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CODEX - The sickness industry’s last stand.
The NSW State Government has formed a committee to weed out 'unscientific thought'. Their first job will be to de-register doctors that use non-western methods. After that, homoeopathy, chiropractic and other modalities are to be challenged.
Hello all,
This is one of the most important alerts we have ever issued. Please take the time to read the following information and to take action by writing to NSW Parliamentarians to voice your opinions.
If you go to the following website - http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/web/phweb.nsf/frames/members - you will find an up-to-date list of all NSW members of parliament. Copy all of their email addresses into a list in your address book and send one letter to all of them at the same time.
This is a very real threat. We will soon lose the right to choose to use complementary treatments and our doctors will lose the right to use them. This is only the beginning. If you would like to circulate a petition to try and stop this legislation, please click here, print this out and bring it to all health food shops, practitioners, etc.
One other member of this committee (the others are as yet unknown - the committee was formed in secret) is a woman by the name of Cheryl Freeman who is very active with the Australian Sceptics - the group which calls us the Anti-Vaccination Liars and insists that we celebrate the deaths of children. Ms Freeman has used lies and false names to try and entrap complementary practitioners. Is this an appropriate person for a committee that is supposed to look at this issue openly and honestly?
The following press release will be issued by the Australian Vaccination Network. Please feel free to use this information in your letters to Parliament.
Media Release
15 November 2002 - For Immediate Release
Prof. John Dwyer, in an attempt to create a smoke-screen covering up Australia’s shocking record of medical safety, has called for the deregistration of doctors who use complimentary medical procedures.
In an article published in Australian Doctor (8 November 2002, Page 3), Prof. Dwyer states that “There are some doctors who regrettably are practising a deplorable standard of medicine...If a doctor is actively advising their patients not to be immunised, then should they be allowed to continue practising?”
Calling anything that is not part of Western medicine “unscientific”, Professor Dwyer demonstrates the worst of medicine’s excesses. By trying to draw attention to these procedures, he is obviously trying to deflect public condemnation of the mounting evidence that Western medical procedures are harming more people than it ever helps.
If deaths from properly researched, properly registered, properly prescribed and properly used drugs were added to those preventable deaths which occur in private practice, it would add up to a staggering 19% or almost 1 in every 5 deaths in Australia! 1,2
Doctors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, causing 250,000 deaths every year. 3
More than 5 million people have been killed by Western medical practices in the past decade in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with more than 20 million permanently maimed.
Western medicine’s record has never been good. Therapies which one year are touted as the safest and most effective around, are later shown to be dangerous and ineffective and quietly withdrawn. Just a few examples are Thalidomide for morning sickness, Relenza for Diabetes, cigarettes for the treatment of Asthma, Hormone Replacement Therapy for the symptoms of Menopause, Rotavirus Vaccine for the prevention of Rotavirus. The list can go on and on for far longer than we have space to write here.
“Before Professor Dwyer starts out pointing the bone at doctors who practise medicine according to their own experience of what is best for patients, he should first look at the misery that drug-based medicine is causing in Australia in particular and the Western world in general,” says Meryl Dorey, AVN National President.
“In a press release which was accidentally leaked from the office of the NSW Minister for Health, dated October 31, 2002, it is stated that the aim of this committee is to tighten up legislation, enabling practitioners who are involved in dodgy medical practices (dodgy according to whom?) to be struck off. This is a witch-hunt, plain and simple. A way for the powers that control medicine to ensure that all doctors think, act and prescribe alike with no dissent in the ranks allowed. The NSW Government has instituted a bureau of medical “Thought Police” and John Dwyer is the Head Inquisitor.” Ms Dorey continued.
The Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), a national, non-profit charitable organisation has asked all of its members, thousands across Australia, to write to NSW representatives to urge them to vote against these draconian changes. Medical freedom is everyone’s right in a democratic country. Nobody, least of all John Dwyer who represents a philosophy which has proven so deadly to Australians, has the right to tell healers how they can and cannot practice medicine.
“I would just like to remind everyone of another maverick doctor who, like the doctors of today, was threatened with deregistration and worse by the Inquisitors of his day. His name was Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis. In 1847, he had the audacity to claim that women were dying after childbirth because doctors were not washing their hands when they went from cadaver to patient. This was taking a terrible toll on both mothers and their infants who were dying of Puerperal fever. Because Dr. Semmelweis instituted the procedure of washing his hands before delivering babies, the mortality rate sank from 18 percent to 2.45 percent. Semmelweis was called mad and persecuted unmercifully by the John Dwyers of that time. Do we see history repeating itself today?”
Attached to this Media Release are questions which were asked about this committee in NSW Parliament. To date, there have been no answers forthcoming.
For further information or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Meryl Dorey
Phone: 02 6687 1699
FAX: 02 6687 2032
Mobile: 0414 872 032
email:
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1. Iatrogenic Injury in Australia - This is the executive summary of a 150 page official report revealing 14,000 preventable medical error deaths (only in hospitals - not private practice). (Full report on file).
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics - Australian 1994 total deaths (1994) = 126,692
3. JAMA; Mon, 12 Feb 2001 15:32:38 -0800
Attached to the media release will be the following questions from Parliament:
The Hon. ALAN CORBETT: My question is directed to the Treasurer, representing the Minister for Health. I refer the Treasurer to the committee that the Minister for Health announced on 31 October to review the laws and regulations concerning alternative or complementary health products and practices. Is the Treasurer aware that Professor John Dwyer, the chair of the committee, has been put on notice for a potential defamation action by a person whose company is highly likely—on the basis of past scathing comments made by the professor—to be targeted for investigation by his committee? Is the Treasurer also aware that Professor Dwyer is a longstanding critic of complementary medicine and that he does not have the confidence of practitioners in this area? Given the possible defamation action, the conflict of interest that will arise regardless of whether the defamation proceeds, and the need for the committee to be, and to be seen to be, unbiased and objective in its review, will the Minister for Health appoint a new chairperson? If not, why not?
