Dr Kevin Coleman – the antivaxers’ champion

Dr Kevin Coleman is a general practitioner at Tuggerah Medical Centre, on the New South Wales Central Coast. Coleman publicly lists his medical employment history on his Facebook profile, including his current position at Tuggerah Medical Centre:

Pay particular attention to the positions which Coleman has held in the past; HIV/AIDS Coordinator/Communicable Diseases at the Dubbo Public Health Unit, in NSW’s central west:

Coleman is no stranger to professional controversy. In 2010, Coleman was cautioned by the Medical Professional Standards Committee [inquiry PDF] for undertaking an inappropriate breast exam, without permission, on a patient. From the Health Care Complaints Commission publication:

The Health Care Complaints Commission recently prosecuted a complaint against Dr Kevin Thomas Coleman, a general practitioner, before a Medical Professional Standards Committee. The complaint alleged that Dr Coleman undertook a breast examination without the patient’s consent, without explaining to the patient the reason for the examination, and that the examination was inappropriate. It was further alleged that he failed to maintain adequate medical records.

In its decision of 12 April 2010, the Committee found Dr Coleman guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and cautioned him.

Coleman still has conditions attached to his registration. For example:

2. To practise only in a group practice (group is defined as at least 3 practitioners), with one other practitioner (supervisor) always on site. Nursing home and home visits are permitted if approved by the Medical Council of NSW.

3. To not consult, treat, interview or examine any female patient over the age of 13 years, whether in his surgery rooms, a nursing home or on house calls, unless a chaperone (an adult third person) is continuously present.

a) Prior to any such consultation, examination, treatment or interview, he must inform each female patient, or the parent or other adult carer of each child patient, of the necessity for a third person/chaperone to be present at all times.

And, importantly, note the final condition. Keep this in the back of your mind:

Registration is also subject to conditions that relate to personal health. Particulars are not published due to privacy considerations.

Coleman is also the co-author – with his wife, Flavia Coleman – of a book titled, Monkey Business: a Story of Soulmates and Primates. The Facebook page for the book is co-administered by both Colemans. Therefore, they are both responsible for its content:

We first became aware of Coleman’s association with the Sydney anti-vaccination protest movement, and its sexist thugs, when we found out he had given a speech at the September 2015 protest. The video for the speeches given at this protest have never surfaced. But, we know he was there, from this public image, courtesy of Facebook:

1. Brett Smith; 2. Kevin Coleman; 3. Flavia Coleman;
4. Belle Angel Lovelight; 5. Ian Stanley.

Coleman’s newly-found fame was also covered in Australian Doctor, in two separate articles by Serkan Ozturk [full text of the two log-in protected articles included at the end of this post]:

Spirituality can help fight infectious disease, says GP

A doctor who was “in charge” of vaccinations while working for a NSW Government public health unit, says spirituality has played a role in driving down rates of communicable disease.

Dr Kevin Coleman, now a GP on the NSW Central Coast who says he is “not anti-vaccination across the board”, outlined his views in a submission to the Senate inquiry into the Federal Government’s proposed ‘no jab, no pay’ plan.

“We are witnessing a slow-moving tsunami of immunological dysfunction as evidenced by a steady increase in childhood cancer and allergy, and emotional–cognitive development disorders. Why?,” Dr Coleman asks.

“Like most pathologies, the answers are complex and multifactorial: but it stands to reason that vaccination is in there as ‘person of interest’.”

GP unrepentant over vaccination views

A vaccination-sceptic GP says he is unafraid of a visit from AHPRA over his controversial views that “spirituality” may be a weapon in reducing communicable disease.

Tuggerah GP Dr Kevin Coleman has told Australian Doctor that he stands by his comments made in a submission to the Senate inquiry looking into the Federal Government’s proposed ‘no jab, no pay’ Bill.

“I am concerned about this legislation. It is vexatious in my view. I don’t think we should be coercing or forcing parents into medical procedures of any kind,” Dr Coleman told Australian Doctor.

“That’s what we fought two world wars for – to preserve our freedoms.

“I really don’t care if AHPRA come after me for my views. I think if the medical establishment was doing its job – which it’s not – we would have independent outcomes about vaccines.

The No Jab No Pay legislation –  which passed through parliament, unamended – senate submission written by Coleman can be viewed, here [PDF].

