Specific conclusions of the Commission's report

Based on investigations in New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia

Modern chiropractic is far from being an "unscientific cult"

Chiropractic is a branch of the healing arts specializing in the correction by spinal manual therapy of what chiropractors identify as biomechanical disorders of the spinal column. They carry out spinal diagnosis and therapy at a sophisticated and refined level.

Chiropractors are the only health practitioners who are necessarily equipped by their education and training to carry out spinal manual therapy.

General medical practitioners and physiotherapists have no adequate training in spinal manual therapy, though a few have acquired skill in it subsequent to graduation.

Spinal manual therapy in the hands of a registered chiropractor is safe.

The education and training of a registered chiropractor are sufficient to enable him to determine whether... the patient should have medical care instead of or as well as chiropractic care.

Spinal manual therapy can be effective in relieving musculoskeletal symptoms such as back pain, and other symptoms known to respond to such therapy, such as migraine.

In a limited number of cases where there are organic and/or visceral symptoms, chiropractic treatment may provide relief, but this is unpredictable, and in such cases the patient should be under concurrent medical care if that is practicable.

Although the precise nature of the biomechanical dysfunction and... the precise reasons why spinal manual therapy provides relief have not yet been scientifically explained, chiropractors have reasonable grounds based on clinical evidence for their belief that symptoms of the kind described above can respond beneficially to spinal manual therapy.

In the public interest and in the interest of patients there must be no impediment to full professional cooperation between chiropractors and medical practitioners.

Subsequent to the New Zealand Inquiry, the Australian Federal Minister of Health requested that a Committee be formed to consider extending the scope of (government-funded) Medicare benefits for certain services, including chiropractic.

The Committee accepted all of the findings of the New Zealand commission, and also noted the "significant shift in the last decade in attitude ... towards the issue of scientific research" in chiropractic. It also recommended funding for chiropractic in hospitals and other public institutions, and endorsed greater philosophical unity in chiropractic.