Administrative Anarchy in American Accredited Academia: Corruption and Chaos in Chiropractic, Nutrition, Functional/Naturopathic Medicine, and more
These are the hard truths contributing to the decline of education, healthcare, and patient care that impact everyone. The solutions are simple and require only the discipline to do the right things.
Well, here it is: what I've been working on this week... Maybe you can help me with the wordsmithing... I didn't write this to make anyone happy; I wrote it to tell the truth. These are the hard and unpopular truths that are contributing to the decline of education, healthcare, and patient care that impact everyone. The causes are obvious, the consequences are carried by all of us. The solutions are simple and require only the discipline to do the right things.
Accredited Administrative Anarchy in American Academia: Corruption and Chaos in Chiropractic, Nutrition, Functional/Naturopathic Medicine, and more
Alex Vasquez DC ND DO
“How much truth can a spirit endure, how much truth can a spirit dare? More and more, intellectual integrity became for me the real measure of value. Error (faith in the ideal) is not blindness; error is cowardice. ... To endure my seriousness and my passion, the scholar must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. We must become indifferent; we must never ask if the truth is “useful” or if it will be our undoing. ... At every step and with every word, one has to wrestle for truth; one has had to surrender to it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service." Friedrich Nietzsche
Chiropractic and nutrition were my first loves. More accurately, I would say that my positivistic misinterpretation of chiropractic, my naïve perceptions as an inexperienced youth fresh out of military boarding school, and what I considered to be the promise of the profession – those were my first loves. Instead, what I found in two of the three chiropractic “universities“ where I was faculty, and in one “Doctor of Clinical Nutrition” program where I was a founding professor, was not simply one or two or colluding administrators, but rather an entire ecosystem of corruption (see illustration) that emanated from the upper administration, contaminating everything from the financial accounting to the integrity of exams and accreditation standards, but also the Board of Trustees (BoT) which supposedly had responsibility for supervision of the administration, and also selection of the president himself. I found that “accreditation” was a completely worthless stamp of approval provided by privatized regional accreditors who were paid by the very schools they accredited for the programs that were approved, regardless of the veracity of the submitted documents and the integrity (or lack thereof) of the program, including completely changing program requirements after the program/changes had been approved, and the administration’s implementation and allowance of a corrupted online examination platform that allowed students to pass quizzes and examinations without any study, simply by clicking on the provided answers until the correct answer was made obvious. The students cared more about academic integrity than did the administrators; the regional accreditor apparently couldn’t care less as long as the school was paying for the accreditation processes and making things look pretty, and the US Department of Education obviously had no fΰcks to give and could not be bothered.
The infographic (interconnect diagram) accompanying this narrative depicts my painful, personal-professional experience in chiropractic academia. Chiropractic was certainly my first love, and I dedicated many years of my life to being an ambassador, scholar, and cheerleader for the profession. I traveled thousands of miles to deliver hundreds of hours of graduate and postgraduate education. I authored dozens of articles for the profession and several textbooks specifically for chiropractic students and clinicians.[1] One of the biggest disappointments of my life will forever be witnessing and experiencing the shameless and unbridled corruption within the administration of chiropractic colleges, many of which have now rebranded themselves as “universities“ despite not meeting strict criteria for such.
To have a corrupt administration, one must be begin with corrupt administrators, which is to say people with ulterior motives and/or sociopathy/psychopathy. Psychopathic and narcissistic traits are common in the general population (1% severe, 10-30% mild) and are higher in certain groups, namely incarcerated prisoners and organizational administrators[2]; thus, we cannot be surprised that some of these sociopaths would eventually infiltrate academia, then seek, obtain, and defend positions of power and profit. Furthermore and perhaps somewhat specific to chiropractic is that the lack of oversight (eg, the schools are impressively small compared to legitimate multiprogram universities) and the relatively lower academic standards (eg, no entry examinations, no external standards for graduate performance) facilitate the entry and perpetuity of academicians with lower qualifications, lower scholastic and professional achievements, and a much more casual and narrow perception of what might otherwise be rigorous academic standards, which they themselves have never experienced. Again: due to the relatively lower entry standards (for students and administrators) and overall lack of internal/external oversight, chiropractic colleges are attractive targets for swindlers and sociopaths. Those who strive and try to survive within chiropractic academics often refer to it as “chiroland”—analogous to the surreal and illusory Twilight Zone—and often chuckle that chiropractic administrators would happily eat their own young in order to maintain their positions of prestige and profit. In a profession that offers only a very narrow range of opportunities— hard-working private practice clinician, adjunct faculty member with no benefits or job security, or upper administrator with full benefits, retirement, free international travel, and additional bonuses—those few chiropractors who acquire an upper administrative position cling to that prestigious and profitable outpost with tenacity and desperation.
