More stupidity

In February the ABC Four Corners television program aired a story called Swallowing It: How Australians Are Spending Billions on Unproven Vitamins and Supplements (Thompson et al 2017) as part of the ABC’s constant stream of free advertising for the medical industry. From the transcript:

DR MICHAEL GANNON, PRESIDENT AUSTRALIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION: It’s very rare to meet an Australian family that doesn’t have some form of vitamin supplements somewhere in the family, and what a lot of Australian families have is very expensive urine.

GEOFF THOMPSON: Melbourne’s Swinburne University is just one of the top Australian universities which have entered into funding deals with Swisse and Blackmores. La Trobe University has agreed to accept 15 million dollars from Swisse to establish a Complementary Medicine Evidence Centre. Blackmores donated five million dollars to the University of Western Sydney where it also funds scholarships. At Sydney University, a 1.3 million dollar Maurice Blackmore chair of integrative medicine is awaiting appointment. Last year even Australia’s peak scientific body the CSIRO signed a three-year multimillion dollar research deal with Swisse. The company is also a sponsor of the ABC’s international service Australia Plus.

DR MICHAEL GANNON: Their margins are tight and I think there’s more and more evidence that they do make the majority of their income from the other things they sell, and the problem lies when they sell things that are potentially useful, potentially harmful.
GEOFF THOMPSON: The pharmacists’ embrace of complementary medicine has put them in conflict with the doctors’ peak body, the Australian Medical Association.
DR MICHAEL GANNON: We’ve got a number of concerns about the use of complementary medicine in pharmacy. If we’re talking about non-evidence based treatments, they’re given a legitimacy by being sold by pharmacists, an important member of the professional healthcare team.

DR MICHAEL GANNON: When we look at the most trusted professions, year on year on year, I’m proud to say that at the top is doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. So that respect has been hard won. That’s put at risk if they’re being seen to promote treatments that increasingly the average consumer recognises might be a load of rubbish.

So Gannon bemoans the fact that taking vitamins is very common in Australia, while pushing for even more forced-fluoridation, even though fluoride is already the most commonly taken drug in Australia, not by choice but because it’s dumped into public water supplies as a supposed preventive measure. Apparently he can’t see the irony in referring to “very expensive urine” and “non-evidence based treatments” in relation to essential nutrients, while promoting the involuntary consumption of fluoride, which is itself a treatment not based on evidence, and not a nutrient. He accuses pharmacists of giving legitimacy to bogus treatments while he and the other professional forced-fluoridation promoters give legitimacy to fluoride-spiked water by talking a load of rubbish about it. The hypocrisy could not be more stark. Perhaps it has never occurred to Gannon, or the geniuses at the ABC, that one of the reasons so many Australians take vitamins and minerals may be that fluoride toxicity has increased their need for them. Fluoride promotes oxidative stress and inflammation (Barbier et al 2010), interferes with enzymes and various biological processes by binding to essential minerals such as magnesium, zinc, iron, and calcium (Adamek 2005, 70), and can interfere with the absorption of nutrients by damaging the mucosa and microvilli in the gastrointestinal tract (Susheela et al 2014, 573). Another reason, which may also largely be a consequence of fluoride toxicity, may be that the health of the Australian population is poor, with high rates of various chronic health conditions for which the medical profession has no satisfactory answers. Many people self-treat due to the lack of a viable alternative. Seeing so many unhealthy people all around them, it is hardly surprising that many people with no obvious health problems are also worried about their health, and take nutrients as a preventive measure. Personally, I do not have a very high opinion of the Australian supplements industry. For one thing, I have not seen any evidence that there is any testing of the fluoride content of its products. I also agree that health research should be independent, not funded by businesses which can profit from marketing disguised as research. The absence of adequate, independent research is a failure of government, and that applies to fluoride exposure and its consequences just as much as it does to anything else.

“Michael Gannon always knew he would be a doctor. As a child he had allergies, asthma and chronic tonsillitis. Nothing dramatic, he says, but enough to make him a regular at the local GP. It was this kind, warm and compassionate GP, Dr Ian Matthews of Perth, who inspired him to study medicine. ‘He was a fantastic role model. Medicine is a wonderful vocation. It is an amazing privilege.’ ” (Fram 2016) This is entirely in keeping with Gannon’s very low standards and religiosity. There have been large increases in the rates of allergies and asthma in Australia in recent decades, and the medical industry is just raking in the extra profits without knowing the cause(s), providing cures, or providing anything more than partial and temporary relief of symptoms. There is a cure for chronic tonsillitis, but that involves removing the tonsils.

Twitter (22 February 2017)
Great advice from our cousins USA. #vaccination is the #publichealth #prevencion triumph of our time. Must never lose gains
It’s interesting that Gannon refers to vaccination as “the” public health triumph of our time, not “a” public health triumph. It raises questions as to whether or not he actually believes what he says about forced-fluoridation, and whether or not what he says about it is simply an attempt to protect the reputation, and therefore power, of the medical industry. The use of the word “cousins” is also interesting, considering that dumping fluoride pollution into public water supplies is as American as dumping people in the street, dumping people in cages, dumping bombs on foreigners, and dumping greenhouse pollution into the atmosphere. There is also reason to believe that fluoridationists are closet white supremacists, but I won’t go into that here.

The latest F-ups from the AMA twit on Twitter:
28 March 2017
#Fluoride a #publichealth triumph. Sadly not across Qld & NSW @Julesschiller @abcadelaide @AUS_Dental #prevention

28 March 2017
Giant cavities in #Paleo PeteEvans’ #Fluoride claims. Do your own research!? 45mins on web not same as BSc or MBBS @AUS_Dental #science

27 March 2017
Please stick to cooking #Paleo Pete. Leave infant feeding, #vaccination, skin #cancer #fluoride to #science experts

Conclusion

Dr Michael Gannon, president of the Australian Medical Association, says that ethics is the most important topic of all while being an entirely unethical human rights abuser himself and criticising others for speaking out about human rights abuse, claims to care about democracy while being extremely authoritarian and turning a blind eye to corruption, refers approvingly to “Hippocratic medicine” while being indifferent at best to the harm he is doing, accuses innocent peope of being child abusers while being a shameless mass child abuser himself, preaches non-violence while being a violent religious zealot himself, dishonestly criticises others for not providing evidence while repeatedly making claims of scientific proof without providing a shred of evidence for them, preaches about science while being scientifically illiterate, accuses others of peddling misinformation while being a braindead parrot himself, accuses others of inciting fear while exploiting fear in his own propaganda, accuses others of being anti-health while being a mass poisoner himself, criticises others for being “extremely vocal” while being a public relations hack himself, refers to “poorly performed research” while ignoring the fact that much of the research showing harm or ineffectiveness is of much better quality than the very poor quality research which fluoridationists rely on, and calls others “simply wrong”, basket cases, stupid, conspiracy theorists, and dills while being a complete imbecile himself. Regardless of what he thinks he is trying to achieve, Gannon is pure evil.

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28 May 2018 update: Michael Gannon has ended his two-year term as AMA president. Unfortunately he has been replaced by Tony Bartone, who is also a perpetrator of forced-fluoridation.

21 May 2019 update: It has come to my attention that Paul Syvret quit The Courier Mail in August 2018. A copy of what is purported to be his last column there was posted on the Hot Copper online forum. Interestingly, he bemoans news stories “giving equal space to the various flat-earthers, vaccination sceptics, creationists, racists and other loons out there” but makes no mention of opponents of forced-fluoridation. As far as I can tell, he has made no public mention of forced-fluoridation since ending his association with Rupert Murdoch.

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