Your doctor is not your doctor

COVID-19 has erased the demarcation line between public health and the practise of medicine. And patients are the biggest losers.

If you’ve tried to question your doctor about any aspect of the COVID-19 biosecurity theatre to which we’ve all been subjected for the past two years, chances are that he or she repeated the officially-accepted catechism (masks work, “social distancing” stops the spread, COVID-19 “vaccines” are safe and effective for everyone) and then changed the subject as quickly as possible.

And woe betide you if you asked for a medical exemption from COVID-19 injections. I have had dozens of clients recount to me their experiences, but the following five were particularly surreal:

• A young woman who had a serious bout of pericarditis two years prior and was concerned about the risk of getting it again from an mRNA COVID-19 injection, was told that if that happened, she would just receive the same treatment as before, so what was she worried about?

• An elderly man collapsed and fell unconscious 4 hours after his first AstraZeneca COVID-19 injection. He was rushed to hospital and eventually regained consciousness. Multiple evaluations failed to identify an explanation for this episode, and his GP refused to write an exemption for the second shot.

• An elderly woman developed sudden-onset deafness after her second AstraZeneca shot. Her GP told her that she was just anxious, and later pushed the booster shot on her.

• A middle-aged woman with a history of chronic immune-related illness went to her GP, who was usually open to discussing any topic my client raised, to request an exemption. Instead of answering directly, the GP simply showed her an email from the Australian Health Practitioners Regulatory Authority (AHPRA), which warned that any practitioner who diverged from government policy on COVID-19 would run the risk of investigation, sanction and even loss of licence. The specialist who diagnosed her condition acknowledged her concern that many people with her diagnosis had reported significant deterioration after taking a COVID-19 injection, but then told her he couldn’t help with obtaining an exemption as he had already been investigated by AHPRA and didn’t want to draw more fire from them.

• A late middle-aged man with a history of coronary artery disease and heart attacks took a pile of medical studies demonstrating how the spike proteins induced by COVID-19 injections are taken up by endothelial cells, triggering blood clot formation, to his cardiologist. The cardiologist didn’t dispute the evidence, but informed my client that the official position was that people with cardiac risk factors should get the shot, and he wasn’t willing to risk his medical licence to write an exemption.

The last two cases were in many ways the most illuminating, in that the doctors admitted – either obliquely or quite candidly – that they were in fear of punishment by AHPRA if they wrote exemptions, regardless of whether they considered them medically justified.

In other words, they were willing to subject their patients to medical treatment that could be harmful to them and had not been tested in people with their health conditions, in order to avoid the AHPRA Eye of Sauron falling upon them.

In case you haven’t twigged yet, your doctor is not “your” doctor. He or she no longer serves your interests, but those of the state.

We’ve all been bombarded with “public health” messaging over the last two years, but few people – including doctors – have ever stopped to think about what public health is, and how it relates to the practise of medicine.

As I discussed in my two part series, ‘COVID-19 and philanthrocapitalism’s War on Public Health’ (Part 1; Part 2), public health is a very distinct field from the practise of medicine, or for that matter complementary and alternative health care.¹

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which describes itself as “the nation’s leading public health agency”, explains (emphasis mine),

“Public health is concerned with protecting the health of entire populations. These populations can be as small as a local neighborhood, or as big as an entire country or region of the world… Public health professionals try to prevent problems from happening or recurring through implementing educational programs, recommending policies, administering services and conducting research—in contrast to clinical professionals like doctors and nurses, who focus primarily on treating individuals after they become sick or injured.”

What is Public Health?

Got that? Public health professionals focus on the collective, while doctors, nurses, naturopaths, chiropractors, clinical psychologists, acupuncturists and speech therapists focus on the individual sitting in front of them.

And there’s the rub. Individuals exist in reality. They have names, faces, bodies, partners, children, jobs – and personal and family health histories. As a practitioner, I can take a case history from an individual, and tailor my treatment plan to his or her specific situation, taking into account both medical and personal factors that are unique to that individual.

Clinical practice is not, and should not be, “one size fits all” because it is applied to individuals, but public health policies are by definition “one size fits all” because they are applied to (arbitrarily defined) collectives.

But collectives do not exist in reality. They are abstract notions that we assign nouns to for the sake of convenience – like “neighbourhood” or “community” or “nation” – but when we try to pin down their definitions, we quickly realise how slippery they are.

What exactly is my “neighbourhood” or my “community”? Does it comprise all the people who live within a certain radius of me, or within a certain travelling time, or just the people whom I see, or interact with? Who sets these criteria – do I define what my community is, or does someone else (for example, a public health professional) do it on my behalf?