One of these chiropractic presidents confided to me that because the upper administrators selected the Board of Trustees, all they had to do was pick the most naïve, enthusiastic/passionate, and gullible alumni to join the Board and go along with any and every suggestion offered by the upper administrators, including effectively paying themselves “performance bonuses” based on the profit of the school, which in their hands ultimately met siphoning scholarship money away from students to inflate the perceived profitability of the school and thus fund their so-called “performance” bonuses. I remember when one Board of Trustees member was being informed about the corruption of the upper administration, her reply was simply that “it broke her heart to hear such things” and so—to stop her small heart from breaking—she simply refused to listen to disgruntled students and betrayed faculty members—ie, she refused to listen to the exact people who had “boots on the ground” experience; of course, she never participated in or initiated any investigation to the obvious wrongdoings and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of dollars that was ruining the school. Emotional reflexes and administrative protectionism were the guiding lights for her trusteeship, and this is exactly why she had been chosen to be on the Board of Trustees by the same people who would benefit from her naïve and unquestioning loyalty.
As I’ve said in my decades of articles and presentations, if any one American healthcare profession could positively change the course of health outcomes literally overnight, then that profession is chiropractic. The chiropractic adjustment is an irreplaceable clinical tool, and the profession could have and should already have advanced to a more prominent position in healthcare and professionalism; those who continue to allow and perpetuate corruption and profiteering within chiropractic leadership and academia are those who are most to blame for the profession’s retardation, lack of direction, delayed development, and the perpetual inability of the profession to complete its greater promise to its students, its clinicians, and the public.
Nepotism and (self)overpayment of administrators are notorious in chiropractic academics. For example, according to Chronicle of Higher Education (Fuller[3] 2012 Apr), “The compensation packages of presidents at chiropractic colleges consume, on average, 2 percent of their colleges' budgets, five times as much as the typical president at a private college with a budget over $50-million. And some chiropractic-college presidents earn nearly as much as leaders of research universities that are 10 times, or even 90 times, their size. … the presidents of chiropractic colleges are taking in some of the biggest paychecks in higher education.” Many chiropractic college presidents and vice-presidents use their schools as welfare states for their families, including sons, daughters, wives, and more distant relatives, eg, “Elizabeth A. Goodman, wife of the president of Logan College, is dean of university programs there. When Sidney E. Williams, founder of Life University, served as president in the early 2000s, his wife, Nell, worked as vice president for student affairs. His daughter, Kim, was an assistant to the president, and his sister-in-law, Mildred Kimbrough, served as an assistant vice president.” All one has to do is visit the websites of the chiropractic colleges—an easy task for any reporter or staff journalist—to see the names of parents and children among the list of administrators. According to Chronicle of Higher Education (Stripling[4] 2012 Apr), the president of Logan Chiropractic College hired his wife (who served as “Dean of University Programs”) and also gave employment to his son, stepdaughter, and daughter-in-law. “The issue of nepotism and of family associations with the historic development of chiropractic as a profession is strong, and that's not true of other colleges.” As would be expected, chiropractic administrators commonly hire friends and family into administrative and teaching positions without conducing the legally required competitive application processes; this undermines quality and destroys goodwill and respect among those faculty and administrators who actually had to apply and complete for their jobs. If regulators at the state and national levels cared to look, they would find a superabundance of illegal behavior, including underpayment of adjunct faculty, which translates directly to wage theft (eg, failure to pay for required duties), tax evasion (ie, less salary = less state and national taxes) and greater “profitability” (eg, upper administrators underpay faculty in order to increase their own payment bonuses).
A note of clarification: The two paragraphs above and below cite articles published in Chronicle of Higher Education (all in 2012) specific to nepotism, profiteering, and faculty/student abuse at Logan Chiropractic College; I personally have no experience with that institution, but I see the examples provided as being clearly representative of the types of unprofessional shenanigans that plague the profession and permeate throughout chiropractic academia, even at the “best” chiropractic colleges and “universities.”
To cover-up and legitimize nepotism and (self)overpayment of administrators, chiropractic administrators commonly use fake independent reviews and audits. For example, according to Chronicle of Higher Education (Stripling[5] 2012 Oct), “After years of guarding such details, one of the nation's largest nonprofit chiropractic colleges has disclosed on its tax forms that the institution's president and his family members collectively earned more than $1-million in 2010- The bulk of the $1,028,939 went to George A. Goodman, whose $798,198 compensation as president of Logan College of Chiropractic University Programs, ... The second-highest earner in the family was Mr. Goodman's son, Jason C. Goodman, whose compensation as an instructor totaled $97,910. Elizabeth A. Goodman, Mr. Goodman's wife, earned $92,486 in her role as dean of university programs. Jessica Chrun-Goodman, Jason Goodman's wife, earned $40,345 for duties unspecified in the form. Logan uses an "independent third party" to conduct a presidential-compensation analysis every two years, and the college's full governing board reviews that information before approving pay levels, according to the tax form.” Any college/university can pay an accounting firm to review the submitted documents and approve them; the guaranteed means of success are submit only the scrubbed and accurate-appearing accounting documents, and work with an accounting firm that understands that its job is to give its stamp of approval to whatever documents the administrators provide.
