Covid, Consent, and the Code of Conduct
How AHPRA entered the consultation room and is now refusing to leave.
It’s a story I’ve heard far too many times. “There was no mention of any possible serious side effects other than the after your Covid-19 vaccination information sheet I was handed on the way out. If only I’d known.”
What followed was the now all-too-familiar story of repeated emergency room presentations, doctor visits and an array of diagnoses including chest pain (cause unknown), pericarditis, myocarditis, Bell’s palsy, fibromyalgia, neuralgia, and fatigue, just to name a few.
Months later, patient X is still suffering from crippling symptoms and is struggling to recover.
‘If only I’d known.’ Those words come back to me. It’s apparent that one of the foundational requirements of good medical practice has been omitted from the original consultation, that of ‘informed consent.’
Bioethics
Australia’s medical Code of Conduct, the statutory rules for medical practitioners, defines informed consent as “a person’s voluntary decision about medical care that is made with knowledge and understanding of the benefits and risks involved.”
In addition, the Australian Immunisation Handbook states:
“For consent to be legally valid … it must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion, or manipulation … and it can only be given after the potential risks and benefits of the relevant vaccine, the risks of not having it, and any alternative options have been explained to the person.”
Think back to the last time you gave consent for a medical procedure or, dare I say it, a vaccination. Were you taken through this process?
There’s more. What happens to consent if you’re involved in a clinical trial?
Former barrister, Julian Gillespie, explains:
“There is a portion towards the end of the medical Code of Conduct, which… clearly addresses if you are a medical practitioner and you are involved in a clinical or experimental trial, … then there’s all these further procedures and protocols that must be satisfied.”
Well now, that would only apply in the circumstances of an experimental trial, wouldn’t it?
As it happens, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past couple of years. “We heard it out of former health minister Greg Hunt’s lips, and several others,” Gillespie says. “It’s well acknowledged that these Covid-19 vaccines have only been provisionally approved and are still subject to clinical trials.”
Law
Julian Gillespie LLB, BJuris, is co-author, with Peter Fam LLB, of a recently published bombshell legal opinion casting doubt on the legal basis of AHPRA’s 9 March 2021 ‘gag order’.
The opinion was issued with a letter stating:
“Contingent to a joint statement received from AHPRA and the National Boards on 9 March 2021, Australian Health Professionals… were essentially forbidden from publicly questioning the science underlying the emerging Covid-19 injectables, let alone questioning any government messaging urging Australians to be vaccinated, because these products were deemed ‘safe and effective’.
“The effect of this unilateral action… inserted AHPRA and the National Boards between the Clinician and their Patient, which resulted in a serious failure of evidenced-based information being shared by Health Professionals with patients… for the purpose of their providing legally acceptable Informed Consent to receiving Covid-19 injectables.
“This failure in Informed Consent has likely resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Australians agreeing to the administration of Covid-19 injectables, where they would not have so agreed or consented had they been provided with all the available evidenced-based information… including that they expose a recipient to a real and significant risk of death, injury, or illness.”
What does this mean?
Essentially, the legal opinion posits that it was illegal for AHPRA and the National Boards to even produce the position statement. Health Professionals were always required to first observe their Codes of Conduct irrespective of the various coercive and threatening statements made in the March statement.
But wait, there’s more.
It also appears the public officers responsible for that statement are now legally exposed:
“As the harm to Covid-19 vaccine victims was foreseeable, in terms of these still remaining experimental gene-based therapies, these vaccine victims… can sue the public offices of AHPRA and the National Boards in their personal capacity,” says Gillespie.
It doesn’t stop there. There may be further liability available to health practitioners who administered the vaccines in breach of their Codes of Conduct. Gillespie adds,
“Should those health practitioners subsequently be sued by their patients… then those health practitioners may in turn be able to sue the public officers of AHPRA and the National Boards for coercing and threatening them to ignore their Codes of Conduct. Such illegal action would be the tort of misfeasance in public office.”
I’ll just let that all sink in.
The legal opinion was sent to all medical associations and colleges, nearly 70 of them, all Australia’s politicians, state, federal and territory, and medical professional insurers.
Oh, and it was also sent to over 300 of Australia’s top personal injury and medical negligence lawyers.
No one’s missing out on this one.
The legal opinion was helpfully accompanied by a 107-page report reviewing the evidence and adverse event data for Covid-19 vaccines. It’s an alarming read.