The Hon. MICHAEL EGAN: I am not aware of the circumstances of the matter that the Hon. Alan Corbett has raised, but I will refer it to my colleague the Minister for Health for his response. I point out that the fact that someone is engaged in defamation proceedings with someone else does not necessarily mean that the parties cannot work together harmoniously. Good heavens, I have been both a plaintiff and a defendant in so many defamation cases that I could work with hardly anybody!
The Hon. ALAN CORBETT: I ask a supplementary question. Given the dearth of information available with respect to this committee, will the Minister endeavour to obtain some information about it?
The Hon. MICHAEL EGAN: I will find out what I can about the committee. I did not provide any information because I was not conversant with it. I do not have any information on me.
The Hon. Alan Corbett: No-one has the information.
The Hon. MICHAEL EGAN: We will find out what we can. I will then provide the information to the House.
If honourable members have further questions I suggest they put them on notice.
Questions without notice concluded.
The Hon. RICHARD JONES: I ask the Treasurer, representing the Minister for Health whether a secretive committee headed by Professor Dwyer is conducting a vicious witch-hunt on the complementary medical profession, including homeopathy, which has been used successfully by the royal family for many years and which has been in existence for 200 years. Is a member of that committee acting as an agent provocateur falsely representing herself as a Michelle Trueblood when contacting practitioners and trying to entrap them? Will the Minister stop this witch-hunt and the outrageous activities of this committee member and make sure that this committee is open and accountable?
The Hon. MICHAEL EGAN: One of the things that I will miss when the Hon. Richard Jones leaves this Parliament—which is what he has indicated he will do shortly—is the constant conspiracy theories with which he entertains this House. I will certainly take the honourable member's question on notice. It is a pity that he was not here yesterday because his colleague the Hon. Alan Corbett got in early and asked a more intelligently framed question on the same subject. I will refer the Hon. Richard Jones' question to the Minister for Health.
The Hon. RICHARD JONES: I ask a supplementary question. Will the Treasurer ask the Minister for Health to stop this committee member falsely representing herself as a Michelle Trueblood and trying to entrap complementary medical practitioners, which is what she is up to?
The Hon. MICHAEL EGAN: As I said earlier, the Hon. Richard Jones is famous for his conspiracy theories. He is famous, one might say, for his wackiness, but I actually like wackiness. When he leaves this Parliament I am sure all honourable members will miss him. However, I will treat his question seriously and refer it to the Minister for Health.
The Hon. RICHARD JONES [11.08 p.m.]: Professor John Dwyer has apparently been invited by the Minister for Health to form a committee comprising so-called legal and medical experts to investigate complementary medicine. In an article in the Wentworth Courier of 6 November Professor Dwyer said that there is an endless list of flourishing fraudulent claims that hoodwink Australians into spending more than $1.5 billion a year for useless advice and therapy. Professor Dwyer is well known for his antipathy towards complementary medicine. This committee, about which I asked a question today and the Hon. Alan Corbett asked a question yesterday, is a secretive committee.
However, we have received reliable information that one member of the committee has been using a false name to telephone various practitioners, pretending to be a patient and seeking information. That person is trying to dupe these practitioners into giving therapies by means of entrapment as an agent provocateur. It would appear that Professor Dwyer has been hired by the Minister for Health to conduct an unprecedented attack on complementary medicine in this country. It would appear from Professor Dwyer's various pronouncements that he has a total antipathy towards complementary medicine.
I point out to Professor Dwyer that some 19,000 people die every year from iatrogenic illness. Indeed, today a friend of mine died from contracting golden staph while in hospital. Food in hospitals is absolutely disgraceful. In fact, many conventional practitioners prescribe antibiotics for influenza, which is completely useless, and thousands of unnecessary operations are performed, such as caesarean sections. Perhaps conventional practitioners should put their own house in order before attacking the complementary health industry. Professor Dwyer also attacked the Chinese health industry. Many Chinese practitioners have sought registration in this State but have been denied, presumably because of influence from some medical people.
A number of Chinese medicines have been used successfully for hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of years. These same people are attacking homeopathy, which has been used in India for hundreds of years and, indeed, for many years the Royal Family has used it with great success. Many of the practitioners practising complementary medicine whom Professor Dwyer wishes to destroy have had enormous success, and that is why people are prepared to spend $1.5 billion to consult them. Apparently Professor Dwyer even questions the use of vitamin therapy. He is out of date and should seek advice from complementary practitioners himself to find out what is wrong with him.
I ask the Minister to determine the purpose of the committee, its composition, its objectives and what it intends to do over the next six months. Apparently the committee's brief is to provide and develop a plan for the Minister in six months time, if he is still Minister for Health. Apparently it also has a representative from the pharmaceutical industry, so obviously there is a vested interest in trying to destroy the complementary health industry. This is the biggest attack on complementary health that has ever taken place in this State. The Minister for Health should be very careful because many people now use complementary medicine, particularly those who were born overseas, such as the Chinese community. Even acupuncture is under threat from this committee.
Although 19,000 people die from conventional medicine each year, very few known deaths are caused by complementary medicine. Professor Dwyer referred to one unfortunate death, which was probably caused by a fraudulent practitioner. There may well be some fraudulent practitioners but, by and large, the complementary health industry is very successful and that is why people are turning to it. I ask the Minister to get Professor Dwyer and this member of the committee who is fraudulently phoning practitioners to lay off the complementary health industry.
Motion agreed to.
The House adjourned at 11.13 p.m.
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