25 Comments

As a doctor I would love to comment, but to speak my mind may lead to my deregistration.

AHPRA was a Labor government set up by Nicola Roxon, and like all Labor schemes, is in my mind an abject failure.

The world of medicine into which I entered 40 years ago is no more.

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“As a doctor I would love to comment, but to speak my mind may lead to my deregistration.”

Wow, Gareth, how bad is this?!

This is an absolutely desperate situation, reaching a crescendo with the Covid debacle and the destruction of voluntary informed consent for vaccination, with the wholehearted collaboration of most of the ‘profession’.

It’s obvious now there’s been a campaign for years in the medical profession to shut down dissent on controversial issues, cancelling out those practitioners who dare to rock the boat.

A few brave souls such as Jereth Kok, Duncan Syme, Mark Hobart and others, stuck by their principles, while the rest folded, happy to ‘follow orders’, and act as agents for the state and take the Medicare money.

What has the medical ‘profession’ become?! Where is the leadership?

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I think medicine reflects the world in general, where no dissent is tolerated, and critical thought is verboten.

It is essentially no different to the climate scam in that respect. As I have previously written, the traits required to make it into and through medical school - high conscientiousness and trait neuroticism - run counter to a critical mind.

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Grim.

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I agree! It is disheartening. I feel like we are now simply shills for the Pharmaceutical industry. I practice de-prescribing as much as I can!! It's a start.

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Excellent, well-researched and balanced piece. What a joy to read such brilliant journalism. Thank you for highlighting this important case. Regulators have usurped lawmaking from elected parliaments. We need to limit their powers.

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Thank you Alison 🙏

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The rose coloured glasses were ripped off my face in The Pandemonium regarding the Medical Fraternity and ALL its predatory Gatekeepers.

🤑🤑🤑 💉🩸💊🩺🤑🤑🤑

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Me too!

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I've watched AHPRA for decades. Quickly and surely their true colours shone. I observe them as an over-reaching regulator, set-up to heavily censor and control professionals under their gaze and in direct lockstep with the federal gov's political and other agenda/s.

While I may not agree entirely with Dr Kok's views on abortion, I agree with his general views of how the Medical Regulator & AHPRA did not operate appropriately. Sadly, which seems the case more so over the past 5 years, the Rule of Law appears lacking in dealing with his case, including unreasonable delay in hearing the case, causing profound income problems, character assassination based on personal religious views, and ultimately undertakings resulting in ending his career for said views.

It is clear that AHPRA and associated professional organisations (Medical Regulator) are increasingly being used as Gov cheer squad to censor, shut-down, control and remove descending voices...

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It would be interesting to see what percentage of the population agrees with Dr Kok on abortion. It may be more than we think. He pointed out in his witness statement that 38% of Australians voted against same sex marriage, a statistic I had forgotten and that actually surprised me on reading.

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By now I think we are all well aware of the reliability and accuracy of postal voting, the votes are irrelevant if the counters are biased. Further I believe that 90+% of the population have no idea what abortion actually looks like.

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I reckon you’re not wrong about that last sentence

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I think we shot ourselves in the foot on the SSM Yes or No debate. The movers and shakers of the No case refused to air the fact that data from a huge longitudinal USA study indicates that children are worse off under Same Sex Married Parenting than under Unmarried Same Sex Parenting. See https://tinyurl.com/SSMParenting. If that data were well known, I think the 38% No to SSM would have been significantly higher. And if the grisly facts of abortion, whether by starvation or poisoning or dismembering - before or after death - were known, I think more would agree with Dr Kok.

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Re: “Dr Kok also referenced the “industrial-scale massacre of babies by doctors,” called Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital the state’s “premier baby killing facility,”…”

It’s estimated there are around 80,000 abortions per year in Australia.[1]

This is a shocking figure, which can indeed be described as ‘industrial-scale’.

I can well understand a Christian doctor being aghast at the abortion industry.

It’s reported there were 67,546 surgical abortions in 2017-18.[1]

An abortion clinic website states that the upfront cost for surgical termination up to 12 weeks is $950.[2]

Just making that quick sum, that’s more than $64 million.

So abortion is a lucrative business.

Is this why doctors such as Jereth Kok have been cancelled out, for raising awkward moral issues that threaten this industry?

It is extremely grim that discussion on abortion is being suppressed.

No wonder medicine has become a moral desert.

References:

1. See for example: Estimating the abortion rate in Australia from National Hospital Morbidity and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme data | The Medical Journal of Australia: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.5694/mja2.51217

2. https://www.clinic66.com.au/abortion-faqs

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Richard Dawkins wrote an insightful essay called ‘They think it’s murder’ after Roe v Wade was overturned explaining to hysterical liberals that yes you are upset but they really actually do think it’s murder: https://richarddawkins.net/2022/05/dawkins-on-the-overturning-of-roe-they-think-its-murder/

I can completely understand why a conservative Christian (or Muslim or Hindu) doctor would not wish to perform or be involved in abortions.

