AHPRA and the Medical Board

How Regulatory Capture Endangers Public Health

In a scathing indictment of Australia’s health regulator, Kara Thomas, secretary of the Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS), exposes AHPRA’s alarming transformation. Once a guardian of public health AHPRA has morphed into a ruthless enforcer of government health policy and an instrument of harm, posing a real threat to public health. This dangerous development in Australia’s medical history is cause for serious concern among healthcare professionals. It threatens the independence of medical practitioners and potentially compromises patient care by prioritising policy enforcement over fully informed, patient-focused medicine.

Kara Thomas: AHPRA and The Medical Board’s Reign of Terror

Australia’s medical regulator AHPRA and the Medical Board have become not just failed watchdogs, but an active threat to public health through its ruthless enforcement of government policy over scientific evidence. The organisation’s transformation from public protector to political enforcer represents one of the most dangerous developments in Australian medical history, made even more egregious by its continued defence of unsafe Covid vaccines despite mounting evidence of harm.

Image courtesy of AMPS, Australian Medical Professionals Society

The Queensland Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dr William Bay case exposed AHPRA and the Medical Board’s methods as fundamentally unlawful, finding they denied basic procedural fairness, demonstrated apprehended bias, and failed to identify actual breaches of professional standards. Instead of protecting the public, AHPRA has become a tool for enforcing political compliance through regulatory terror.

Dr Fraiman’s rigorous reanalysis of Pfizer and Moderna’s original trials revealed that serious adverse events occurred in one out of every 800 recipients – a staggering safety signal that should have triggered immediate suspension of the program. Yet AHPRA continued to persecute doctors who raised these legitimate concerns about safety, especially considering that Pfizer appears to have concealed deaths prior to Emergency Use Authorisation and substantial DNA contamination has been detected in the process two manufactured global vaccine rollout, which was never properly tested. Dr Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), appears correct in his assessment of the Covid response being ‘the biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made … the harm to people is catastrophic’.

The human cost is in fact devastating. The Australian Medical Professionals’ (AMPS) recent ‘Human Cost of AHPRA’ survey of health practitioners shows over half of medical practitioners have faced AHPRA notifications, with nearly 80 per cent reporting unfair treatment. Multiple practitioners have committed suicide while under investigation. Many more report depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation – not from clinical misconduct, but from AHPRA and the board’s persecution of those who dare question official guidelines, political narratives and the government’s response to Covid.

The consequences extend far beyond individual practitioners. When AHPRA shut down Professor Dr Reece’s Brisbane practice serving 1,100 drug-dependent patients, the results were calamitous, patient deaths, hundreds re-incarcerated, widespread return to illicit drug use, and a 17 per cent spike in local crime rates. Similar devastation followed AHPRA’s action against Melbourne’s Dr Taylor and his 1,360 vulnerable patients.

AHPRA and the National Boards March 2021 directive effectively criminalised medical opinions that questioned government Covid policies. The unprecedented level of government information control and regulatory overreach created an environment where critical safety data were withheld from doctors and the public, while practitioners’ careers were threatened if they raised any concerns. The government’s suppression of scientific debate combined with AHPRA and the Board’s attack on clinical independence forced doctors into an impossible position – most lacked access to crucial safety information, yet faced career destruction for even questioning the official narrative. The result has been catastrophic: systematic suppression of emerging safety signals, destruction of informed consent, undermining of ethical evidence-based medicine, and the creation of a climate of fear where many physicians dare not speak out even when confronted with clear evidence of patient harm.

As the Hope Accord petition now argues, the apparent emergency that justified rushed vaccine approval ‘no longer exists’. Yet AHPRA and the board continue to enforce compliance with a failed policy that emerging evidence suggests is ‘contributing to an alarming rise in disability and excess deaths’. The regulatory capture is complete – rather than protecting the public, AHPRA and the Medical Board refuse to meet with independent researchers to exchange critical safety information, seemingly actively suppressing evidence of harm to maintain political narratives and corporate profits.

The current situation is untenable. AHPRA and the board’s conduct has created a healthcare system where fear replaces evidence, where compliance trumps conscience, and where bureaucrats dictate clinical decisions, many that cause more harm than good. They continue to defend policies that have resulted in monumental social and economic harm and destruction of trust in our institutions from the enforcement of unscientific secret health advice that was in total contravention of our 2019 Pandemic Plans. At the same time, they refuse to acknowledge the mounting safety signals that demand immediate suspension of these experimental gene-based mRNA products. British Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra has stated, ‘These experimental injections should never have been approved for use in a single human being.’

The path forward requires more than reform. It demands a complete overhaul of medical regulation in Australia. The alternative – a permanently cowed and gagged medical profession serving as mere enforcers of government policy while ignorant or ignoring clear evidence of public harm – represents an existential threat to both public health and democratic society. We must remember: when AMPS keeps asking for scientific exchange, for discussion, for scientific evidence, the authorities keep ignoring the questions.

AHPRA’s and the Medical Board’s transformation from regulator to enforcer will be remembered as one of the darkest chapters in Australian medical history. We have here a cautionary tale of how institutions meant to protect the public can become instruments of harm when captured by political and corporate interests. The cost of continued silence is measured not just in ruined careers but in preventable deaths and injuries. Reform is no longer optional; it is a moral imperative for anyone who believes in public health and medical ethics.

Resources: