It is excellent news that after the hammering the BCA received in the courts on 1st April, they have now decided to drop the libel case against Simon Singh. Although he remains out of pocket by around £100k+ he has won the case convincingly. Not only did the chiropractors have no evidence to back their claims, but the courts have also heavily criticised them for bringing the libel charge in the first place.
It is absurd that when chiropractors claim to be able to treat childhood colic, that they should be able to use libel laws to suppress the challenge that they have no evidence. Any reasonable person would expect them instead to offer their evidence and debate the case, not try to gag critics.
Chiropractors make a lot of money from treating people and many of them have made claims which they cannot justify. The BCA itself had to warn its members not to do so. Patients who are handing over money for treatment which does not have evidence of efficacy have a reasonable claim that they are being deceived and they may now be encouraged to challenge the chiropractors.
Despite a mealy-mouthed press release pretending that their case was justified, the BCA has been publicly humiliated and exposed as an organisation trying to use libel law to suppress very reasonable criticism of its unjustified claims.
Hopefully there will now be a backlash from the very many chiropractors who treat back pain and don't make outlandish claims. They are justified in demanding to know why their representatives chose to waste their subscription money defending people who shouldn't have been making those absurd claims in the first place. They have seen their trade association bringing them all into disrepute.
It may also have the perhaps unintended consequence of getting chiropractors themselves to start to appreciate the need to back up their claims with high quality peer-reviewed scientific evidence, the sort provided by controlled, randomised, double-blind trials, not the sort published in tame journals owned by chiropractic and alternative medicine companies.
Onwards with the quacklash!
