Jane Brody's column, "MRIs, CT Scans Detect Stroke Threat More Easily," seriously misrepresents the safety of chiropractic cervical manipulation. The truth is that stroke resulting from cervical manipulation is one of the rarest adverse medical reactions in recorded history.

Chiropractic is one of the safest forms of treatment. According to the RAND Corporation, a serious adverse reaction from cervical manipulation occurs once in 1 million manipulations. Studies show that when an adverse reaction does occur, it often is the result of an improperly trained person performing the procedure - someone other than a doctor of chiropractic.

When compared to the number of illnesses and deaths that will occur this year from the appropriate use of prescription and over- the-counter drugs, the number of serious complications from chiropractic is extremely low. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 2 million Americans become seriously ill every year from reactions to correctly prescribed drugs - 106,000 die from these side-effects.

While there is no way to determine exactly which patients may be prone to adverse reactions, some patterns have emerged. Doctors of chiropractic are educated in the screening of high-risk patients. The goal of the profession is to reduce these risks to zero, and to help educate the medical profession to the dangers of the untrained application of cervical spinal manipulation.

　　From Healthy.com