Another excellent post by blogger Rebekah Barnett, dealing with the example of Dr Sally Price, who, is one of a number of doctors who have fallen into conflict with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation agency (AHPRA), which is essentially banning any criticism of the vax cult, on any grounds: “”There is no place for anti-vaccination messages in professional health practice, and any promotion of anti-vaccination claims including on social media, and advertising may be subject to regulatory action.” One would have hoped that there could by now be a High Court challenge of such anti-science regulations, but apparently not so. Further, the culture is a vaxxed one, and there is no guarantee of court success, although the freedom movement has an almost religious faith in judges, which to me, always seemed totally unrealistic, being made by people with no legal experience. Still, the fight must go on, and hopefully education of the masses will generate a critical mass at some point to move the great pendulum of history from its present far Left position.
https://rebekahbarnett.substack.com/p/the-re-education-of-dr-sally-price
“On a Friday in August 2021, Dr Sally Price received a phone call from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). There had been an anonymous complaint against her, and AHPRA was to follow up with an investigation.
“So of course, I was checking my email all afternoon,” says Dr Price, who describes the ensuing investigation as, “destructive” and “very stressful.”
At the time, Dr Price was a practicing GP in Perth, with additional qualifications in nutritional medicine and Ayurveda. In over 30 years of practice, Dr Price had never received a complaint before, and she was mystified as to which of her patients could possibly have complained to AHPRA.
When the email from AHPRA finally arrived in her inbox, Dr Price was surprised to find that the complaint was not from a patient, but from a social media follower who, to the best of her knowledge, she has never met or had any contact with.
The complaint centred around five Facebook story posts, four of which were reposted content from a non-partisan, pro-choice activist group called Reignite Democracy Australia (RDA). Two of the posts referenced efforts of politicians (in Australia and Italy) to resist vaccination mandates. Another story was a repost offering insight into the physiological effects of the fear response.
The complainant characterised the reposts as “anti-vaccination,” though none of the posts gave advice on vaccination or stated any opinion on the Covid vaccines. This was all that was required for AHPRA to launch an official investigation into Dr Price’s conduct.
AHPRA’s position statement on the Covid vaccination rollout (March 2021) set the bar for such vague complaints to trigger investigations, when they specifically barred doctors from expressing messages that could be construed as anti-vaccination on their social media:
“There is no place for anti-vaccination messages in professional health practice, and any promotion of anti-vaccination claims including on social media, and advertising may be subject to regulatory action.”
Dr Price was given two weeks to respond, during which time she engaged with her indemnity organisation in a highly stressful back-and-forth, knowing that her reputation, and maybe even her licence were on the line. Dr Price was strongly advised to offer to undergo ‘re-education’ at her own cost, so as to avoid more serious consequences, such as suspension, or having conditions imposed.
AHPRA agreed that Dr Price should undergo 10 hours of re-education and submit a letter of reflection detailing what she had learned from the process. “What you have to do is pull your forelock and tell AHPRA that you’ve been a very naughty girl,” says Dr Price.
As part of her re-education, Dr Price was required to study the Australian Medical Association’s (AMA) Code of Ethics (2017). Ironically, this firmly established in Dr Price’s mind that the AMA’s Code of tehics and AHPRA’s position statement on the Covid vaccination rollout were at odds with each other. “As I studied the AMA Code of Ethics, I was struck by how AHPRA’s position statement overrode our professional ethics, and that had me more deeply concerned,” says Dr Price. “It highlighted to me that none of this was ok.”
The AMA’s Code of Ethics states that doctors must, “consider first the well-being of the patient,” (Article 2.1.1) and that they must provide full informed consent before undertaking any tests, treatments or procedures (Article 2.1.4). Dr Price says that AHPRA’s position statement and hawkish regulatory behaviour put the public health agenda before the patient and made it “impossible” for doctors to provide valid informed consent to patients.
AHPRA’s unilateral decision that all doctors must fall in line with the vaccination rollout was also in conflict with the AMA Code’s provision that doctors may conscientiously object to providing certain treatments or procedures (Article 2.1.13), and that they may publicly state opinions contrary to the status quo (Article 4.3.3). Further, the Code requires that doctors “practise effective stewardship, the avoidance or elimination of wasteful expenditure in health care...” (Article 4.4.1), and that they use their “knowledge and skills to assist those responsible for allocating health care resources, advocating for their transparent and equitable allocation.” (Article 4.4.3) These articles imply a responsibility for doctors to speak out and take action when they believe that public health policy could be improved upon.
Feeling conflicted about how to practice good medicine under these conditions, Dr Price decided to take some leave to reflect and regroup. She lodged a complaint with Ahpra and the Ombudsman, requesting either a waiver to excuse her from the requirements of AHPRA’s position statement, or that AHPRA explain how she might be able to practice under their conditions whilst also keeping to the AMA’s Code of Ethics. No waiver or explanation was provided, and so Dr Price determined that continuing to practice as a GP was untenable. Her registration has since lapsed.
Dr Price says that, as it stands, the system has strayed from its primary purpose of letting doctors be doctors, and putting patients first. She speaks to a culture of fear within the medical profession. “The thing to understand is that doctors feel like someone is always behind them waiting to stab them in the back or put a bag over their head. That’s how it feels being under AHPRA,” she says.
The censorial nature of AHPRA’s regulatory practices was brought into the national spotlight several weeks ago by former AMA president Dr Kerryn Phelps, who recently revealed that she is Covid vaccine injured. In a submission to the federal government’s Long Covid Inquiry (Submission #510), Phelps wrote, in reference to the aforementioned AHPRA position statement,
“Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration.”
This is a view also held by cardiologist and Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) founder, Dr Chris Neil, who warned in a recent article for Spectator Australia, that many medical professionals believe that not only is the AHPRA position statement unlawful, but that “it is at the root of a dangerous shift in Australian Medicine.” Neil points to the changes to the National Law for Health Practitioner Regulation introduced last October in the Queensland Parliament.
The changes, which the AMA strongly opposed, will further compel doctors to fall in line with public policy decided by bureaucrats , and will create a culture of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ by way of publicly naming and shaming medical professionals who are under investigation. AMPS has gone on the defensive with a Stop Medical Censorship national tour, on which medical, legal and other professionals gather to speak to audiences about the implications of censorship in medicine.
Dr Price says she feels damaged by the experience of being investigated by AHPRA, and she may not return to the profession. “I’m not sure that I want to come back. If medicine were to return to its ethical code, I will reconsider.”
It will certainly be a task of Hercules to get the average GP moving on this issue, as most are happy to be shrills for Big Pharma, I am sorry to say. I am very tired of doctors and the entire medical profession, all of whom need critical deflation.
“Jacob Stegenga, a philosopher of science in Cambridge, has written a closely argued and empirically supported book in which he argues the case for medical nihilism by which he means that our confidence in the effectiveness of medical interventions should be low. My belief is that many doctors, particularly senior ones, are instinctively nihilists but most patients are not.
Medical Nihilism is one of the latest in a long history of arguments doubting the effectiveness of medicine. Stegenga briefly summaries that history, starting with Heraclitus (the way that doctors torture their patients is “just as bad as the diseases they claim to cure”), passing through Oliver Wendell Holmes (“If the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea it would be all the better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes”) to Ivan Illich (“modern medicine is a negation of health . . . it makes more people sick than it heals”). In the same week that Stegenga’s book was launched the doctor and journalist James Le Fanu launched Too Many Pills, a book in which he argues that doctors are prescribing too many pills and endangering health (more of that in another blog) and The BMJ made the case for overcoming overuse of medicine. Something is up.”