So Pfizer broke the rule and they advertised these drugs for purposes other than what was approved.  75% of these purposes had no scientific evidence supporting them however MDs commonly make these types of prescriptions.  The reason that the MDs make the prescriptions is that they have found in theory and practice that the off-label utilization of these drugs is effective in some instances.  They aren't willing to wait to give people what they feel would be good for them while multiple randomized trials play catch-up to clinical experience.

Here lies the double standard alluded to in the title of this blog entry.  One of the common knocks about Chiropractic and similar therapies (I choose not to call these "Alternative") is that some things we do are "Unscientific" or based on "Anecdotal" evidence.  While this is true in some cases the same applies to the practice of medicine.  Your MD renders treatments which are not based in hard scientific evidence all of the time but we call that "Experimental" whereas with Chiropractic the same practice is called "Quackery".  Here is the truth... Doctors everywhere, regardless of the discipline, do their best to take care of you, our patients.  We want you to be healthy, live a long time, enjoy your life, etc.  We do the best that we can and sometimes we just take a different approach.  I'm not anti-medicine.  I saw my MD just yesterday for a physical.  I just can't abide the perception that what I do is somehow unethical, dishonest, snake-oil style treatments aimed at duping my patients into making me rich (which I'm not).  Really I'm just like the doctor who is very comfortable making daily off-label prescriptions because they want to help their patient be healthy.

Oh and by the way... Spinal manipulation is THE most researched treatment for back pain and has been proven in the arena of science to be the most safe and effective available treatment for this and other conditions.  Just thought you should know.