I used to believe the "they aren't all hacks thing" until I met more chiropractors. While I would like to believe that there's a subset of them out there who treat it more like a science of doing adjustments and what not, I don't think that's actually the case. My mom works for a chiropractor and has gone to several of their conventions over the years, and from what it sounds like they are all nutjobs who believe aligning your spine will cure you of all disease.

I would really love to see the numbers of how many chiropractors are antivaxxers. I bet it's in the high 90%.

Oh I know, and I don’t trust any that ask me what other non-skeletal ailments I have (I had one tell me my acid reflux could be cured by chiro). But I have a few skeletal problems I go to them for about 3 times a year, and it helps.

Yeah but so can regular doctors.

A friend went in for a colonoscopy and died from a series of complications. First they nicked the inside of her colon, and it started bleeding. Then there was a whole series of stupid responses, based on the meds she was taking and had disclosed. They just made one mistake after another, until she died.

None of us knew she was walking into that hospital for the last time, because we were all relying on the doctors to be masters of their craft.

To find religious behavior in the medical field doesn’t take long. Another friend has described being unable to process patients because the blood pressure equipment is broken. They’re down to one machine, and the manual squeeze bulbs have all failed, so there’s a massive backlog in their clinic.

Now, they know clinical outcomes are suffering as a result of the lack of throughput, but they have to take blood pressure on every patient before they do anything else. So they’re beholden to this policy, and can’t practice medicine in a rational manner. But they’re embedded in a system that won’t let them use their eyes and brains to operate on what’s in front of them.

So even without belief in the supernatural, doctors are serving a “false god” which is the bureaucracy, and because they can’t serve two gods that means actual medical practice itself takes a second seat.

MDs give you incorrect information too. I had a GP for 5 years who, when I talked about my cataplexy - a well-documented condition that is directly related to my (at that time, undiagnosed) narcolepsy - he told me to go on birth control, then he changed my antidepressant meds, and then when those things didn't help me, he said "try exercising more and lose some weight". If he would had looked up the symptoms I was describing (like I eventually did), he would have probably recommend I see a sleep doctor, but instead, I lived with narcolepsy under his care for 5 years, almost getting fired for falling asleep at my job.

I know it's not the same, as your brother had a life-threatening condition, but all this to say that MDs aren't all outstanding professionals either.