Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
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Focus Alternat Complement Ther©2005 Pharmaceutical Press
Focus Altern Complement Ther 2008; 13: 3–4
Dana Lawrence is an associate professor at the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research, as well as the Human Protections Administrator for Palmer College of Chiropractic. He is also past-editor for several professional scientific journals for the chiropractic profession, including the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (for many years the sole journal in the chiropractic profession to be indexed in Index Medicus and Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, along with other international databases), Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, Journal of Chiropractic Humanities, and the Journal of Sports Chiropractic and Rehabilitation. As a founding member of the Chiropractic Research Journal Editors’ Council, Dana Lawrence has helped to elevate the profession’s understanding of the issues involved in ethical biomedical publication and to set standards governing that publication. He was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), and later became a member of the Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Council of the OAM and the North American Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). He drafted the entry on chiropractic that appeared in Alternative Medicine: Expanding Medical Horizons. He was invited to participate in President Clinton’s healthcare reform programme. Dana Lawrence has many professional publications, including textbooks and articles. In 1998, he was named ‘Researcher of the Year’ by the Foundation for Chiropractic Research and Education for his service to the profession. His current research involves developing best practice statements for the use of spinal manipulation for low back pain, as well as being a member of a team planning to conduct a clinical trial studying manipulation set on a US army base.
Q Which part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
DL: The constant involvement in attempting to understand the science behind what my profession does in patient care.
Q What stimulates your creativity?
DL: The need to answer the questions that have not yet been answered.
Q What is the greatest danger to CAM?
DL: Lack of a sufficient evidence base. But also, the fact that CAM is often treated as a single entity when it is not, therefore allowing critics to target all of CAM by pointing out the problems in one discipline within it.
Q What does your mother-in-law think about you working in CAM?
DL: She loves it. She cannot live without her chiropractor and her osteopath.
Q What makes a good researcher?
DL: An inability to accept things as they are, combined with a need to understand how things are the way they are.
Q If you had not entered your current profession, what would you have liked to do?
DL: Write great fiction.
Q Which do you believe is the most over-rated virtue?
DL: Piety.
Q Which word do you overuse most?
DL: Well, it starts with “s” and has 4 letters …
Q What makes you happy?
DL: My family, my work, my friends. A good bottle of wine as a simple pleasure.
Q What depresses you?
DL: That I will never read all the books I want to nor listen to the music I want to, and that I have not accomplished enough in the time I have had.
Q What is your greatest extravagance?
DL: A bottle of Harlan Estate wine.
Q What makes you lose your patience?
DL: Slow drivers. Politicians. Pundits.
Q What is your greatest temptation?
DL: No question, good food.
Q What is your favourite food?
DL: Laugh all you want, but a melted cheese on salami sandwich made on a salt bagel. It’s the cholesterol nightmare!
Q What is your favourite holiday location?
DL: Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA. More specifically, Mills Lake in RMNP.
Q If you were a car, what make would you be?
DL: Pontiac Grand Prix — speedy, but not overly over-the- top.
Q Why do you think people like you?
DL: Because I bring immense positive energy to everything I do, and am loquacious to boot.
Q What was the most embarrassing moment in your life?
DL: It’s not really fit for family reading but involved pushing two beds together. They separated… .