And when the CDC waxes lyrical about “protecting the health of entire populations”, what does “protecting” mean in actual practice, and do the people who comprise these “entire populations” get a say in how, and by whom, and against what, they are to be “protected”?

Furthermore, how do we define what “health” means for a “community”, let alone formulate policies to improve it? Perhaps even more importantly, who defines what health means to any given (but functionally non-existent) “community”? Do the people who supposedly comprise this community get a say, or does some external committee of “experts” decide for them and then impose a set of “public health measures” on them?

As I wrote in COVID-19 and philanthrocapitalism’s War on Public Health: Part 2 – Technological solutions to public health problems, attendees of the 1986 First International Conference on Health Promotion in Ottawa pledged to

“accept the community as the essential voice in matters of its health, living conditions and well-being… and to share power with other sectors, other disciplines and, most importantly, with people themselves.”

Commitment to Health Promotion

Setting aside the definitional problems with “community” and exactly how it is that this nebulous non-entity is supposed to have a “voice”, let alone the issue of who or what is supposed to be listening to that voice and who appointed them to listen in the first place, at least this pledge placed the locus of control with the people who were the subjects of all this public health activity.

However, the version of “public health” that we’ve all been subjected to for the past two years is not remotely interested in hearing our voices or sharing power with us. Instead it is a blunt instrument of state control – a throwback to the pre-1830s paradigm of public health in which “ruling elites” promulgated “religious and cultural rules” intended to prevent diseases “by enforced regulation of human behavior”.

Hopefully by now you can see the problem: doctors and other health professionals have been co-opted into becoming functionaries of this elite-generated public health apparatus, despite the mismatch between the aims of clinical practitioners and the aims of public health professionals.

Vaccination campaigns provide the perfect illustration of this mismatch. Public health professionals advocate for universal or near-universal vaccination because they claim it helps to achieve herd immunity (a questionable assumption, but that’s a topic for another day). They acknowledge that a small percentage of people will have adverse reactions to vaccines, and some of them will die, but the maiming and untimely passing of a few healthy people is considered an acceptable price to pay for achieving “the greater good”.

But a doctor or other health practitioner’s duty of care is for the patient in their consulting room. If the practitioner judges that a particular patient has a higher chance of being harmed by a particular vaccine than of being benefited by it, then it is incumbent on the practitioner to prioritise the health of the individual patient – who actually exists, and is sitting in front of them, over that of the collective – which is merely a theoretical construct to whom they cannot possibly owe a duty of care.

In 2006, the Australian Medical Association adopted the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Geneva “as a contemporary companion to the 2,500-year-old Hippocratic Oath for doctors to declare their commitment to their profession, their patients, and humanity”.

Then-AMA president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal acknowledged that there were “great challenges to the integrity and independence of the medical profession” and heralded the Declaration as a reaffirmation of the traditional role of doctors as independent professionals dedicated to the service of their patients, not servants of the state:

“The Declaration is a short, sharp summary of all that is good about being a doctor in the 21st Century… It reinforces the independence of the medical profession and it spells out clearly our duty and dedication to our patients and our respect for all human life.”

AMA Adopts WMA Declaration of Geneva

The Declaration of Geneva has undergone several revisions over its history; here is the latest (2017) version, re-endorsed by then-national president of the AMA, Dr Michael Gannon:

The Physician’s Pledge

AS A MEMBER OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION:

I SOLEMNLY PLEDGE to dedicate my life to the service of humanity;

THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF MY PATIENT will be my first consideration;

I WILL RESPECT the autonomy and dignity of my patient;

I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life;

I WILL NOT PERMIT considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient;

I WILL RESPECT the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died;

I WILL PRACTISE my profession with conscience and dignity and in accordance with good medical practice;

I WILL FOSTER the honour and noble traditions of the medical profession;

I WILL GIVE to my teachers, colleagues, and students the respect and gratitude that is their due;

I WILL SHARE my medical knowledge for the benefit of the patient and the advancement of healthcare;

I WILL ATTEND TO my own health, well-being, and abilities in order to provide care of the highest standard;

I WILL NOT USE my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat;

I MAKE THESE PROMISES solemnly, freely, and upon my honour.

Compare these solemn undertakings with the way the vast majority of doctors are now behaving:

• THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF MY PATIENT will be my first consideration… except when AHPRA threatens my medical licence, in which case I’ll refuse to protect my patients by writing legitimate exemptions, because I could get myself investigated for doing so.

• I WILL RESPECT the autonomy and dignity of my patient… except if they’re an “antivaxxer”, in which case I’ll bully them, discriminate against them or threaten to bar them from my practice.

• I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life… except if the state’s agencies tell me that there are no cheap, safe, effective treatments for the early treatment of COVID-19, in which case I’ll ignore evidence like this, this and this, and just let people sicken and die unnecessarily.

