The South Australian health minister, Jack Snelling, has demanded answers from Australia’s health regulator about how it plans to stop chiropractors from making false and potentially dangerous claims that risk harming the public.
In his role as the chair of the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, Snelling sent a letter to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and the Chiropractic Board of Australia asking for information about steps taken to deter false advertising in the chiropractic profession and to punish those responsible for it.
Snelling wrote the letter after he was sent screenshots from 400 websites where chiropractors were allegedly making unproven and unscientific claims about the conditions they could treat.
The screenshots were sent by the group, Friends of Science in Medicine, to all state, territory and federal health ministers.
“I am aware that the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law places restrictions on the disclosure of protected information and publication of outcomes of regulatory actions,” Snelling wrote.
“However, it is important that the Board and AHPRA have a very visible response to the management of potentially false or misleading advertising.”
Snelling requested a response to his list of questions by early March. Guardian Australia has contacted the office of the federal health minister, Sussan Ley, and the assistant health minister, Fiona Nash, for comment.
It follows an article in the Medical Journal of Australia last month that argued the Chiropractic Board of Australia should be sacked over its failure to take action against members behaving unethically.
The president of Friends of Science in Medicine, Prof John Dwyer, who is also emeritus professor of medicine at the University of NSW, said he had made dozens of complaints about unethical chiropractors to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency over a number of years.
It took on average 18 months to get a response to each complaint, he said.
“We are very pleased that Snell, at least, has responded quickly to our concerns after we sent out the list of false claims to him and other ministers last week,” Dwyer said.
“I challenge the Chiropractic Board of Australia to come out with a statement about the appropriateness and evidence for the treatment of babies and children with chiropractic care. Because if they say it’s appropriate, they need to make the evidence public, and if they are unable to produce any evidence, they should make it very clear it is not only unprofessional, but illegal, to make such claims.”