Skip to content
Dr. Trust Me BroDr. Trust Me BroIndependent data journalism · wry humor

Scope of practice

Conditions doc bros advertise outside their license

Conditions that named non-physician doctors, mostly chiropractors, list as things they treat, grouped by who is most at risk if the advertised care is wrong. Every name links to the full dossier, the page it was said on, and the state rule we read it against.

49Named doc bros
43Conditions
40With their own page
525Advertised claims

Ordered by the group most at risk, then by how many doc bros advertise it. Position says nothing about any individual. Checked means the advertised activity was compared against the permitted activities in the cited rule text. As we read it means a reviewer reading without that confirmation. Classifications reflect our review, not an adjudicated finding.

Tier 1 · Infants and childrenThe age group a pediatric body singles out for possible highest adverse-event risk, and the one age a national regulator has told practitioners to avoid11 conditions · 16 doc bros

Developmental and behavioral regression

1 doc bro · 1 advertised claim

Jaban M Moore · MO

1doc bro
Tier 2 · Pregnancy, fertility and newbornsGiven their own protections in federal research rules, and named in a provincial regulator's advertising rules4 conditions · 12 doc bros
Tier 3 · CancerThe severity axis the FTC itself uses; delayed care is the harm1 condition · 5 doc bros
Tier 4 · Serious infectious and post-infectiousCarved out of the license by statute in several states3 conditions · 14 doc bros
Tier 5 · Mental health, neurological and cognitiveCongress wrote a dedicated penalty statute for deceptive treatment marketing in this class9 conditions · 23 doc bros
Tier 6 · Heart, kidney and liverNamed in state carve-outs alongside infectious disease2 conditions · 12 doc bros
Tier 7 · Endocrine and metabolicThe largest category by volume, and the one most often framed as root-cause care6 conditions · 35 doc bros
Tier 8 · Autoimmune, digestive and fatigueChronic conditions where delayed diagnosis is the main harm7 conditions · 33 doc bros

How this list is built

Who is counted. Only people we could confirm in the federal provider registry with a profession license number, whose scope review ran at high or medium confidence, and who are not registry-confirmed medical doctors or osteopathic physicians.

What counts as a condition. Only advertised activities our review classified as outside scope under the cited state rule text. Gray-area and unclear items never appear. Musculoskeletal care, lab panels, techniques, devices, and books or courses about a condition are not offers to treat it and are not counted. Around half of eligible rows map to no condition at all and never render.

What the two labels mean. Checked against the cited rule text means the advertised activity was compared with the permitted activities in that statute. As we read the published rules means a reviewer reading without that confirmation. Both are our reading of public pages, not an adjudicated finding. Boards decide; we do not allege.

How we avoid misattribution. Pages that host guests, and single posts that name another practitioner, are left out so one person's words are never attributed to another. Patient testimonials are never shown as a practitioner's own words. A single social post can support a listing but never puts a name on a page by itself.

Naming. Every person named on a condition reached the same bar: a federal registry match with a license number, a scope review at high or medium confidence, an active Wall of Fame entry, and at least one advertised activity the review placed outside the cited rule text. One person is enough. A condition gets its own page once an archived receipt of that wording exists; until then it stays a row on this hub, and every row links to the report it came from.

Why children come first. In a 2017 clinical report the American Academy of Pediatrics said the risk of adverse events from spinal manipulation may be highest in infants and children, because the spine is not yet stable, and that high-quality evidence for using it on non-musculoskeletal problems is lacking. Australia's national chiropractic regulator has advised chiropractors not to use spinal manipulation on children under two since March 2019, advice replaced in November 2023 and reinstated in June 2024 at the request of that country's health ministers. British Columbia's chiropractic regulator has told registrants since October 2018 that they must not represent chiropractic as helping childhood conditions such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. US research rules give children and pregnant people their own protections. US consumer-protection penalty enhancements cover seniors and disabled people, not minors, so we rank children first on medical and regulator grounds and say so here.

What this page does not measure. Our corpus is where we scanned, not a national survey, and a handful of states dominate it. A condition missing here is not evidence that nobody advertises it.

Records may share a common name with someone else, may be incomplete, or may have since been resolved, dismissed, or overturned. This section is analysis and opinion, not legal advice.