What brings us to today’s post is that I have finally managed to transcribe the bulk of the speech given by Dr Kevin Coleman at the November 2015 anti-vaccination protest, which was held outside the Surry Hills offices of News Limited. I’ll include the transcript at the end of the post. This is a still from the Coleman speech:

The protest was an embarrassing failure for the increasingly rabid anti-vaccination fringe. The crowd was estimated at somewhere between 15 and 20 attendees. There were more onlookers and police present, than there were protesters. This editorial from the Sunday Telegraph, on November 22 2015, gives a very succinct run-down on just how successful the anti-vaccine protests have been:

Here is the video of the Coleman speech. It would be pointless of the protesters to delete the video; we have several copies available should there be a request from health profession regulators:

_______________________________________

Some excerpts of Coleman’s speech are as follows:

00:23 There’s no question that some of you here, just looking around at some of the placards, have children who have suffered because of an adverse event following vaccination.

00:50 There’s no question that you can live a healthy life without vaccines…So they’re acknowledging that a small number of children are, have catastrophic consequences. What we’re not acknowledging is that for some children those consequences are subtle, but, all-pervasive and can be terribly detrimental for the life trajectory of those children.

Coleman alludes to vaccines being a source of criminal behaviour:

01:23 At the moment I’m dealing, counselling a lot of young men and some of whom are on probation for some sort of criminal offence…Our prisons are full of youth and older who’ve had some sort of deficit as a consequence of whatever.

Coleman asserts that there has not been enough research done on the vaccines/autism debate:

02:02 If we look at something like autism for instance…Not infrequently the mother will say “my child had a vaccine and my child was just not the same after that.” So there’s a whole range of environmental toxins, okay, inclusive I believe of vaccines that can cause damage to our children. One of the great difficulty we have is we haven’t researched this issue sufficiently…So, for instance, we know that, if we look at something like autism, and the jury’s still out.

Coleman again asserts the flawed hypotheses that vaccines have not been studied appropriately, and that post-immunisation surveillance is not adequately carried out:

03:18 So often those children are at risk and yet we tend to have one size fits all so we tend to say look all children are the same you’re through that you’re more better off being vaxed than not. And the fact is we just don’t have the information, we don’t have the research; we certainly don’t have the research around the subtle sequelae that follow from vaccination.

Coleman alleges that vaccine safety data is deliberately distorted:

03:39 And this is the difficulty; we need transparency of data; we need a more sophisticated research approach; and we need to take the parents seriously…As I said one of the big problems we have in medicine is a distortion of the data…

Coleman alleges that accusations of vaccine injury are ignored, based on the claims of the anti-vaccine activists present:

07:36 Although this is a small crowd, it’s important we voice our concerns. So I’m not gonna go and bash the parents who want to vaccinate their child and neither am I yourselves; I think your experiences are real and they’re valid. They need to be listened to and taken seriously; we need good research. We don’t have it at this stage.

Coleman alleges that general practitioners ignore the lifestyle factors of their patients in lieu of writing scripts:

07:55 Certainly I think working in general practice one is very mindful that we are, in, that how often have you gone to a GP and we try to do our best and sometimes we could do better than we do. But often it’s just script, script, script, alright? So we’ve become churning through the scripts, and we’re burying the lifestyle issues.

Alarmingly, Coleman notes that he was admitted to a stroke unit in 2009, attributing his condition to an influenza immunisation:

08:17 I used to be a passionate supporter of vaccines. I used to consider you guys the lunatic fringe. Okay? And now I’m saying well hang on, what’s going on here. I needed to be hit over the head with a bit of four-be-two. In 2009 when my patients came in for the swine flu vaccine they said “doc, are you sure this is safe because the vaccine companies are being indemnified by the government.” I said “look I’m sure it is”, so I got myself a whack in the shoulder and there you go, alright? Subsequent to that I noticed a few little splinter haemorrhages in my bed-nails, I thought nothing of it. And a little while later I found myself in the stroke unit in Gosford Hospital. I was throwing off a few emboli. It’s purely anecdotal. It doesn’t necessarily mean very much, it goes under the radar. But in my experience, when you look for it, vaccine side-effects are much more common than we actually give it credit: they’re there, and they’re not being investigated.

