‘It’s about safety’: Chiropractors once again banned from manipulating babies’ spines

Chiropractors have once again been banned from manipulating babies’ spines after a health board reversed its controversial decision to allow the practice.

The about-face by the Chiropractic Board of Australia follows revelations in this masthead that practitioners had quietly given themselves approval to resume spinal manipulation of children younger than two from November after a four-year ban.

The Chiropractic Board of Australia has reintroduced a ban on practitioners manipulating babies’ spines.Credit: Getty Images

“The board expects chiropractors to comply with the interim policy, which advises chiropractors to not use spinal manipulation to treat children under two years of age, until further consultation with health ministers can allow for developing a final position,” the board’s chair, Dr Wayne Minter, said in a statement on Monday.

The axing of the initial ban drew a fiery response from doctors’ groups and federal Health Minister Mark Butler, who put the issue on the agenda at a meeting of Australian health ministers on Friday.

On Monday, Butler said: “This is the right decision after The Age exposed the Chiropractor Board’s decision to resume spinal manipulation of infants under two.”

Health ministers vowed to write to the board “requesting it to immediately reinstate the interim ban and provide urgent advice on its recent decision to allow a resumption of this practice”, according to a statement released after Friday’s meeting.

Minter said that while there had been no evidence of serious harm to infants from chiropractic care in Australia, the board’s role was “first and foremost to protect the public”.

“We look forward to working with ministers to develop an evidence-based final policy on paediatric care that balances the paramount need to protect patients with the right for parents and other patients to have a say in the care they choose,” he said.

Neurosurgical Society of Australasia Board executive Dr Patrick Lo, who is also the Victorian chair of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons, welcomed the reintroduction of the ban.

“It’s great that they have taken heed and common sense prevails,” he said. “It is what the public demanded five years ago ... this is about safety and what we leave behind for our children.”

Spinal manipulation involves moving the joints of a child’s spine beyond their normal range of motion using a high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust.

The initial ban was introduced in 2019 after footage emerged of a Melbourne chiropractor holding a two-week-old baby upside down. The chiropractor then used a spring-loaded device on the newborn’s spine and tapped him on the head, prompting then-Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos to describe the vision as “deeply disturbing”.

A Safer Care Victoria report at the time, which involved a systematic review by Cochrane Australia, found no strong evidence that spinal manipulation helped childhood conditions such as colic, back/neck pain, headache, asthma, ear infections or torticollis (twisted neck), despite it commonly being spruiked as a solution to these issues.

While this report identified little evidence of patient harm occurring in Australia, it noted “it was clear that spinal manipulation in children is not wholly without risk”.

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