THE Melbourne chiropractor who was widely criticised by doctors and other chiropractors for cracking a four-day-old baby’s back in a viral video, has defended his actions during an awkward interview on Studio 10 this morning.

The video of Ian Rossborough treating the newborn baby, who suffered from colic and reflux, has received more than one million views on YouTube.

Last week, the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Frank Jones, said there was “absolutely no basis” for this “outlandish” treatment on a newborn baby and launched an attack on the chiropractic industry as a whole, telling news.com.au there is “no scientific basis for most of the stuff they do”.

Dr Rossborough admitted the chiropractic profession is “light on clinical trials”, but insisted his treatment methods are not damaging.

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years ... if there was a problem somewhere, if there was any injury somewhere, I would know about it,” he said.

“The pressure of my fingers, [it’s] just the end of my finger ... the finger tip is directed to a very specific part of the child’s dysfunctional spine.

On Wednesday morning, Dr Rossborough was grilled by Studio 10 hosts Sarah Harris, who recently gave birth to a baby boy, and by Jessica Rowe, who has two daughters.

“What evidence to you have to suggest that [cracking the baby’s back] helped with her colic?” asked Harris. “Where are the peer-reviewed studies on chiropractic methods working on babies? Where are the long term clinical trials that shows that this works?”

“I’m not an expert on research,” Dr Rossborough said.

“If you’re going to perform this sort of therapy on a four-day-old baby, shouldn’t you really be across all of that research?” Harris responded.

Doctor under fire for video showing him cracking newborn's back Doctors condemn chiropractor cracking newborn baby's back. Courtesy: Fox News.

“It’s not putting a force in the body that the baby can’t handle. It would be a lot more dangerous to leave that joint in the wrong position.

“This is a story that’s come out of a baby getting well with no side effects no injury, a very safe healthy practice and a very happy baby and very happy parents.”

When asked how this method can treat colic, Dr Rossborough gave a confusing response, saying “there is no actual treatment of colic as such.”

“It’s not like the baby comes in with a diagnosis of colic and then we set about treating colic,” he said.

“We don’t have an actual ... it’s not like medicine where you have symptom plus a symptom equals colic and then there’s a medication to treat the colic. There’s no colic bone, there’s no part of the spine that’s directly related to colic.

“What we do when a sick person comes to us is look at their whole health picture and ask what can we do to help? What part of this problem is for us? In her case, that gorgeous baby had a very specific problem in her spine that was causing her a lot of distress and a lot of pain.”

Dr Rossborough says he has 30 years experience in the health profession, including 12 years a nurse in a hospital and 20 years as a chiropractor, specialising in spinal dysfunction. He says he would “absolutely” perform this procedure on his own children, as seen in this video:

He said the parents of the newborn baby had come to him previously to treat their first son, and had success then too.

“The parents were beside themselves and they couldn’t find an answer. They did have a good experience with their older boy, who was born with a lot of distress. We fixed him he was younger, so they brought little Millicent [the baby girl] in to see if I could help.”

There has been some speculation on social media that Dr Rossborough was an anti-vaxxer.

“Do you support vaccination?” Rowe asked him.

“I definitely support a parent’s choice to vaccinate,” he replied.

When asked by news.com.au last week what his stance was on vaccination, Dr Rossborough said: “I do not disagree with parents choosing to vaccinate their children.”

Last week, the deputy president of the Chiropractor’s Association of Australia, Andrew Lawrence, said the video of Dr Rossborough doesn’t do the chiropractic industry “any favours”.

Dr Lawrence says while the practice of cracking a newborn’s back isn’t commonplace, it’s not “completely out of the question”.

“It’s certainly not recommended as a first result,” he told news.com.au earlier this week. “Most of these tensions within the baby can be released by gentle stretching. I can understand why people are a bit taken aback by it, but it has been used in the past and in some circumstances it can work.

“It could be that this technique was the most appropriate to use in the situation, but there are plenty of other techniques that you could use first.”

When contacted by news.com.au, Dr Rossborough denied he actually “cracked” the baby’s back.

“Anyone that understands anatomy would understand that the bones themselves could never ‘crack’, but a sound can be made by reducing the pressure in the fluid within a joint,” he said last week.

“I agree with [president of the Chiropractor’s Association of Australia] Dr Lawrence. ‘Cracking backs’ is not a specific chiropractic adjustment and has no place in chiropractic industry.

“We do not ‘treat’ colic, reflux or any other specific illnesses. We only focus on the natural function of the joints of the human body, especially the spinal joints.

“I would never condone or support anyone who randomly and generally manipulated the spine of any person, at any age, for any reason, especially a baby’s,” he said.

Studio 10 airs weekdays on Channel 10 at 8.30am

rebecca.sullivan@news.com.au