Saving medicine from the health bureaucracy

In early January (2020), he was called in by both medical officials and the police, and forced to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.' [New York Times] Sound familiar?

Dr Li was among 'eight people reprimanded by security officers for "spreading rumours". [Int J Infect Dis.] Sadly Dr Li died of Covid. But during his illness he advocated that "I think a healthy society should not have just one voice."' [New York Times]

And it is accepted that chilling the expression of ideas (by making people scared to speak out) is just as detrimental as the specific banning of ideas.

Scholars of history, the Australian public at large, Dr Li and the High Court of Australia, understand the importance of the developed concept of intellectual freedom.

In this context, intellectual freedom is so important to knowledge advancement through, as the High Court ruled regarding 'the contested marketplace of ideas', that banning intellectual freedom (unilaterally removing that contested marketplace) poses a serious risk to public health. Therefore, should doctors associated with AHPRA or the Medical Board of Australia who have participated at all in the dangerous repression of intellectual freedom have their licences to practice medicine immediately suspended while a thorough investigation is undertaken into their fitness to practice?

What builds trust in an institution? Intellectual freedom through open scientific discourse or enforced adherence to the regime's singular 'truth' under the threat of professional excommunication?

Public health is still dependent on individuals receiving informed consent about treatments, consent being specific to the individual patient.

This introduces the last issue where transparency should be favoured over repression. If any information comes to light that would materially alter someone's decision to give/not give consent (and that information was suppressed as a result of the chilling effect on intellectual freedom by AHPRA/Medical Board's censorship), then AHPRA and the Medical Board should be open to both civil and criminal liability for any harm caused due to the silence they fashioned.

Statements by the High Court of Australia in Ridd v James Cook University

One 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 in Sweezy v New Hampshire. 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.'

Whilst different views might reasonably be taken about some additional restrictions upon intellectual freedom, the instrumental and ethical foundations for the developed concept of intellectual freedom are powerful reasons why it has rarely been restricted by any asserted 'right' of others to respect or courtesy. It is not necessary to go as far as Said's assertion that 'the whole point [of an intellectual] is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant' to conclude that, however desirable courtesy and respect might be, the purpose of intellectual freedom must permit of expression that departs from those civil norms.

JCU's submission depends upon drawing a distinction between what is said and how it is said. But such a distinction may not exist. The content of what is said often depends upon how it is said. This is particularly so when impugned speech concerns the expression of an opinion. The content of speech that expresses an opinion will often be inseparable from the strength of conviction with which the opinion is held, which is tied to the manner of expression. The message conveyed by a statement, expressed tentatively 'it may be that it was an error for Professor Jones to claim that the earth is flat' expresses a proposition only of possibility. It cannot be divorced from the tentative manner in which it was expressed. By contrast, 'no reasonable person could ever claim that the earth is flat' expresses a proposition of certainty, all the more so if it is expressed in an emphatic manner.

That interpretation aligns with the long-standing core meaning of intellectual freedom. Whilst a prohibition upon disrespectful and discourteous conduct in intellectual expression might be a 'convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world', the 'price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind'. The 2016 Censure given to Dr Ridd was, therefore, not justified.