Coleman mistakenly equates the real harm done by vaccine preventable disease, with the many made-up claims of vaccine injury, thus doing a great disservice to those he claims to honour:

09:13 And I think that I’m honouring the parents who’ve lost children to vaccine preventable diseases, because I have seen in my career I’ve seen children who’ve been affected by, intra, you know, rubella in pregnancy and it’s devastating for those parents. Just as devastating as it is for parents whose children, whose children’s developmental trajectory has been punctuated by vaccine, they say “the child was never the same after”. So, we’re looking at both sides of the coin, both parents, both mothers deserve our compassion, and the only way through this is with impartial evidence. We’re not getting that.

Coleman continues for another five minutes,  repeating many of the claims which are made above, in what ends up being a rambling, almost incoherent stream of consciousness, devoid of logical acuity, which has little resemblance to the reality of epidemiology and immunisation adverse event surveillance. There is something very amiss with Coleman’s new-found anti-vaccination apologism, and it is time for the Medical Board of Australia to re-open an investigation into Coleman’s fitness to practice.

Looking back to Coleman’s Facebook profile, which lists his medical positions, we see equally disturbing posts from a medical professional who once worked in communicable diseases.

Only yesterday Coleman posted an article from 2011 as if it was confirmation that the Gardasil vaccine is harming vaccinees. It isn’t. The court case discussed never went anywhere, and any self-respecting medical professional would not post such unsubstantiated rubbish four years after the alleged vaccine harm never even made it into a courtroom:

On November 11 2015 Coleman degraded the memories of all who fought against real oppression by grubbily linking Armistice Day with the promotion of anti-vaccinationism:

On October 21 2015 Coleman posted the anti-vaccination staple: the contaminated polio vaccine gambit. What he doesn’t mention is that, although this information has been readily accessible for many years, no one has been confirmed to have suffered any complications from the over-fifty-year-old contamination:

Another anti-vaccine post, from June 2015. Collective Evolution,  no less:

And then there is Coleman’s inexplicable advocacy of Ian Gawler’s treatments, including anti-chemotherapy/oncologist comments:

And Coleman has also been active in a closed anti-vaccination Facebook group, called Unvaccinated Australia. Some bizarre claims – made in agreement with this delusional post – were made by Coleman only last night:

Kevin Coleman I agree this is Tyranny. Aussies are asleep. But the number of harmed will grow incrementally. We will wake up eventually

Kevin Coleman Aggressive ping pong will just perpetuate the cycle of violence, my friend. We got to fight for transparency. Look at the ISIS phenomena. Firm commitment to transparency, compassion and justice. You need to teach your son the power of constructive passion. Aluta continua! The struggle continues. We will overcome

Coleman’s Facebook page is certainly no better.

This is crazy stuff; make no mistake. And Coleman is responsible for this content:

Remember, Coleman worked in public health, as the HIV/AIDS Coordinator, in Dubbo:

And more cancer cure conspiracy crankery:

Hopefully we’ve included enough here to make the Medical Board of Australia, and the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, sit up in fright. Coleman is now a public health concern which needs to be addressed, immediately. I mean, when you are a star of Ian Hastings’ No Vaccines Australia Facebook page, you know your claw marks are present on the bottom of that rusty barrel:

_____________________________________________

Update November 28 2015

Two hours after this blog post went live Coleman posted the 2011 Gardasil article again, along with a stream of unrelated gibberish to, I guess, substantiate his silly behaviour:

_____________________________________________

Addendum 1: Transcript of Coleman Sydney speech

00:23 There’s no question that some of you here, just looking around at some of the placards, have children who have suffered because of an adverse event following vaccination.

00:50 There’s no question that you can live a healthy life without vaccines. There’ll be an attempt to bring in a compensation scheme for children who are severely damaged by vaccines. So they’re acknowledging that a small number of children are, have catastrophic consequences. What we’re not acknowledging is that for some children those consequences are subtle, but, all-pervasive and can be terribly detrimental for the life trajectory of those children.

01:23 At the moment I’m dealing, counselling a lot of young men and some of whom are on probation for some sort of criminal offence; it’s often trivial but there can be a whole host of things from driving under the influence or domestic violence, or an assault, all sorts of things. What we do know is that a lot of, when you go, go down and grind down and started looking at how people are functioning, their cognitive functioning, their emotional functioning, often there are deficits. Our prisons are full of youth and older who’ve had some sort of deficit as a consequence of whatever.