• I WILL NOT PERMIT considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient… except if that creed is something I can spin into “being an antivaxxer” in which case my duty is waived.

• I WILL PRACTISE my profession with conscience and dignity and in accordance with good medical practice… except if there’s a conflict between my conscience/dignity/good medical practice and my ability to make a living, in which case I’ll fold and do whatever AHPRA tells me to do.

• I WILL GIVE to my teachers, colleagues, and students the respect and gratitude that is their due… except if they’re offering non-government-approved early treatment or can be accused of being “antivaxxers”, in which case I’ll dob them into AHPRA so they get investigated – serves them right!

• I WILL SHARE my medical knowledge for the benefit of the patient and the advancement of healthcare… except if AHPRA threatens me with deregistration for sharing my medical knowledge in ways they disagree with, like calling BS on unscientific public health advice, in which case I’ll shut up.

• I WILL NOT USE my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat… except if the government tells me to, in which case I’ll go along with it.

And in case there were any doctors left who harboured a shadow of a doubt about whether they should speak the truth or fall in line with the Ministry of Truth, the Medical Indemnity Protection Society, which provides professional indemnity insurance for doctors, dentists and healthcare students, makes it abundantly clear. In an article titled ‘12 Commandments to avoid AHPRA notifications’, MIPS advises its members (my emphasis):

“Be very careful when using social media (even on your personal pages), when authoring papers or when appearing in interviews. Health practitioners are obliged to ensure their views are consistent with public health messaging. This is particularly relevant in current times. Views expressed which may be consistent with evidence-based material may not necessarily be consistent with public health messaging.”

Let that sink in for a moment. MIPS is basically telling its members, “Evidence be damned – if the state says that black is white and down is up, just nod your head and go along with it. And if you write an article that contradicts the state’s assertions, you’re on your own as far as we’re concerned, regardless of how solid your argument is.”

The line between public health and the practise of medicine – a line that has become increasingly blurry over the past decades, as Dr Mukesh Haikerwal tacitly acknowledged when endorsing the Declaration of Geneva as a reaffirmation of the role of doctors as independent professionals who owed a duty of care to their patients – has now been completely erased, and the manufactured COVID-19 crisis was the implement used to erase it.

Now, when you go to see the person whom you think of as “your doctor”, there’s an extra party in the consultation room: the state, which has inserted itself into the doctor-patient relationship without your consent.

In fact, it’s fair to say that the forced incorporation of health practitioners into the apparatus of public health has for all intents and purposes destroyed the doctor-patient relationship.

We’ve seen this merger of state and medical profession before, and it did not end well. Medical historians have noted that

“During the Weimar Republic in the mid-twentieth century, more than half of all German physicians became early joiners of the Nazi Party, surpassing the party enrollments of all other professions. From early on, the German Medical Society played the most instrumental role in the Nazi medical program, beginning with the marginalization of Jewish physicians, proceeding to coerced ‘experimentation,’ ‘euthanization,’ and sterilization, and culminating in genocide via the medicalization of mass murder of Jews and others caricatured and demonized by Nazi ideology.”

Why did so many German doctors join the Nazi Party early?

The psychiatric profession willingly cooperated with Soviet dictators from Stalin on, by diagnosing political dissidents with bogus psychotic disorders, confining them involuntarily in mental hospitals and subjecting them to “treatments” that were clearly not in the so-called patients’ interest:

“Dissidents were treated with massive doses of psychoactive drugs, which produced agonising side effects.”

Soviet Union admits to abuses of psychiatry

Health practitioners have a critical choice to make. You cannot serve both your patient/client and the state, because their interests are widely divergent.

And members of the public also face a choice: Will you continue to entrust your health care to someone whose allegiance is to the state, rather than you? If you do, don’t be surprised when “your” doctor throws your interests under the bus. As Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters”.

To end on a more positive note, if you’re an Australian healthcare practitioner or student who wants to restore medical ethics and patient-centred healthcare, or a member of the public who believes in medical freedom for yourself as well as your healthcare providers, I encourage you to join Queensland Health Practitioners Alliance.

QHPA (which will be opening branches in other States very soon) is an inclusive organisation of medical, complementary and allied health professionals, along with interested members of the public, working to create a truly integrative health and wellness model to present a viable alternative to our broken sick care system – one that prioritises the interests of patients, not the state.

1. Rereading these articles nearly two years after writing them, I realise that my political orientation has shifted quite dramatically. I identified far more with leftist ideologies back then than I do now. The manufactured COVID crisis has opened my eyes to the grave dangers we face when we cede control over any aspect of our lives to the state.