The chiropractic presidents I have known had not the slightest qualm about hiring their wives and children into upper administrative positions, including the very Board of Trustees itself. Even when their spouses had no legitimate reason for having any official affiliation with such a nonprofit academic institution, their wives were given administrative privileges, including free national and international travel to whatever conference had any tangential relationship with healthcare or academics. Administrators used “nonprofit educational institution” money to get free paid vacations to anywhere in Europe that they wanted, and of course, they could always extend the trip by having to attend more than one conference per trip, thereby justifying a layover of a few weeks—as one chiropractic president told me about the trips he made to Europe with his wife, at the expense of the school—“…two weeks on the beaches of Italy, letting all my concerns drain away” and then he attended another conference in Scotland, noted here as directly quoted from his university-president email: “Scotland is beautiful and the people here are friendly and helpful. The food is much better than I had expected (Scottish lamb, grass fed, unbelievable flavor). Last night [wife, listed on the university website as “Executive Assistant to the President] and I attended a session on the history of Scotch Whisky and then had a sampling. It was fascinating.” This was all the while the faculty on campus were desperately putting out daily fires of incompetence and corruption to keep the academic programs afloat; the true leadership was on campus with their sleeves rolled up and working hard—not knowing they were already on the chopping block to get fired—while the “president” wasn’t presiding over anything other than his personal pleasure, profit, and leisure. This particular president was noted for pretending to be Mormon and thus abstinent from vices such as alcohol; but he let his vices and whiskey take the reins when such suited his personal whims and desires, never for a moment prioritizing the university nor the chiropractic profession. Note the irony of his sending notes of his European vacations from his official presidential university email while all hell was breaking loose on his campus, to which he would return and pronounce, “Don’t tell me about problems; tell me only about solutions” to ensure that he had shifted the responsibility to the faculty to be Pollyannic positivistic people-pleasers instead of honest professionals; anyone who told the truth on that campus was ensuring that they’d be promptly eliminated, as I learned from experience, immediately followed by threatening letters from their pitbull profit-protecting legal henchmen.
Of course, while the cat is away, the mice will play, and when presidents and their “administrative wives” are on a school-funded vacation in Europe, we as the remaining faculty could anticipate new waves of administrative chaos whenever the president and his wife were one of their extended vacations. Second-level administrators would buy tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of unnecessary school furniture, equipment, and infrastructure when the president was absent, apparently without any trace of paperwork because, upon his return, the president himself commented to me how baffled he was that a $70,000 extension had been added to the library without his approval, prior knowledge and apparently without any paper-trail: the school's money disappeared and the unneeded building appeared, as if by magic, clearly showing that this "University President" had no idea what was happening on his campus, and had zero respect even from his fellow upper administrators that were misdirecting and robbing the school. That’s one of the problems with these upper circles of corruption is that it begins to take on a life of its own and even the ringleader of the corruption (let’s assume it’s the president) eventually gets blackmailed by his own fellow administrators because none of them can stop the others from participating and the reckless corruption that they’ve all allowed to take place.
In order to maintain an upper administration of incompetent and corrupt buffoonery, one has to fill the ranks and stack the deck with subordinates who don’t ask too many questions and who don’t have high expectations for the performance of the university institution. What this means in practical terms for the remaining faculty is that they will be underserved and overworked as they have to compensate for a lower quality or outright incompetent infrastructure of internet technology, teachers’ assistants, and other mid-level employees and managers. The only people who are safe from the consequences of academic corruption are the janitors and lawn maintenance crew; everyone else on campus is going to suffer through frustration, confusion, reduced professional development, lower standards, and lower pay for their work and outright gaslighting on a daily and weekly basis for the duration of their careers on chiropractic campus.
