Silence the doctors, harm the children

This shift did not occur in isolation. In 2022, both Labor and Coalition governments supported amendments to the National Law governing medical regulation, placing greater emphasis on maintaining "public confidence" in the health system.

Confidence in medicine matters. But confidence manufactured through censorship is not the same as safety. AHPRA becomes the ministry of truth in effect.

When regulatory systems prioritise protecting institutional reputation over examining evidence and outcomes, public confidence becomes an illusion rather than a reflection of genuine patient protection.

When medicine abandons ethics

History teaches us something uncomfortable but essential: medicine is not immune from political capture.

One of the darkest lessons of the twentieth century is that doctors themselves can become instruments of ideology when professional independence is lost. Historical scholarship examining the role of physicians during the Holocaust documents how the medical profession gradually abandoned ethical principles as political doctrine replaced scientific scrutiny and moral responsibility.

It did not begin with atrocities. It began with conformity.

Doctors were encouraged to embrace fashionable "scientific" ideas aligned with political ideology. Professional dissent was discouraged. Ethical objections were marginalised. Physicians were told they were serving a higher social goal.

Sound familiar?

Step by step, medicine stopped asking the most important question in healthcare: Is this truly in the patient's best interests?

Instead, medicine began asking: Is this consistent with state policy?

The consequences were catastrophic.

The historical record shows how physicians moved from healers to participants in programs of sterilisation, euthanasia, and ultimately mass killing, all justified at the time as scientifically and socially necessary.