02:02 If we look at something like autism for instance, and there’s a whole spectrum of autistic problems, some of those children when you speak to, or you listen to the stories, okay, some children have had scarlet fever and after that the mother says the child just wasn’t the same after that. Not infrequently the mother will say “my child had a vaccine and my child was just not the same after that.” So there’s a whole range of environmental toxins, okay, inclusive I believe of vaccines that can cause damage to our children. One of the great difficulty we have is we haven’t researched this issue sufficiently.

02:44 So, for instance, we know that, if we look at something like autism, and the jury’s still out, if we look at autism, we know that the children who are at risk are the children whose mothers have had a lack of oxygen or ischaemia or hypoxia during birth or some other intra-uterine insult. Let’s say the mum has had a severe bowel infection during pregnancy, or she has a difficult delivery, a Caesar and the baby’s been without oxygen for a while, more in fact if the child is male.

03:18 So often those children are at risk and yet we tend to have one size fits all so we tend to say look all children are the same you’re through that you’re more better off being vaxed than not. And the fact is we just don’t have the information, we don’t have the research; we certainly don’t have the research around the subtle sequelae that follow from vaccination.

03:39 And this is the difficulty; we need transparency of data; we need a more sophisticated research approach; and we need to take the parents seriously. Whether it might be a mum or a dad; whether or not you’re a teacher, a doctor, a pharmacist, or a police officer, or whoever, right, you guys as parents know your child better than anyone else, you know your children; and you’ll know that something’s not right; you’ll know that there’s been a punctuating event, whatever that is, you’re the expert on your children. And I think it’s important that if the parents are concerned to take it seriously. As I said one of the big problems we have in medicine is a distortion of the data…

06:03 We fought two world wars for freedom in this country.

06:28 Whether or not you’re provax or antivax often parents are passionate about the welfare of their children; they’re very really concerned, okay, and so that I think that the point here to this is the vaccine, but, there’s other factors as well. And often we’ve ignored the environmental and lifestyle factors. With autism up until the present time for instance we’re told, well, it’s poly-genetic. There’s something wrong with your genes: that’s why your child has got autism. We hear the same sort of thing with cancer. Whereas we know that really the major cause of, whether it be neurological dysfunction in our children, autoimmune disease in our children, we’re seeing a lot of allergy now that we weren’t seeing a generation ago. So all the rising rates of cancer, there’s something going wrong with our human immune system; there’s something wrong here that we need to explore further and take seriously

07:36 Although this is a small crowd, it’s important we voice our concerns. So I’m not gonna go and bash the parents who want to vaccinate their child and neither am I yourselves; I think your experiences are real and they’re valid. They need to be listened to and taken seriously; we need good research. We don’t have it at this stage.

07:55 Certainly I think working in general practice one is very mindful that we are, in, that how often have you gone to a GP and we try to do our best and sometimes we could do better than we do. But often it’s just script, script, script, alright? So we’ve become churning through the scripts, and we’re burying the lifestyle issues.

08:17 I used to be a passionate supporter of vaccines. I used to consider you guys the lunatic fringe. Okay? And now I’m saying well hang on, what’s going on here. I needed to be hit over the head with a bit of four-be-two. In 2009 when my patients came in for the swine flu vaccine they said “doc, are you sure this is safe because the vaccine companies are being indemnified by the government.” I said “look I’m sure it is”, so I got myself a whack in the shoulder and there you go, alright? Subsequent to that I noticed a few little splinter haemorrhages in my bed-nails, I thought nothing of it. And a little while later I found myself in the stroke unit in Gosford Hospital. I was throwing off a few emboli. It’s purely anecdotal. It doesn’t necessarily mean very much, it goes under the radar. But in my experience, when you look for it, vaccine side-effects are much more common than we actually give it credit: they’re there, and they’re not being investigated.

09:13 And I think that I’m honouring the parents who’ve lost children to vaccine preventable diseases, because I have seen in my career I’ve seen children who’ve been affected by, intra, you know, rubella in pregnancy and it’s devastating for those parents. Just as devastating as it is for parents whose children, whose children’s developmental trajectory has been punctuated by vaccine, they say “the child was never the same after”. So, we’re looking at both sides of the coin, both parents, both mothers deserve our compassion, and the only way through this is with impartial evidence. We’re not getting that.

