Saving medicine from the health bureaucracy

We genuinely urge doctors involved with medical regulation not to go down with the sinking ship of authoritarian censorship and suppression of intellectual freedom. Not only is this behaviour historically illiterate and intellectually feeble, but it is putting the safety of patients at risk, causing hazards to public health, runs counter to our community standards of a liberal democracy, and sits in conflict with the societal benefits of intellectual freedom that have recently been stated by the High Court of Australia.

When has there been a society that prospers because people are cancelled, removed, or 'disappeared' from their vital work because they dared to disagree with the 'regime's unquestionable truth'? Do our modern medical authoritarians want to be looked back on with the same pathetic disdain with which we judge similar historical despots?

In this article we present two rays of hope in the context that the tide is changing. Firstly, for those doctors who genuinely want to have an open expression of ideas, there is a High Court precedent about the benefits to society of intellectual freedom where professional views asserted in the context of intellectual freedom can be expressed forcefully even if they cause offence, embarrassment, or lack of trust.

Secondly, for those doctors who continue to persecute other doctors for participating in the act of intellectual freedom, accumulated medical, ethical and legal information – we believe this warrants consideration that those doctors involved with AHPRA and the Medical Board of Australia themselves have their licenses suspended as they potentially pose a danger to the public's health, in our opinion.

Go forth and be confident in the concept of intellectual freedom

Recent controversy has surrounded the sanctioning, by regulatory authorities, of doctors for publicly expressing views on elements of the Covid pandemic. Doctors have been punished because they sought to bring critical (if not ideologically uncomfortable) medical information to the public's awareness.

This controversy is fundamentally about the limits of intellectual freedom doctors have within the constraints of general, and often highly subjective, Codes of Conduct that doctors must adhere to. In this context, a recent unanimous High Court of Australia judgment gives an important window into how the Court considers what the boundaries of intellectual freedom are and how the Court considers attempts by authorities to curtail such freedom under the guise of 'conduct'. (Find the example in detail at the end of the article.)

Although the case of Ridd v James Cook University (JCU) involved specific clauses within an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement, the High Court included valuable commentary on the societal importance of intellectual freedom from an instrumental, ethical, and historical perspective. This provides a useful context for academic freedom in general. Inherent in the developed concept of intellectual freedom is the ability to dissent against the establishment narrative. It is one of the modern marvels of living in a liberal democracy and brings tremendous benefit to society, as affirmed by the High Court:

Once developed, justification for intellectual freedom is instrumental. The instrumental justification is the search for truth in the contested marketplace of ideas, the social importance of which Frankfurter J spoke powerfully about.

The Court further affirmed that:

Another justification is ethical rather than instrumental. Intellectual freedom plays "an important ethical role, not just in the lives of the few people it protects, but in the life of the community more generally" to ensure the primacy of individual conviction: "not to profess what one believes to be false" and "a duty to speak out for what one believes to be true".

Although doctors do not have a specific clause guaranteeing them the right to intellectual freedom, the High Court's discussion of the societal benefits makes it difficult to argue that doctors should be punished for participation in the act of intellectual freedom.