I will provide two more concrete examples of what I consider to be academic corruption so blatantly obvious that the experiences were simply baffling and bewildering. During an on-site review with the US Department of Education-approved (pay-to-play) regional accreditor, we as faculty specifically described our high academic standards verbally and in writing so they would approve our program and any in-process changes; as things would turn out, everything we said to them was a lie because after we had our changes to the program approved, then upper administrators simply backed off of the standards and allowed students to pass courses without meeting the stated requirements. For example, we claimed to require verbal examinations and a comprehensive final examination that was professionally supervised/proctored, but instead, the upper administrators replaced the high-stakes requirements with a simple “subjective reflective writing exercise” in which students “expressed their feelings about their experience in the program”; this was obviously a complete insult to anyone that was trying to take a graduate-level program seriously. Less obvious but more pervasive was the fact that upper administrators allowed our students to pass all of the online quizzes and examinations by simply randomly clicking on the provided answers because our online educational platform was programmed to reveal the correct answers so that essentially all students could pass the exams, whether they had studied the material or not; this was brought to the attention of upper administration after the students themselves complained about the low quality standards of the program, and the administrative response was to fire the concerned professor to whom the students had confided—another example of the “scorched earth policy” and perpetual erasure of institutional memory (see infographic). In this particular school, the chiropractic administrators fired and replaced 18 top faculty members within 18 months (a remarkably high percentage for a small school), effectively clearcutting the experienced faculty and erasing the institutional memory while further insulating upper administrators behind shields of faculty intimidation and forced erasure of evidence and witnesses. If any professor starts to ask uncomfortable questions—such as about the fake online educational platform or the missing money from the budget and the disappearance of millions of dollars—they can easily be terminated and immediately threatened by aggressive lawsuits/lawyers paid for by school dollars; the pitiful underpaid professors would have to defend themselves from their own light salary/savings, using their own after-tax income to combat a multimillion-dollar tax-free nonprofit institution. This imbalance allows corrupt administrators to use the full force of their tax-free tax-deductible nonprofit institutions to wage legal and psychological warfare against truth-telling teachers. No surprise that the insanity, crazymaking, gaslighting, hazing/abuse, and legal-psychological warfare doled out by administrators is more than enough to force many chiropractic professionals out of their own profession, toward depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The irony here is that the profession is constantly slashing and burning its own small crop of more-studious academically-minded would-be teachers, authors, and scholars.
In the United States, “accreditation” of a college or university is utterly meaningless with regard to the quality of the education; “accreditation” simply requires filling out paperwork, overpromising “high standards of academic rigor to prepare our students for their careers as professionals” (anything that sounds similar to that) and having a clean accessible campus and pretty-looking brochures with paid models posing as happy students. Paperwork and site visits are pathetic means for the assurance of academic quality in higher education because any conniving and convincing imbecile can fraud a glossy program description, and any half-sober administrators can put on a happy face for half-a-day of softball questions from the regional accreditors. Since the regional accreditors have effectively zero oversight by the US Department of Education, and because they are effectively paid to turn a blind eye toward the programs that they are paid to approve, they don’t probe very deeply and they don’t investigate complaints of wrongdoing except in the most egregious situations and/or when doing so has a strategic end or political taint to it. Making matters worse, of course, is when corrupt academicians infiltrate the corpus of the regional accreditors such that they are well-connected and well-informed of any possible spontaneous and semi-legitimate quality checks or investigations. In essence, the lack of oversight from the US Department of Education and the obvious conflict of interest with the pay-to-play regional accreditors means that accreditation in American education is meaningless – it just means that an institution filled out paperwork, satisfied a list of nonacademic requirements such as fire escapes and building accessibility, and was able to bluff their way through some low-level interviews with softball questions that any trickster could knock out of the park.
Academic corruption itself is itself a paradox because theoretically the entire reason for the existence of academia is the accumulation and transmission of truth. Within the academia of healthcare, another higher and outcome-based standard applies to the entire enterprise; if legitimate academia has a requirement to respect the truth, then healthcare academia has the additional demand to produce ethical and competent graduates that can ensure the life-and-death responsibilities that are intrinsic to clinical care. Corruption of healthcare academia therefore carries an even heavier weight than academic corruption in general, because of the increased probability of ultimately increased risk of negligence and injury for patients. But I am hesitant to equate chiropractic academic corruption directly with lower professional performance. Indeed, the healthcare delivered by chiropractors has consistently been found to be safe and beneficial specifically for neck pain, low-back pain and other musculoskeletal complaints; this contrasts with the remarkable lack of safety, lack of efficacy, and lack of supporting evidence of medical/drug interventions for chronic pain.[6] I think that one must differentiate between the administrators, the teachers, the students and the practicing clinicians; one cannot equate the behavior of one of these groups with the behavior of others, even if the continuum might appear instinctively correct. In my experience, having taught thousands of practicing chiropractors, I found that most of them were hard-working, honest, and desirous of advancing their professional skills for the betterment of their own careers and also for the betterment of patient outcomes. However, administrative corruption in chiropractic clearly retards the advancement of the profession as a whole, most obviously because quality schools have traditionally done more than merely educate students; better schools and legitimate universities have also supported research and supported the careers of professors to advance the science of their topics and to serve as a repository for knowledge and guiding example of professionalism. These concepts and practices are essentially nonexistent within the chiropractic culture. This explains largely why the chiropractic profession advances slowly when and if it advances at all. The breadth and profundity of the chiropractic profession remain narrow and shallow because those who would enlarge the profession are excluded from the profession’s institutions by corrupt and viciously insecure administrators. You won’t find many or any “distinguished professors” or “professors emeriti” within chiropractic academia because they aren’t allowed to exist in an academic environment centered around simplicity and profitability. The institutions don’t have enough stability and foresight to cultivate the development of profound scholasticism, nor the scholarship necessary to advance the science and practice of chiropractic.