09:52 So, you’ve heard a lot about the malfeasance, about the corruption within the medical system, it is there unfortunately. As I said, some of that is out-and-out corruption; some of that is perhaps just bias; and some of it is wishful thinking. So we can all be hypnotised by our paradigm. And I think that within medicine we’ve been very focussed on the drugs and not enough on lifestyle. Now lifestyle’s incredibly important, okay?

10:22 If you look at something like meningococcus, which is a terrible disease, and I’ve certainly cared for children in intensive care units who’ve been saved, but, they’ve lost their nose, their ears, there’s fingers, there’s toes, it’s a terrible situation. And certainly speaking as a doctor who’s seen this I’ve said “my God bring on the vaccine I don’t want to see this I don’t want to have to deal with this”. And every other day you’ll hear about the wonders of the meningococcal vaccine and how important it is.

10:49 But what we don’t hear about, what we don’t hear about, is that in families and households where there’s a smoker the mortality rate, the infant mortality rate is four to twenty-fold increase in a smoking household. And that’s not to put down some of you good people who may be smokers – the underlying problem’s trauma that hasn’t been dealt with – so the thing is what we need is parents who have children who have been, we need a transparent and level playing field. We need to listen to all the mums and all the dads about what’s happened to their children.

11:23 The only way through this, and these are very emotionally charged issues, you’ll find that this is polarising and that polarisation is not always helpful; because what we’re looking for is the truth and the truth is that, yes, vaccines do some good. Yes, vaccines do some harm. Yes, you can live a good, healthy life without vaccines. And yes, there is, there are issues around protecting our children and how we best do that. These are difficult issues. The only way through this is with impartial research at arm’s length from industry. We really need this. We need the research, but, it needs to be impartial.

12:00 At the moment I feel that general practice is really letting us down, because it’s really focussed on prescribing the drug. So what we need is, is to empower general practice with front end loading, alright? Front…loading the database in…loading the database about what are the symptoms, what problems, what potential problems here. When was the vaccines given? What was the side effect? What really get up to get that information out? So until we’ve got a level playing field, until we’ve got the research, we’re gonna have this polarisation.

12:33 So, parents deserve to be heard. And you’ve heard a lot of very good speakers here; I’m giving you just a slice from the medical opinion. It’s not straight forward. When I’ve raised this issues with my colleagues a lot were vilifying me, but, quite a number were anonymously saying “look I agree with you but I’m not prepared to [inaudible] anonymous”. So the thing is we need transparency, we need to get away from scapegoating people, as being fruit loops, or the lunatic fringe. We need to get the data; we need to analyse it at arm’s length.

13:04 We need to remain steadfast and united. We need to push for transparency. We need to push for a moratorium on this. I’m very mindful that they’re going to bring in this compulsory, well, I don’t know, there’s vaccination for mothers.

13:19 The big problem in science is you need your case controls ideally randomised to see what’s happening to the kids who were vaccinated, what’s happening to the kids who weren’t vaccinated. What are the subtle changes we’re missing and what are the very early situations we’re missing when a child’s first born there’s that gauge with the mother, there’s that interaction with the mum, okay, we don’t have any way of clinically recording that, unless you go looking for the data, unless you go looking for the clinical signs, and often parents will say “there’s something not right here”, we need better science and better replication of science to sort this thing out. In the meantime, okay, the best thing we can do for our children is a healthy lifestyle, and address the [inaudible] a healthy lifestyle, a plant-based diet, avoid the smoking, if you are a smoker get some help, okay? And be passionate about your children and try to…just keep searching for the truth. Thanks you all.

_________________________________________

Addendum 2: Australian Doctor article by Serkan Ozturk

Spirituality can help fight infectious disease, says GP

Serkan Ozturk | 9 November, 2015

A doctor who was “in charge” of vaccinations while working for a NSW Government public health unit, says spirituality has played a role in driving down rates of communicable disease.

Dr Kevin Coleman, now a GP on the NSW Central Coast who says he is “not anti-vaccination across the board”, outlined his views in a submission to the Senate inquiry into the Federal Government’s proposed ‘no jab, no pay’ plan.

“We are witnessing a slow-moving tsunami of immunological dysfunction as evidenced by a steady increase in childhood cancer and allergy, and emotional–cognitive development disorders. Why?,” Dr Coleman asks.

“Like most pathologies, the answers are complex and multifactorial: but it stands to reason that vaccination is in there as ‘person of interest’.”