But wait… there’s (even) more.
Alarming Legislation
Proposed changes to the Health Practitioner National Law, debated in the Queensland Parliament on 11 October 2022, are set to give AHPRA even more power to interfere with the doctor/patient relationship.
These proposed amendments have medical organisations extremely concerned, including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Medical Network (AMN) and the Australian Medical Professionals Society.
If passed, “Doctors will no longer be able to express their opinion or use their experience, training, and education if their opinion goes against what the health bureaucrats say is in the best interests of ‘public confidence in safety,” says AMN.
And the changes won’t stop in Queensland. The amended National Law will then be rolled out to other jurisdictions. All Australians should be concerned.
The Australian Medical Professional Society says,
“Health regulation is not being used to protect the public from legitimate professional misconduct but is being used to silence Health Professionals from questioning government policy as a matter of routine.”
If the legislation comes to pass, it begs the question: when a patient goes to visit their doctor, how will they know if they are receiving the doctor’s professional opinion or the government’s latest edict?
The 9 March 2021 joint position statement has given Australia a taste of what might come if we don’t stand up to this obscene imposition by regulators in the consultation room.
In the words of ‘Dr Frank Mercy’ — an Australian doctor who writes under a pseudonym for fear of reprisal — “this is our Stalingrad. Defeat here will open the field to unlimited human resources for oppressive forces that can never be turned back. We must oppose this with all our resolve.”
For more information, see the Stop Medical Censorship campaign
___
*Patient ‘X’ is fictitious and based on a collection of stories told over the past 18 months, which I have permission to share.
Originally published at The Spectator Australia. Photo by cottonbro.
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When someone with your medical expertise, Dr Sladden, uses terms like “experimental” and “still subject to clinical trials” for a vaccine (mRNA) which has such a long history of development, with its first clinical trials involving humans being over a decade ago, and having been through by far the largest clinical trials prior to their approval, the only conclusion I’m left with is that you are lying!
Thank you Dr Julie for making the people more aware of the need to challenge the ongoing medical censorship in Australia .
& to think that we have gone over the hump of medical hardship & tyranny that was unleashed upon mostly unwilling participants over the 2.5 years & yet there is a resolve to make it even more devastating & forceful, is nothing less than a blatant disrespect & disregard of each & every Australian.
Thank you for making us aware of what is being proposed & a huge thank you to all those that are actively working to provide the mush needed push-back, that at this very moment in time is a matter of absolute urgency!
Thank you again Julie for your love of Jesus and your commitment to truth . For your resolve under fire and your willingness to share the good news of Jesus Christ.
It saddens me greatly to admit that over the last 2.5 years I have lost my trust in doctors as so many have been willing to place aside their principals, moral values and oath to ‘do no harm’ which has resulted in patient-centered care becoming an almost obsolete practice.
Dr Sladden, thank you for reviving a bit of my hope that honest Australian medical practitioners actually still exist and are willing to continue to advocate for patients health, well being and rights.
And to refer to the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines as ‘experimental’ or to claim that they are still undergoing ‘clinical trials’, is neither false or misleading.
The TGA have it published on their own website that the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers must continue providing them with information on longer term efficacy and safety from “ongoing clinical trials” as this a part of the conditions of allowing the use of the vaccines under, and still current, Provisional Approval status (1,2,3,4).
Some may not consider that the general public is part of a ‘clinical trial’, perhaps because that would require informed consent from competent participants.
But as clinical trials were not completed when the vaccine rollout commenced, and are still not completed, it may be more accurate to say that the public are participants in a medical experiment. And for that we were not provided the information to give informed consent, which is still required, and which was the point of the article.
In regards to mRNA technology research, it may have a long history, but it was only first trialed in humans in 2017 as can be verified with this article in the journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
( https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243#Tab1 ).
So the only conclusion I’m left with is that Dr Sladden has simply stated facts!
(1) https://www.tga.gov.au/products/covid-19/covid-19-vaccines/covid-19-vaccines-undergoing-evaluation
(2) https://www.tga.gov.au/news/news/covid-19-vaccine-spikevax-elasomeran
(3) https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-vaccine-spikevax-bivalent-originalomicron-elasomeranimelasomeran
(4) https://www.tga.gov.au/covid-19-vaccine-pfizer-australia-comirnaty-tozinameran-mrna