For many people, chiropractors are de facto primary health care providers, particularly in medically underserved rural areas like the western slope. Many people find it easier and more affordable to see a chiropractor than an M.D., and tend see their chiropractors far more often than they do M.D.s., generating familiarity and an atmosphere of trust with these health professionals. This puts chiropractors in a great position to deliver vital information about public health to good portion of the community, like educating people in positive health behaviors, informing them about what’s scientifically proven to work to keep people safe from Covid-19, and informing them about when to seek further medical care.

But instead of using their position to benefit public health, it turns out many Grand Junction chiropractors are dispensing egregiously incorrect medical information about vaccines and prevention of Covid-19. And these chiropractors aren’t just flushing their opportunity to be a community asset down the toilet. Chiropractors engaging in this behavior have effectively turned on the people who trust them, by misleading them in a very dangerous way, and often doing it for profit.

Rimrock Wellness Center strikes again

Another Grand Junction chiropractor spreading false medical information about Covid-19 vaccines and the coronavirus is Charles Daniel Vaden, D.C., who goes by the name Daniel Vaden.

Vaden works at Greg Haitz’s Rimrock Wellness Center at 12th and Patterson in Grand Junction. Last December, we saw how Haitz was profiting from the pandemic by marketing his own “Rimrock Wellness Center” proprietary brand of “immune support” supplement by inferring it would give “protection and support” against Covid-19.

To date no supplement has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prevent, treat or mitigate Covid-19, and claims like that about supplements of any kind are health fraud. The FDA has sent hundreds of cease-and-desist letters to businesses across the country like Rimrock Wellness Center that are doing the same thing.

Irresponsibly and militantly anti-vaccination

Vaden uses his status as a health care professional on his Facebook page to actively militate against Covid-19 vaccines, which are now among the most widely administered and closely studied vaccines in history.

FDA-approved Covid vaccines have been administered hundreds of millions of times in this country alone, and are proving to be extraordinarily safe and effective at reducing deaths from Covid-19 and keeping people out of the hospital, saving thousands of lives and helping  save the American health care system from collapse.

Despite this, Vaden refers to Covid-19 vaccines “death shots” and falsely claims

“Real scientists have proven this vax [the Covid vaccination] is 800 times more deadly than the smallpox vaccination and has killed over 150,000 Americans.”

This is untrue. Smallpox was a highly deadly disease that had been around for at least 3,000 years and had killed millions of people. The World Health Organizations (WHO) began the push to eradicate smallpox in 1959. Between 1959 and 1968, the heaviest period of smallpox vaccination in the U.S., there were 68 deaths from complications of the smallpox vaccine. The WHO declared the world free of smallpox on May 8, 1980 in what was widely considered to be the biggest international public health achievement in history.

Yet on October 31, 2021, Vaden wrote that “Vaccinations cause much much more harm than any perceived benefit. Vaccinations are a scam…”

Most of the 330 million people in the U.S. who have gotten childhood vaccines against smallpox, polio, measles, rubella, mumps, chicken pox, tetanus and a host of other diseases knows this claim is false.

Vaden, whose license does not qualify him to prescribe medications, tells people how to get the horse de-worming medication Ivermectin to use as an “early treatment” or prevention of Covid-19. Ivermectin has not been approved to treat Covid-19 and FDA warns that taking it for this purpose can be dangerous or even lethal. NPR reported last September that poison control centers nationwide were getting a dramatic surge of calls from people who were self-medicating with Ivermectin.

 

On Nov. 23rd, citing questionable sources (some of whom don’t even have full names), Vaden wrote that people who are fully vaccinated are nine times more likely to be hospitalized. Consistently, an average of about 80% of people hospitalized locally for Covid-19 have been unvaccinated.

In a December 5, 2021 post, Vaden wrote that “it is IMPOSSIBLE for the Omicron “Variant” (or ANY variant) to exist, let alone be tested for.”

All of these are dangerous and easily verifiable lies that spread misinformation and discourage vaccination — the best tool we have to reduce harm from the virus. Statements like the above put the community in danger.

Vaden was previously fined for practicing without a license

Vaden previously had disciplinary action taken against him by a state chiropractic board.

In July, 2016, Vaden, then under the name Charles Vaden, was fined $4,000 by the Tennessee state Chiropractic Board for practicing without a license.

We can assume that what Vaden says on his Facebook page is the same thing he is telling patients he sees at Rimrock Wellness Center, to the detriment of our entire area. Chiropractors like this are no doubt contributing to the extraordinarily low vaccination rate we suffer from in our area. To that end, he has been reported to the Colorado State Board of Chiropractic Examiners for making false and misleading statements about Covid-19. The complaint has been assigned a case number. It is Case No. 2022-693.