He says that childhood mumps offers a degree of protection against ovarian cancer, but this is “forfeited by those who are vaccinated”.

“There is NO doubt that the major advances in the control of communicable diseases have come with public health measures of: clean water, sanitation, good nutrition, and healthy social relationships and spirituality.”

Dr Coleman says he has more than 35 years of experience in family medicine.

“I was formerly [the] medical officer in charge of communicable disease/vaccinations for Western NSW, whilst working for the Western NSW public health unit in Dubbo and briefly served on the Hepatitis Advisory Committee for NSW in 1994,” his submission states.

“I believe the so called ‘anti vaccers’ need be given the respect they deserve. Their observations are not to be dismissed — but heeded.

“We’ve fought two world wars for our democratic freedoms.

“I am not anti-vaccination across the board – but I do have strong reservations about the way vaccines are marketed, the hype regarding their efficacy, the lack of transparency in the research data and interpretation,” Dr Coleman writes.

________________________________________

Addendum 3: Australian Doctor article by Serkan Ozturk

GP unrepentant over vaccination views

Serkan Ozturk | 11 November, 2015

A vaccination-sceptic GP says he is unafraid of a visit from AHPRA over his controversial views that “spirituality” may be a weapon in reducing communicable disease.

Tuggerah GP Dr Kevin Coleman has told Australian Doctor that he stands by his comments made in a submission to the Senate inquiry looking into the Federal Government’s proposed ‘no jab, no pay’ Bill.

“I am concerned about this legislation. It is vexatious in my view. I don’t think we should be coercing or forcing parents into medical procedures of any kind,” Dr Coleman told Australian Doctor.

“That’s what we fought two world wars for – to preserve our freedoms.

“I really don’t care if AHPRA come after me for my views. I think if the medical establishment was doing its job – which it’s not – we would have independent outcomes about vaccines.

“Unfortunately medicine has got such a cosy relationship with big business and the pharmaceutical industry that it has lost its boundary.”

In his submission, the former Western NSW public health unit employee, who was once “in charge” of vaccinations and communicable diseases, claimed that not only could spirituality help lower rates of disease, but that vaccines themselves were likely contributing to a range of health problems affecting modern societies.

“We’re vaccinating ourselves into a very dangerous situation where we are sabotaging our natural immunity,” Dr Coleman told Australian Doctor.

“What we have now, because of successive vaccination campaigns, is a situation where mums are becoming pregnant and they don’t have that advantage of that early infection during their own childhood. So there is no trans-placental transfer of immunity.”

Dr Coleman said he felt sorry for doctors who might scoff at his suggestion that spirituality had any significant part to play in driving down disease.

“A lot of us, I would say, when we’re in the shit and sweating on it out the back of buggery, would say our prayers. And sometimes those prayers are answers. That’s my view and I’ll stand by it,” he said.

“We’re talking about ‘psychoneuro’ immunology. Meditation and yoga – these spiritual disciplines we know that they enhance health. I would say that there is a place for prayer.”

When prompted by Australian Doctor, Dr Coleman said his own children had been vaccinated but argued that it was in a “different context”.

“It was yonks ago in rural South Africa, where there are high rates of HIV and TB,” he said.

“I think that vaccinating children and having collateral damage without good data – and we know that the industry is not providing open access to data – well, I think that is institutionalised abuse.”

Dr Coleman, who in his submission described himself as “not anti-vaccination across the board”, also said that he had in recent months attended protest rallies organised by the anti-vaccination group, the Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network (AVN).

When asked whether he believed vaccines caused autism, Dr Coleman said it was possible.

“It may well be that vaccines may be part of the problem in terms of causing autism,” he said.

“We don’t know as we don’t have the data. We need research and long-term studies. We need to apply the science in an independent way. It needs to have distance from the pharmaceutical industry.”

In 2010, Dr Coleman was the subject of disciplinary action by the Medical Board after he was found guilty of undertaking a breast examination on a female patient without consent.

Despite that finding, Dr Coleman said he was prepared to fight for his views to be heard.

“The problem of bullying and the lack of ethics starts right at the top with the Australian Medical Board and it trickles down,” he said. “I’m prepared to own that.

“In the earlier part of my career, I would have been very appalled by what I’m saying now. But I’ve had a chance to back off and reflect on what’s going on here and look more closely at the data.”

__________________________________________