Dena Churchill says that if the price for sharing her health truths" is a $100,000 fine and losing her career, it's a price she's willing to accept. The former Halifax-based chiropractor surrendered her licence and admitted to charges of professional incompetence following a lengthy investigation by the Nova Scotia College of Chiropractors, all prompted by Churchill's persistent sharing of views on vaccines. CBC News began reporting on the complaints against Churchill in 2018, but she has declined to speak publicly until now. In a recent interview, Churchill said she believes there is a distinction between what she was posting on personal social media pages and what she was doing in her professional capacity. She said she felt "assaulted" that her professional governing body could mandate and govern her personal views. "I didn't want to take [the posts] down," she said. "This whole issue is not about what I was doing in my practice or what I was promoting in my practice ... I was reprimanded on my own personal views and wanting to share it with the people I love." Churchill said the information she was sharing was intended for just a few family members, although she also compared what she was doing to living in a building she discovered had arsenic in the water system. "I'd go knock on every door in that building to let them know because I would feel a human desire to help and to share information," she said.
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.