Australian Medical Association wants Covid vaccine sceptic doctor off the ballot at upcoming election
With elections nearing in the Australian state of Tasmania, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) has weighed in, declaring the Liberal Party’s preselection of a Covid vaccine critic as “untenable.”
“Liberal Party’s anti-vaccine doctor selection is a mistep,” stated the AMA last week, immediately following the announcement of Dr Julie Sladden’s preselection in the seat of Bass, in northern Tasmania.
Dr Julie Sladden is a medical doctor who, after decades of practice, closed her practice in 2021 due to the Covid vaccine mandates.
Since then, Dr Sladden has been active in politics and the media, frequently writing critical op-eds on the topics of pandemic policies and vaccine safety, consulting to federal Liberal MP Russell Broadbent, and co-founding the not-for-profit Australians for Science and Freedom.
Results from the last federal election in 2022 suggest that there is considerable appetite amongst Tasmanian voters for candidates with Dr Sladden’s willingness to question the prevailing establishment consensus.
At that election, one in four Tasmanians (27.8%), voted for minor parties, which have been collectively referred to as the ‘freedom’ parties due to their common opposition to the illiberal pandemic policies favoured by the two major parties (conservative Liberals and left-wing Labor) and the Greens. The Liberal Coalition received 32.9% of the vote, and Labor just 27.3%.
The Liberal Party’s preselection of Dr Sladden therefore appears to be a strategic move to funnel some of the ‘freedom’ votes back to the Coalition.
However, AMA Tasmania vice president, Dr Annette Barratt, doesn’t want Tasmanians to have that option at the next election - she wants Dr Sladden off the ballot altogether.
As reported by Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC,
“The Australian Medical Association (AMA) Tasmania described Dr Julie Sladden's comments and articles as "dangerous" and "misleading", and that her preselection as a Liberal candidate for Bass was "untenable"…
“AMA Tasmania vice president Dr Annette Barratt said it was highly concerning that the Liberals had preselected Dr Sladden.
"It is untenable for any government trying to urge Tasmanians to follow the best clinical advice and vaccinate to have one of its own undermining that message," she said….”
Bear in mind that the current clinical advice from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) is that you should really only get a booster if you’re old or infirm, and that in fact, the risks outweigh the benefits for young folk.
The article continues,
“Dr Barratt said the public looks to political leaders for accurate information.
"COVID vaccines have saved lives and continue to do so," she said.
The AMA statement also reminded doctors that they must, “ensure your medical opinions are based on peer-reviewed evidence.”
Pause to consider the irony of this statement coming out in the same week that international headlines featured the findings of new safety signals and apparent dose-effects arising from the largest ever peer-reviewed Covid vaccine safety study, involving 99 million people from multiple countries.
Conducted by scientists affiliated with the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the New Zealand Ministry of Health, this study adds to thousands of peer-reviewed papers published over the past several years documenting Covid vaccine harms.
Media reporting on the study emphasised that where there is risk, patients must have the opportunity to give informed consent - a core principle of medicine that Dr Sladden has advocated for unwaveringly throughout the pandemic.
The AMA is Australia’s peak professional body for doctors. Its purpose, as stated on its website, is to promote and protect the interests of doctors, as well as protecting the healthcare interests of patients and communities, and working with governments to develop and influence health policy.
The AMA is also committed to improving and promoting equity, inclusion, and diversity in Australia’s medical profession through its policy and advocacy work, to which it has dedicated an entire Comittee.
However, the AMA’s commitment diversity, equity and inclusions falters when it comes to the democratic process of voting for a candidate who best represents your interests - political parties must only run candidates approved by the AMA for their uniformity of opinion.
To include any voices on the ballot that run counter to the AMA’s position on health policy would be “untenable.”
Such hypocritical posturing is the result of a medical professional establishment mistakenly thinking themselves to be kingmakers.
Yet the AMA has shown themselves to be woefully out of touch with public sentiment, burning through whatever remaining political capital it still has after years of wilfully blind adherence to the ‘safe and effective’ dogma.
Australians have all but abandoned the ‘safe and effective’ Covid boosters, with the latest government figures showing that only 3.3% of adults aged 18-64 have taken a booster in the past six months. With public trust in government and institutions continuing to decline in the West, voters are tired of being told not to believe their lying eyes.
In its effort to publicly pressure the Liberal Party to toe the establishment line in its choice of candidates, the AMA has perhaps unwittingly alerted Tasmanians to the fact that if you no longer trust the medical establishment, Dr Julie Sladden will represent your interests.
As for Dr Barratt, her position is “untenable on foundational scientific and democratic principles,” wrote Emiritus Professor Ramesh Thakur of the Crawford School of Public Policy, in a rapid response published earlier today in the Epoch Times.
Prof Thakur, alongside Dr Sladden is a co-founder of Australians for Science and Freedom, a group which seeks to uphold core principles of scientific enquiry.
“In fact, it is the AMA that owes the people of Tasmania an apology for this unwarranted intrusion into the electoral process,” he said.
Indeed, it is now up to voters, and not the medical establishment, to decide who will best represent the interests of Tasmanians at the next election.
Disclosure: I also am a member of Australians for Science and Freedom, and have featured Dr Julie Sladden’s perspectives in several articles, including my most recent for Umbrella News on immune suppression. DDU remains politically non-partisan, and does not advocate for any particular candidates or parties.
*Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Dr Sladden had surrendered her registration with AHPRA in 2021. This is incorrect. Dr Sladden remains registered, but closed her practice in 2021.
To support my work, make a one-off contribution to DDU via my Kofi account and/or subscribe. Thanks!
I live in Queensland so I cannot directly affect politcal matters in far off Tasmania, but I will be contacting my local MP for the federal electorate in which I live - who is a Liberal - as well as the Liberal-National Senators for Queensland, and will be telling them that if the Liberal Party removes Julie Sladdern from their ticket, then the Liberals will never get my vote again - or the votes of my extended family - and we are all traditional Liberal voters.
I think that the AMA has a bloody hide to try this on. It only goes to show how far they and their member doctors have fallen. I lost my best friend to heart failure about three weeks after he was injected with the toxic jab. There was no autopsy. He was extremely fit and had never had a history of cardiac disease. I cannot forgive the members of organisations such as the AMA for their refusal to put the interests of their patients first.
f*ck the AMA
this is no time to be polite
.. they continue to remain silent on deaths and injuries from the C19 injectables
.. as an organisation they have failed First, Do No Harm, making the AMA untenable
f*ck the AMA