No surprise, then of course that many chiropractors find that the only way to advance their career is to (paradoxically) leave their profession by seeking other degrees, and quite commonly ignoring and denying the fact that they were ever chiropractors in the first place. Even in my own situation of having been a chiropractic scholar and advocate, I don’t even mention the chiropractic colleges where I have worked on my resume; this is all the more ironic because I consider my chiropractic education to have been quite excellent, and I went on to attain two additional doctoral degrees in other healthcare fields.
No doubt exists that the chiropractic profession’s worst enemy is itself. As I’ve said in my decades of articles and presentations, if any one American healthcare profession could positively change the course of health outcomes literally overnight, then that profession is chiropractic. The chiropractic adjustment is an irreplaceable clinical tool, and the profession could have and should already have advanced to a more prominent position in healthcare and professionalism; those who continue to allow and perpetuate corruption and profiteering within chiropractic leadership and academia are those who are most to blame for the profession’s retardation, lack of direction, delayed development, and the perpetual inability of the profession to complete its greater promise to its students, its clinicians, and the public. In 2009, I published Chiropractic and Naturopathic Mastery of Common Clinical Disorders* detailing the integrative chiropractic management of several primary care conditions; but did the profession advance in any meaningful way? In 2010, I published “Chiropractors Managing Chronic Hypertension—An Idea Who's Time Has Arrived” in the profession’s biggest newspaper/magazine Dynamic Chiropractic (2010 Jun, archived here), and in 2011 I published the clinical handbook/textbook Integrative Chiropractic Management of Chronic Hypertension and High Blood Pressure, Second Edition* and I handed a copy directly to the president of the American Chiropractic Association, but apparently nothing changed for the profession as a whole—no action, no initiative, no conversation. In 2014, I published Chiropractic Immune Nutrition Against Viral Infections* but the chiropractic profession demonstrated zero leadership during the global viral pandemic chaos of 2019 that has continued to the present day. (*All of these previous works have been compiled and updated in Inflammation Mastery 4th Edition.) I wanted more for chiropractic; I reasonably expected more from chiropractic. I never dreamed that my experience in chiropractic academics would result in my writing essays on administrative incompetence, faculty abuse, lost professional opportunities, and drawing interconnected maps of academic corruption; but such has been the result of my experience, corroborated by the experiences of many—too many—of my colleagues, friends, and students within chiropractic. If you ever wonder why the chiropractic profession is so slow to advance, you need look no further than the corrupt administrators and inept leadership that repels and actively eliminates the true leaders, scholars, clinicians, and teachers who would otherwise advance the profession.
As part of their no-rules neoliberal-style imperialistic expansion, many of these so-called “universities” are now offering additional programs in clinical nutrition, functional medicine, and naturopathic medicine. But look at the chaos, cheating, gaslighting, unprofessional buffoonery and administrative anarchy —these schools are functioning and being allowed to run free-range as diploma mills with zero legitimate quality-control and zero oversight from the now privatized and pay-to-play accreditation system. I worked briefly as one of the founding professors in a new “Doctor of Clinical Nutrition” program, where I was told by the two upper administrators of the program that I was the only professor in the program [brazen enough] to require a midterm exam and a comprehensive final exam for the students on my class; apparently the norm at this school was simply to pass and eventually graduate these students based on nothing more than the professor’s feelings and subjective evaluation, which is even more absurd considering that many/most/all of these courses were taught online with no direct contact whatsoever between students and professors. Notice and again and sadly that these are all “university degrees” that have been “accredited” by the privatized regional representative of the US Department of Education, thereby demonstrating the complete worthlessness of American educational “accreditation” in the current era.
