How Medical Doctors Change Their Minds
Commentary from Jennifer Margulis
'Cammy Benton, M.D., owner of Benton Integrative Medicine, started her career as a conventional M.D. A mom of three, she watched her children’s health deteriorate every time she took them to the doctor. But it still took her years to realize that some mainstream medical practices, including unnecessary C-sections, reducing fever with acetaminophen, and vaccinating babies against a sexually transmitted disease at birth and during infancy were not in the best interests of children’s health and well-being. (This post is not about Dr. Benton, however.
I had an amazing talk with a medical doctor who began her career adamantly believing in the safety and necessity of all the CDC-recommended vaccines. In medical school, like all aspiring doctors, she was taught to trust medical authority.
Since then she’s changed her mind about a lot of her beliefs. She’s now well versed in alternative health, a champion for non-pharmaceutical health solutions, and a vaccine safety advocate.

How Did This Doctor Change Her Mind?
Dr. M told me that her change of heart started years ago when she “got into it” with an acquaintance on Facebook.

Let’s call the acquaintance Gina. In a thread on a Facebook post, Gina asked Dr. M questions about vaccines and vaccine safety. She didn’t walk away when the conversation got heated (which it did). She stayed calm, kind, respectful, and engaged the whole time.
Gina also praised Dr. M for being willing to have a conversation and to exchange information. And she asked her all the right questions.

To wit: “I haven’t been able to find large-scale safety studies comparing statistically significant numbers of completely unvaccinated children with fully vaccinated children. I’m eager for you to send me that science, so I can read it. That will go a long way to reassuring me that the brain, immune, and heart damage parents are seeing in their children after vaccinating aren’t actually due to vaccines.”

At first Dr. M got angry. She answered belligerently and almost blocked Gina. But she liked to be right (what doctor doesn’t?) and was eager to prove Gina wrong. So she checked in with a subscription-only group of other Mama MDs.

“This crazy anti-vaccine crackpot is asking me for vaccine safety studies. I can’t believe people think this way! Everyone knows that vaccines are safe. Send me your best URLs to large peer-reviewed studies so I can prove her wrong!”
Gina also praised Dr. M for being willing to have a conversation and to exchange information. And she asked her all the right questions.

Guess what happened?
The Mama MD doctor group got furious at Dr. M! Instead of sending her safety data, they sent her newspaper articles from places like CNN and NBC (media outlets that take enormous amounts of advertising money from pharmaceutical companies.) The Mama docs also jumped all over her, and actually accused Dr. M of being a troll.

“I wanted science and they freaked out,” Dr. M laughs about it now. “I was being canceled just for asking questions. That was my first red flag.”

Instead of shutting down due to cognitive dissonance, she kept digging. But the more research she did, the more she saw that the calm and gracious woman who she believed to be a “crazy anti-vaccine crackpot” was actually not a crackpot at all. In fact, she was right about her vaccine safety concerns.
Another Doctor Opens Her Mind
Something similar happened with another doctor friend of mine. A breastfeeding advocate who unquestioningly believed in the current vaccine program, despite understanding how the formula industry pays off doctors in order to undermine women’s ability to breastfeed, this medical doc was also willing to engage in the conversation.

Some brave moms in my social media network kept it respectful, shared credible information with her, and told her about their personal experiences. They stayed engaged. And kept asking follow-up questions.

This doctor, too, now has a much more nuanced point of view about vaccines, supports parents who choose to follow a modified schedule, and has told me she wants to write about vaccine safety, though she’s afraid to go public for fear of losing her job and her social standing.
The Take-Away
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Anger doesn’t help get your point across. Neither does name-calling.

Advocates and activists of all stars and stripes—please remember to keep your cool. On-line and in real life. Talk to people where they’re at, not where you want them to be. Remember that you were once where they are now: adamant that you were right and the “other side” was simply crazy.

Keep sharing your stories, sharing the science, and asking them questions. But do so politely. Listen with genuine interest to other people’s points of view.

And maybe—just maybe—you’ll change your mind as well.'