The Coroner’s Report on Joanna Kowalczyk: A Subtle Yet Dangerous Manipulation of Facts
How Key Omissions and Misleading Conclusions Shifted Blame onto Chiropractic Care While Ignoring Broader Medical Failures
Introduction
The death of Joanna Kowalczyk has been used by both the media and the coroner’s office to perpetuate the false narrative that chiropractic adjustments are inherently dangerous. While news outlets twisted the story to fit their own anti-chiropractic agenda, the coroner’s report itself also contained serious biases, selectively emphasizing chiropractic involvement while downplaying key medical failures.
Upon closer analysis, the coroner’s conclusions strategically framed chiropractic care as a contributing factor, despite the fact that Joanna’s arterial dissection likely began at the gym, her stroke was misdiagnosed by paramedics, and she refused critical medical interventions multiple times.
This blog post dissects the logical fallacies, omissions, and biases within the coroner’s report, exposing how even a supposedly neutral investigation manipulated the facts to shift blame onto the chiropractor while ignoring the larger healthcare system failures that contributed to her death.
CLICK HERE for a copy of the coroner’s report
How the Coroner’s Report Framed the Chiropractor Unfairly
While the coroner’s duty is to provide an objective analysis, several key aspects of the report reflect a clear bias against chiropractic care, creating a misleading impression of causality where none existed.
Misleading Cause of Death Statement: Implying Chiropractic Care Was a Factor
The coroner’s official cause of death states that Joanna died due to a combination of the consequences of chiropractic treatment following a naturally occurring medical event, on a background of an undiagnosed medical condition.
This wording subtly implies that chiropractic care played a role in worsening Joanna’s condition, when in reality:
Her arterial dissection began at the gym, not during an adjustment.
Medical doctors failed to diagnose the vascular injury when she first sought help.
Paramedics misdiagnosed her stroke and failed to transport her to the hospital.
She refused multiple opportunities to receive medical care.
A more accurate statement would have been:
"Joanna Kowalczyk died due to complications of a naturally occurring medical event, which was initially misdiagnosed, inadequately treated, and exacerbated by delayed emergency intervention."
By unnecessarily linking her death to chiropractic care, the coroner subtly reinforced the false narrative that her treatment contributed to her fatal outcome—despite no definitive evidence to support that claim.
Ignoring the Gym Injury as the Likely Root Cause
The coroner’s own timeline confirms that Joanna’s symptoms began immediately after a personal training session at the gym—a classic warning sign of an arterial dissection.
Yet, instead of acknowledging this as the most probable cause of her vascular injury, the coroner focused on her later chiropractic visits, leading to:
A false emphasis on chiropractic care as the culprit
The omission of gym-related risks as a discussion point
Exercise-related arterial dissections are well-documented in medical literature. Strenuous neck movements, weightlifting, or hyperextension of the cervical spine can trigger arterial injury, especially in individuals with undiagnosed connective tissue disorders like Joanna’s.
If Joanna had never visited a chiropractor, she still would have been at risk for stroke due to her gym-related injury.
By not directly stating that the gym incident was the likely primary cause, the coroner left room for blame to be redirected onto the chiropractor, despite the chiropractor’s lack of involvement in the original injury.
CLICK HERE for a detailed timeline of events
Downplaying Medical Provider Failures to Diagnose and Treat Joanna’s Condition
Instead of holding the hospital and emergency medical responders accountable, the coroner’s findings barely acknowledge their critical mistakes:
Joanna was advised to get a lumbar puncture but self-discharged without full testing—yet the coroner does not question whether doctors failed to adequately warn her of the risks.
The hospital did a CT of the head but should have also done angiograms and other testing.
She exhibited clear stroke symptoms after her last chiropractic visit, yet paramedics misdiagnosed her condition as a migraine and did not take her to the hospital.
When she was finally hospitalized, it was too late for effective stroke intervention.
Instead of stating outright that these failures significantly contributed to her death, the coroner glosses over them, focusing instead on the lack of chiropractors obtaining patient medical records—an issue irrelevant to the actual cause of her stroke.
Failing to Acknowledge the Surge in Post-COVID Vascular Events
One of the biggest omissions in both the coroner’s report and media coverage is the complete failure to consider the rise in vascular complications following COVID-19 infection and vaccination.
What We Know About Post-COVID Vascular Risks:
COVID-19 infections increase the risk of arterial dissections, clotting disorders, and stroke.
COVID-19 vaccines, particularly mRNA vaccines, have been linked to vascular complications such as myocarditis, blood clots, and cerebrovascular incidents.
Younger individuals have experienced an increase in unexplained vascular events since 2021, when Joanna suffered her fatal dissection.
Given Joanna’s young age and the sudden onset of an arterial dissection, her medical providers should have considered this possibility. Instead, the media and the coroner ignored it entirely.
The question remains:
Did Joanna recently have COVID-19?
Was she recently vaccinated?
Did her connective tissue disorder make her more vulnerable to post-COVID vascular complications?
Since vascular health concerns have increased dramatically post-COVID, every healthcare provider—medical, chiropractic, and emergency medicine—should be screening for these risks.
Final Verdict: A Coroner’s Report Designed to Fit the Narrative
While the coroner’s report should have been an unbiased examination of Joanna Kowalczyk’s death, it instead served as a tool to reinforce anti-chiropractic bias.
It framed chiropractic care as a contributing factor when there was no definitive evidence to support this.
It ignored the gym injury as the root cause.
It downplayed the hospital, medical doctors and paramedics’ responsibilities and failures that led to her misdiagnosis and delayed treatment.
It failed to acknowledge the rising trend in post-COVID vascular events.
The coroner should have:
Clearly stated that the gym incident was the most likely cause of the initial arterial dissection.
Held medical professionals accountable for their failure to diagnose and properly treat Joanna’s stroke symptoms.
Considered post-COVID vascular risks as a possible contributing factor.
Avoided suggesting chiropractic care was a causal factor without concrete medical evidence.
Unfortunately, the biased wording of the coroner’s report has fueled media misrepresentation, allowing the false chiropractic stroke myth to persist—all while ignoring the real healthcare failures that contributed to Joanna’s tragic death.
It’s time to demand better from coroners, the media, and the medical establishment. The truth matters. Joanna deserved better.
Click Below for the other articles in this series that break down the case:
What the News Reported vs. Reality – Analyzing the logical fallacies and disinformation in media coverage.
What the Coroner’s Report Actually Said – Examining Joanna’s medical timeline and the failures of emergency medicine and paramedics in properly diagnosing and treating her condition.
A Detailed Timeline of Events & critical decision making errors
Risk Management Strategies for Chiropractors – Providing evidence-based recommendations to ensure chiropractors can mitigate risks and protect both their patients and their profession in similar cases.
