic - AMA - Wilk trial - Fishbein - Big tobacco - Big Pharma

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