The Myth of “Organ Autonomy”and Stephen Perle’s Claim About the Nervous System
Originally published: 2025-09-09
The Provocative Claim
Stephen Perle, DC, MS, University of Bridgeport professor and a longtime editorial figure at Chiropractic & Manual Therapies, made an extraordinary assertion:
“The authors quote Gray’s Anatomy about the idea that the nervous system controls and coordinates all organs and structures. This is not relevant to the study and is untrue. Many organs function well without nervous system control.”
When challenged on this, rather than clarify or walk it back, Perle doubled down. On social media he wrote:
“Of course. It is absolutely true that many organs function without nervous system control. We know this from both basic science and the fact that after trauma that severs nerves and the spinal cord, organs still function.”
This is a bold claim, but it is also profoundly wrong. Organs like the heart or gut may continue to display activity after a spinal cord injury or during transplantation, however this does not demonstrate independence from the nervous system. In fact, it proves the opposite.
“What appears as organ independence is actually the persistence of local nervous system control. The nervous system is still there, embedded, striving to coordinate and adapt.”
The Nervous System Is Still There
Perle conflates the absence of higher central nervous system input with the absence of nervous system control altogether. They are not the same thing.
A transplanted heart continues to beat not because it is free of the nervous system, but because of its sinoatrial node and intrinsic conduction system, often referred to as the “little brain of the heart.” These pacemaker tissues are specialized nervous system structures. Likewise, the gut continues to function after spinal cord injury because of the enteric nervous system, which contains hundreds of millions of neurons and is sometimes called the “second brain.” The bladder may still contract, but only because sacral reflex arcs, again, neurons remain intact.
In each of these cases, organ activity persists because of nervous system elements embedded within the tissues themselves. What Perle describes as organ autonomy is simply nervous system activity occurring at a local level.
Function Versus “Function Well”
The second major problem is Perle’s use of the phrase “function well.” Surviving is not the same as thriving adapting or expressing resilience. While a transplanted heart may beat, it cannot adapt normally to exercise or stress without sympathetic and parasympathetic input. Patients with denervated hearts live with reduced adaptability and impaired physiological responses. Similarly, spinal cord–injured patients experience chronic constipation, malabsorption, autonomic dysfunction, and urinary disorders despite the persistence of reflexive or baseline activity. Endocrine glands may secrete hormones when exposed to circulating stimuli, but without neuroendocrine integration, feedback loops fail and homeostasis is undermined.
This is not “functioning well.” It is a crude, maladaptive survival state.
“Survival-level physiology should never be confused with normal, healthy, integrated function and adaptability.”
Reinnervation: Proof of the Nervous System’s Role
Another key point that undermines Perle’s claim is the phenomenon of reinnervation. Over time, transplanted hearts sometimes undergo partial reinnervation, with new nerve fibers extending into the graft. This allows for some restoration of autonomic modulation. Far from demonstrating that organs operate independently, reinnervation testifies to the inherent recuperative powers of the body and the nervous system’s relentless drive to restore coordination.
This constant striving for reestablished neural integration is not an accident of nature. It is proof of the body’s design, confirming that full health and adaptability depend on nervous system control and coordination.
“Reinnervation is the body’s own admission that nervous system control is essential and irreplaceable.”
What the Evidence Really Shows
The examples Perle cites do not prove that organs can function without nervous system control. They show that nervous system elements exist at multiple levels and that when higher oversight is lost, primitive local circuits maintain a bare minimum of activity. But this is not independence, it is dependence on decentralized neural mechanisms. The result is maladaptive physiology that compromises health and survival.
This is precisely why Gray’s Anatomy has long declared that the nervous system controls and coordinates all organs and structures. Hormones, local reflexes, and intrinsic pacemakers all play supportive roles, but none of them replace or negate nervous system control. To argue otherwise is to misrepresent the very framework of physiology.
Senzon’s Findings: A Pattern of Flawed Reasoning
This episode is not an isolated misstep. Simon Senzon’s 2022 dissertation, Truth, Lies, and Chiropractic, examined the 31 most influential papers in the chiropractic identity literature and found 339 fallacies across 27 of them. Perle co-authored four of those papers, each rated as critically or fatally flawed. Senzon’s work revealed a troubling pattern of bias and poor scholarship among authors whose writings have shaped chiropractic’s professional identity.
Perle’s denial of the nervous system’s central role in organ function is consistent with this pattern. It is part of a broader attempt to downplay or erase vertebral subluxation by undermining the primacy of nervous system control.
The Larger Implication
These claims matter because they filter into how chiropractic is taught, how policy is shaped, and how the public perceives the profession. If the nervous system is portrayed as incidental, then interference to it becomes irrelevant. If subluxation is minimized or erased, chiropractic is reduced to a narrow musculoskeletal specialty stripped of its core.
This is not simply an academic debate. It is about the very identity of chiropractic and the truth about how the human body functions.
The Bottom Line
Stephen Perle’s assertion that many organs function well without nervous system control is false. The organs rely on intrinsic neural circuits, reflex arcs, and pacemaker cells, all of which are nervous system elements. What is lost when central input is severed is not nervous system control but higher-level coordination and adaptability. And the very phenomenon of reinnervation demonstrates that the body itself strives to restore nervous system integration because it is essential for health.
The nervous system is not optional. It is the master coordinator of life. As Gray’s Anatomy affirms, the nervous system controls and coordinates all organs and structures. That reality has not changed, and no rhetorical maneuvering can alter it.
