Originally Posted by DrStitzel

The National Scoliosis Foundation was started in 1976 and has served as a beacon of light for scoliosis patients and their families by rejecting, rather than accepting the darkness of hopelessness. The non-profit organization, originally created by Mrs. Laura Gowen, grew out of a rejection of the status quo and a realization that scoliosis doesn’t have to define a person, or their lifetime. She realized that a person is more than just the summation of their pieces and parts; especially if some of those parts happen to form a cobb angle.
It is because of these heroic beginnings that it brings so much concern to see the NSF’s chief mouthpiece, the online public forum, degrade into the negative environment that it is today. Opinions, non-mainstream ideas, alternative treatment experiences, and even published research that doesn’t fit into the narrow perspective of a few out-spoken forum members/moderators routinely come under attack (often on a personal level) and are subject to “got-ya” style political ambushes.
This isn’t the broad scope place to exchange ideas, share information, and provide emotional support for which the online forum was intended. The tone of conversations is often very hostile and unproductive. The moderators frequently allow other forum members to openly and viciously degrade member posts that challenge the conventional wisdom of the day or worse yet, participate in the one-sided-attacks themselves. The forum leaders even have the audacity to delete threads or posts they personally deem as “unworthy”. It seems that the NSF forum has become lost in its primary mission of serving the scoliosis community with a mouthpiece that represents the whole scoliosis community in favor of the agenda of a narrow few members/moderators with an axe to grind.
I challenge the National Scoliosis forum to return to its grassroots and once again become committed to finding a better way. The NSF forum should be a meeting place without prejudice, without personal agendas, and without censorship (from both editing or character assassination). I challenge the NSF forum to once again become the mouthpiece for the whole scoliosis community. It is in the best interests of the entire scoliosis community for the NSF forum to unite and lead patients, parents, and health-care professionals to a place where ideas are judged on their merit, not by their adherence to the accepted conventional wisdom of the day.
I’m sure that I will be attacked on a personal and professional level for being the first outspoken critic of the NSF forum’s current state of affairs….the seems to be the way they do things in that forum…., but change is a slow, difficult, and sometimes a painful process that often comes from a single dissenting voice.

Silence when there should be protest is what makes cowards of men.
-Abe Lincoln

Best in health,

Clayton J. Stitzel DC