In an era when so many other practitioners ARE willing to do it, I would prefer that such practitioners not only be excused from these providing this service, but also be free to state in public forums why they don’t want to do it.

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A disgraceful situation, where again, the process is the punishment - just for having an opinion which some bureaucrat disagrees with, based on anonymous reports!

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Speaking about this with my colleague Emma McArthur, she said:

QUOTE

AHPRA suspensions go totally against the fundamental principles of natural justice. There is zero due process and we are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty in Australian society. Therefore, a doctor should not be subject to such an arbitrary suspension for a purported thought/speech crime. It’s positively Orwellian. This is what happens when bureaucrats get their hands on the levers of power. It’s bonkers. It has also occurred many times. The church unfortunately also did this when it persecuted heretics.

The worm has turned now….

END OF QUOTE

It really is mind-boggling - how can a doctor be suspended for five years without resolution, literally left hanging?!

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Australian regulators:

AHPRA & ACMA - suspension and fines for something you wrote online.

The TGA - don’t worry about a few deaths, we’ll say it was a coincidence.

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Pretty much

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Where can i get a doctor like him?

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Yes indeed, the process is the punishment. That is the point of the process.

I fully support free speech, but acknowledge that using social media to say "controversial topics" will result in some sort of response. It is a trade off that must be considered.

Free speech is no longer free, it will cost you.

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Labelling same-sex parenting of children as “child abuse” is hopefully wrong in most cases. However, Scullins' analysis* (cited below) of a huge longitudinal study of American families showed that, on all measures, Married-Same-Sex-Parented-Children (MSSPCs) were, on average, worse off than DefactoSSPCs, who were often worse off than DefactoOppositeSPCs, who were usually worse off than MOSPCs. While that may not indicate abuse, the data revealed that 70% of same-sex-married-parented girls had been forced to have sex compared with 10% of heterosexual-married-parented girls. Whether that indicates abuse from within or without their family, it does indicate environments where abuse was more likely.

The chart below is hopefully more digestible and easier to comprehend than the original charts and somewhat obscure terminology Sullins uses.

[Unfortunately it seems that graphics can't be posted in comments here: so please see https://tinyurl.com/SSMParenting where this is posted as ChildAbuseClaims].

The charts were redrawn from graphics on pages 10&11 of Sullins article* based on data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health that “represent(s) U.S. adolescent population with a high degree of precision”.

Sullins comments:

+ “opposite-sex marriage is associated with improved outcomes, but same-sex marriage is associated with lower outcomes.”

+ “On every measure, well-being for children with same-sex parents is lower if those parents are married than if they are not.” Pg. 18.

+ “Residing with married rather than unmarried parents of the same sex is associated with substantially increased depressive symptoms, anxiety and daily distress, and lower educational achievement and school connectedness.”

+ “The extremely high [unhappiness] among children with married same-sex parents, but low [unhappiness] among children with unmarried same-sex parents, is particularly notable.”

* “The Unexpected Harm of Same-Sex Marriage: A Critical Appraisal, Replication and Re-Analysis of Wainright and Patterson's Studies of Adolescents with Same-Sex Parents” by D. Paul Sullins www.sciencedomain.org from the British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science 11(2): 1-22, 2015, Article no.BJESBS.19337 ISSN: 2278- 0998. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2589129 (August 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2589129 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2589129

Sullins has two other metrics not shown here where MSSPCs and DSSPCs usually do better than DOSPCs and MOSPCs in negative interpersonal relations, and Grade Point Average. See the “Effects of Same and Opposite Sex Marriage on Kids” elsewhere on this site.

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I have seen claims that loving, nuclear families statistically produce more stable, happy, successful children. That seems intuitively obvious, although the exceptions are also obvious. Even if the claims of the study posted are scientifically supportable, I cannot see that that provides a basis for calling same sex parenting "child abuse", which I think you are also acknowledging. The study is essentially saying that same sex parenting is sub optimal for the child - if the definition of child abuse is sub optimal parenting, most parenting could be classed as child abuse. Also I notice this study investigated lesbian couples only.

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Yes. It's also a matter of degree. I think the study clearly shows that the degree of sub-optimality, on most measures, statistically increases from Married Parenting, to Defacto Parenting, to Unmarried Same-Sex Parenting, and generally worse for Married Same-Sex Parenting. It would be interesting to also compare results for both Married and Unmarried Lesbian and Homosexual Parenting.

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