“A new court ruling has again called into question a widely used but controversial chiropractic treatment, concluding that a Newfoundland practitioner made a patient deaf in one ear and caused other debilitating injuries by performing a neck manipulation on him. The judge in the civil suit found the chiropractor negligent and will decide later what compensation to award Abe Gallant, who says he had to leave his $80,000-a-year job because of the damage. The decision follows a series of public inquiries and inquests that have blamed cervical manipulation for strokes, some of them fatal, and the filing of a $500-million class action suit in Alberta that targeted the allegedly dangerous chiropractic therapy. "This is not something new ... they've been maiming people all over the country," Mr. Gallant said in an interview yesterday, suggesting the procedure be banned. "I'm lucky that I can talk about what happened. Most of them are dead or on respirators."” National Post (21st January 2010)