President ’ s Report
Peter Berryman | ATMS President
We all have been posed some difficult questions lately , particularly related to the current COVID-19 pandemic : for instance , who gets what resources , and when ? Take the simple example of how medical masks were discouraged by public health experts early in the pandemic . A potential public run on high-grade medical masks throughout the community could reduce their availability to front line workers who urgently needed these limited resources . However , it was quickly established that wearing masks by the general public was a crucial public health practice , meaning that discouraging its widespread uptake , though well-intended , was at the time a misleading “ expert ” decision . Clearly , if masks were deemed not effective as personal protective equipment , then why did doctors and nurses need them ? The public could not be trusted to hear the truth , so the credibility of these experts , in my opinion , was damaged .
Once upon a time , mere authority trumped credibility , as important decision making was bestowed on a limited number of people in our society who would make the big decisions for the public . The authority of these people , such as those in royal families , or Popes elected by Cardinals , entitled ancestral landowners , or simply those wielding a lethal weapon , would ordain the big decisions for the public , such as going on a religious crusade , or even ruling that the earth is indeed flat .
Who do you trust today to make important decisions for you ? Maybe our elected politicians , representing us at State and Federal levels ? Since
1901 , we have had the democratic political process in Australia give us a compulsory federal voting opportunity about once every three years , though women got the right to vote a little later in 1903 , and indigenous Australians only in 1962 . How much do you rely on your social class to dictate decisionmaking for you , such as comrades in the working class typically voting Red , and professionals in the middle class often voting Blue ? Social mobility could change the voting preferences of an entrepreneur who started out working in their own garage , and then turned themselves into a successful billion dollar “ unicorn ” company owner .
I have personally gone through a rigorous tertiary education process on behalf of science . I once was a believer in the authority of science to make only good decisions . I had naïvely overlooked some of the worst failings , either deliberate or inadvertent , of science ’ s practitioners in their role in the acquisition of knowledge and power . This has been demonstrated in the sequence of events that led to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , Josef Mengele ’ s cruel experiments on twins in Auschwitz , and even the invention of the fossil fuel-burning internal combustion engine . Today , science still wrestles with a contest of ideas . Many people contend that global warming in the Anthropocene era is catastrophic , while others deny that this even exists . The world is gripped by a pandemic , yet vaccine hesitancy is widespread . Available scientific evidence can be interpreted in multiple ways , because of personal rivalry , perverse career incentives , institutional and even nationalistic priorities . Richard Horton , chief editor of The Lancet has stated , “ much of the scientific literature , perhaps half , may simply be untrue . Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes , tiny effects , invalid exploratory analyses , and flagrant conflicts of interest , together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance , science has taken a turn towards darkness ". 1
This has relevance to unregistered practitioners of natural medicine in Australia . Ideological motivations are likely to be behind the politically initiated scientific investigations of the high-level evidence we believe supports natural medicine . The reports arising from these investigations have been used to formulate public health policies , and one of their outcomes was that private health insurance rebates were lost for 16 modalities on 1 April 2019 . These reports have been challenged at an Ombudsman level since 2016 , though the outcomes are yet to be made public . A repeat of this same contest of ideas is currently under way , though with recent delays , even if this next report delivers a positive outcome , it is unlikely to take effect until 2023 at the earliest .
The conduct of conventional medical professionals at times fails to acknowledge such findings , like those of an analysis of 1128 systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials ( RCTs ) on the efficacy of conventional medicine . Researchers found that it was beneficial in 45 % of cases , harmful in 10 %, and
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