After seeing the abysmal decline of academic standards in these programs, I fear that we are graduating a generation of numbskulls who will leave their diploma mills with nothing more than diplomas and debt, the first of which are worthless except for ego inflation, and the second of which will enslave them for decades while administrators laugh all the way to the bank. As more healthcare/nutrition/chiropractic/medicine programs become profiteering overglorified correspondence courses, the true burden of life and death risk will be carried by the consumers, clients and patients. I fear that American academia is collapsing into meaninglessness, and graduating these unmentored and untested neophytes with titles of “doctor”, “nutrition”, and “medicine” is going to have harmful repercussions for these professions and the patients who will be undertreated, overtreated, and mistreated by these undertrained virtual clinicians. Caveat emptor—the risks of injury and death will be carried by the patients of these undertrained graduates, while regulatory agencies currently sit on their hands in inaction and “plausible deniability”, which this narrative is helping to make undeniable.
The solutions to these problems are obvious, but the enforcement of ethical and professional expectations has to begin with defining those standards, then ensuring their adherence from multiple positions, including students, faculty, community oversight, and—the most obvious and most potent—involved and active governmental bodies at the state and national levels with the power to investigate thievery, fraud, appropriateness of expenses, program quality (eg, including hiring outside topic experts), examination integrity (eg, not allowing all students to pass their online exams simply by clicking on the answers), and the relentless tax evasion and wage theft that occurs from underpaying the part-time fully-disempowered “adjunct faculty.” These lawless feral schools need to be investigated and held to account; otherwise students will continue to be fleeced and indebted for low-quality education, professional standards will be reduced to abject incompetence, national quality of production will continue to decline, and the final customers, consumers, and patients will bear the brunt of undereducated ego-inflated unskilled healthcare providers delivering substandard and dangerous healthcare.
Alex Kennerly Vasquez DO ND DC (USA), Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN), Former Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM, London UK): {education} An award-winning clinician-scholar and founding Program Director of the world's first fully-accredited university-based graduate program in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, Dr Alex Vasquez is recognized internationally for his high intellectual and academic standards and for his detailed expertise spanning and interconnecting many topics in Medicine and Nutrition. Dr Vasquez holds three doctoral degrees as a graduate of University of Western States (Doctor of Chiropractic, 1996), Bastyr University (Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, 1999), and University of North Texas Health Science Center, Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, 2010). Dr Vasquez has completed thousands of hours of post-graduate and continuing education (certifications) in subjects including Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Basic and Advanced Disaster Life Support, Nutrition and Functional Medicine; while in the final year of medical school, Dr Vasquez completed a Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research hosted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). {teaching, directing, organizing} Dr Vasquez has served in many teaching roles at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels in various accredited universities and colleges throughout the United States and has lectured internationally at the post-graduate level including accredited Continuing Medical Education (CME) for medical physicians. DrV was the founding Program Director of the world's first fully-accredited university-based graduate program in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, and almost-single-handedly orchestrated the entirety of the five-day 2013 International Conference on Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine.{books} Dr Vasquez is the author of more than ten textbooks, including Integrative Orthopedics (2004, 2007 2012), Functional Medicine Rheumatology (2014), Musculoskeletal Pain: Expanded Clinical Strategies (commissioned and published by Institute for Functional Medicine, 2008), Chiropractic and Naturopathic Mastery of Common Clinical Disorders (2009), Integrative Medicine and Functional Medicine for Chronic Hypertension (2011), Brain Inflammation in Migraine and Fibromyalgia (2016), Antiviral Strategies and Immune Nutrition (2014), Autism, Dysbiosis, and the Gut-Brain Axis (2017) and the 1200-page Inflammation Mastery 4th Edition (2016) also published as a two-volume set titled Textbook of Clinical Nutrition and Functional Medicine. Dr Vasquez’s books are available internationally via bookstores such as BookDepository, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, ThriftBooks, AbeBooks, BetterWorldBooks, WaterStonesBooks. {journals} "DrV" has also written approximately 100 letters and articles for professional magazines and medical journals such as TheLancet.com (online x1), British Medical Journal (BMJ: online x3, print x1), Annals of Pharmacotherapy, Nutritional Perspectives (x11), Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Original Internist (x3), Integrative Medicine (x4), Holistic Primary Care, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine (x2), Journal of the American Osteopathic Association (JAOA), Dynamic Chiropractic (x3), Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Current Asthma and Allergy Reports, Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, Nature Reviews Rheumatology, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and Arthritis & Rheumatism—Official Journal of the American College of Rheumatology. Having served on the Review Boards for Acta Neuropsychiatrica, Journal of Pain Research, Autoimmune Diseases, PLOS One, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, Neuropeptides, International Journal of Clinical Medicine, Journal of Inflammation Research, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine (all PubMed/Medline indexed), Integrated Blood Pressure Control, Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, Chiropractic Journal of Australia, and Journal of Naturopathic Medicine, Dr Vasquez served as the founding Editor of Naturopathy Digest, founding Editor (2013-) of International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine and Editor (2018-2019) of Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine.
This narrative and infographic are archived/updated at academia.edu/118395502
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[1] A sample listing of additional pro-chiropractic, chiropractic-specific, and chiropractic-friendly books, articles, and editorials by Dr Vasquez:
1. Vasquez A. High body iron stores: causes, effects, diagnosis, and treatment. Nutritional Perspectives 1994
2. Vasquez A. Musculoskeletal disorders and iron overload disease. [Letter] Arthritis & Rheumatism 1996; 39:1767-8
3. Vasquez A. Integrative Orthopedics: 2004, 2007, 2012
4. Vasquez A. Integrative Rheumatology: 2006, 2007, 2014
5. Vasquez A. Musculoskeletal Pain: Expanded Clinical Strategies: Printed monograph approved for ACCME PRA-1 Continuing Medical Education. 2008 May
6. Vasquez A. Chiropractic and Naturopathic Mastery of Common Clinical Disorders: 2009
7. Vasquez A. Chiropractic Management of Chronic Hypertension 2010, Integrative Chiropractic Management of High Blood Pressure: Updated & Expanded 2nd Edition 2011
8. Vasquez A. Selected Topics in NeuroMusculoskeletal Medicine: 2013
9. Vasquez A. Chiropractors Managing Chronic Hypertension An Idea Who's Time Has Arrived. Dynamic Chiropractic 2010 Jun
10. Vasquez A. Affirmation and Rebirth of the Chiropractic Profession, Part 1. New Standards in Musculoskeletal Care and Health Promotion. Dynamic Chiropractic 2007 Apr
11. Vasquez A. Affirmation and Rebirth of the Chiropractic Profession, Part 2. Dynamic Chiropractic 2007 Apr
12. Vasquez A. Chiropractic Musculoskeletal Competence: Is Being "Best" Good Enough? Dynamic Chiropractic 2007 Mar
13. Vasquez A. Implementing the Five-Part Nutritional Wellness Protocol for the Treatment of Various Health Problems. Nutritional Wellness—a chiropractic nutrition magazine 2005 Nov
14. Vasquez A. The Importance of Integrative Chiropractic Health Care in Treating Musculoskeletal Pain and Reducing the Nationwide Burden of Medical Expenses and Iatrogenic Injury and Death: A Concise Review of Current Research and Implications for Clinical Practice and Healthcare Policy. The Original Internist—a chiropractic magazine/journal 2005; 12(4): 159-182
15. Vasquez A. Revisiting the Five-Part Nutritional Wellness Protocol: The Supplemented Paleo-Mediterranean Diet. Nutritional Perspectives—published by the American Chiropractic Association's Council on Nutrition 2011 January
16. Vasquez A. Five-Part Nutritional Wellness Protocol That Produces Consistently Positive Results. Nutritional Wellness—chiropractic nutrition magazine 2005 Sep
17. Vasquez A. The Science of Chiropractic and Spinal Manipulation, Part 2 mercola.com/2005/mar/12/chiropractic_spine.htm 2005, March 12
18. Vasquez A. The Science of Chiropractic and Spinal Manipulation, Part 1 mercola.com/2005/mar/9/chiropractic_spine.htm 2005, March 9
19. Vasquez A. Vitamin D Supplementation in the Treatment of Musculoskeletal Pain. The Original Internist—a chiropractic magazine/journal 2004; 11: 7-9
20. Vasquez A, John Cannell, MD. Better Bones and Beyond: Vitamin D Plays Role in Inflammatory and Metabolic Disease. Holistic Primary Care 2004; (Fall) 5: 3,6,7
21. Vasquez A. Integrative Orthopedics and Vitamin D: Testing, Administration, and New Relevance in the Treatment of Musculoskeletal Pain. Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients 2004; October, 75-77
22. John Cannell, MD and Vasquez A. Measuring Your Vitamin D Levels: Your Most Important Blood Test? mercola.com/2004/jul/3/vitamin_d_levels.htm 2004, July 3
23. Vasquez A. Interventions Need to Be Consistent with Osteopathic Philosophy. JAOA: Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 2006 Sep
24. Vasquez A. Web-like Interconnections of Physiological Factors. Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal 2006 Apr/May
25. Vasquez A. Reducing pain and inflammation naturally - Part 6: Nutritional and Botanical Treatments against “Silent Infections” and Gastrointestinal Dysbiosis, Commonly Overlooked Causes of Neuromusculoskeletal Inflammation and Chronic Health Problems. Nutritional Perspectives—by ACA Council on Nutr 2006 Jan
26. Vasquez A. “Chapter 10: Organ System Function and Underlying Mechanisms: The Interconnected Web.” In Jones DS (Editor-in-Chief). Textbook of Functional Medicine. Institute for Functional Medicine. 2005
27. Vasquez A. “Chapter 25: Structural Imbalances.” In Jones DS (Editor-in-Chief). Textbook of Functional Medicine. Institute for Functional Medicine. 2005
28. Vasquez A. “Chapter 27: Inflammation and Autoimmunity: A Functional Medicine Approach.” In Jones DS (Editor-in-Chief). Textbook of Functional Medicine. Institute for Functional Medicine. 2005
29. Vasquez A, Murray MT. Chapter 188 “Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease” in Pizzorno JE, Murray MT (Eds). Textbook of Natural Medicine: Third Edition. Churchill Livingstone. 2005 Nov
30. Vasquez A. Reducing pain and inflammation naturally - Part 5: Improving neuromusculoskeletal health by optimizing immune function and reducing allergic reactions: a review of 16 treatments and a 3-step clinical approach. Nutritional Perspectives—published by the ACA's Council on Nutrition 2005 Oct
31. Vasquez A, Muanza DN. Comment: evaluation of presence of aspirin-related warnings with willow bark.[letter] Annals of Pharmacotherapy 2005 Oct
32. Vasquez A, Cannell J. Calcium and vitamin D in preventing fractures: data are not sufficient to show inefficacy.[letter] BMJ: British Medical Journal 2005 May
33. Vasquez A. Reducing pain and inflammation naturally Part 4: Nutritional and Botanical Inhibition of NFkappaB, Major Intracellular Amplifier of the Inflammatory Cascade. A Practical Clinical Strategy Exemplifying Anti-Inflammatory Nutrigenomics. Nutritional Perspectives—published by American Chiropractic Association's Council on Nutrition 2005 July
34. Vasquez A. Subphysiologic Doses of Vitamin D are Subtherapeutic: Comment on the Study by The Record Trial Group. TheLancet.com 2005 May online
35. Vasquez A. Reducing pain and inflammation naturally - Part 3: Improving overall health while safely and effectively treating musculoskeletal pain. Nutritional Perspectives—published by the American Chiropractic Association's Council on Nutrition 2005; 28: 34-38, 40-42
36. Vasquez A. Healthcare for our bones: Practical nutritional approach to preventing osteoporosis. [Letter]. JManipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2005;28:213
37. Vasquez A. Reducing Pain and Inflammation Naturally. Part 2: New Insights into Fatty Acid Supplementation and Its Effect on Eicosanoid Production and Genetic Expression. Nutritional Perspectives—published by the American Chiropractic Association's Council on Nutrition 2005; January: 5-16
38. Muanza DN, Vasquez A, et al. Isoflavones and Postmenopausal Women. [Letter] JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association 2004; 292: 2337
39. Vasquez A. Reducing Pain and Inflammation Naturally. Part 1: New Insights into Fatty Acid Biochemistry and the Influence of Diet. Nutritional Perspectives—published by the American Chiropractic Association's Council on Nutrition 2004 Oct
40. Vasquez A, Gilbert Manso, M.D., John Cannell, M.D. The Clinical Importance of Vitamin D (Cholecalciferol). Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 2004
41. Vasquez A. A brief review of two potential adverse effects of zinc supplementation. Nutritional Perspectives—published by the ACA's Council on Nutrition 1995
[2] DeAngelis T, American Psychological Association. A broader view of psychopathy. American Psychological Association 2022 Mar apa.org/monitor/2022/03/ce-corner-psychopathy. Sanz-García et al. Prevalence of Psychopathy in the General Adult Population: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Front Psychol. 2021 Aug 5;12:661044
[3] Fuller A. Chiropractic Colleges Seek Legitimacy Amid Financial Woes. Chron Higher Ed 2012 Apr15 chronicle.com/article/chiropractic-colleges-seek-legitimacy-amid-financial-woes/
[4] Stripling J. Presidential Couple at Chiropractic College Draws Fire. Chron Higher Ed 2012 Apr15 chronicle.com/article/presidential-couple-at-chiropractic-college-draws-fire-over-wifes-role/
[5] Stripling J. Dogged by Nepotism Charges, Chiropractic College Reveals Earnings of Chief’s Family. Chron Higher Ed 2012 Oct17 https://www.chronicle.com/article/dogged-by-nepotism-charges-chiropractic-college-reveals-earnings-of-chiefs-family/
[6] Vasquez A. Official Guidelines guarantee failure in treatment of chronic pain per American Family Physician and American Academy of Family Physicians 2021
. Paradigm Shift in Medical Management of Chronic Pain 2024, part1
