Part Two

Casualties of Corporate Medicine, The Jennie Burke Story
Written by Eve Hillary. Filed November 1, 2003
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Do not read this article unless you agree to the following conditions: This article should not be construed as medical advice which should be sought from a qualified medical practitioner. Medical issues mentioned in this article do not refer to appropriate life saving procedures and drugs, but to harmful and unnecessary ones. The author asserts copyright. This article is deemed to be in the public interest and may be distributed for assessment and commentary by authorized persons and stakeholders in the public interest.

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The Web
A Preference for Poison
"At any given moment there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact."- George Orwell.

The 1990’s proved busy for Professor Dwyer. Apart from working on structural reform in medicine, he also saw patients as a clinician at his hospital. He was frequently consulted by insurance companies to assess persons who sought compensation for chemical injuries resulting from chemical exposure. This included a 48-year-old woman who was diagnosed as having sustained a chemical injury as a result of exposure to pesticides. The US Professor who diagnosed her was a world authority on chemical injury and the author of numerous scientific studies in the field. The expert had already conducted exhaustive pathology testing and scans which supported his diagnosis. After reviewing her case for an insurance company Professor Dwyer refuted the woman’s injury despite her abnormal scans. Dwyer wrote: “It is likely that … (the patient) did experience a toxic reaction to constant exposure to [pesticides] This did her no significant harm…” (6)

Professor Dwyer states he has seen more than a hundred other patients with her condition. Of these he writes: “We seem to be dealing with severe psychosomatic symptomatology in all these cases“. As to the treatment options for these chemically injured persons, Professor Dwyer recommends that patients; “understand and accept the psychosomatic basis of (the) illness and enter into some intensive help from a competent psychiatrist”. He makes no attempt to explain the abnormal pathology results that would exclude a psychiatric diagnosis. As to the woman’s treating doctors, including the US Specialist in the field, Professor Dwyer says; “…she slipped into unscientific hands and was told she had multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome.” (6)

By his own account there are over a hundred patients whom the professor has diagnosed as mentally disturbed when they have been chemically injured, while judging the doctors who diagnosed these patients as being “unscientific”. In so doing, the professor denies that toxic chemicals can cause injury, while defending the safety of pesticides. These reports have proved valuable to the chemical industry and devastating to persons that have lost the ability to lead normal lives because of chemical injury.

In 1991 Professor Dwyer was awarded the Order of Australia for distinguished service to Australia and/or to humanity at large in the field of medicine and public health. (7)

Unholy Health Alliances
“There is throats to be cut, and works to be done.” – (war minister) Henry V, William Shakespeare 

For several years, Professor Dwyer has been associated with the Australian Skeptics, an organisation which includes a page on its website entitled “Quakatak” which; “…is dedicated to getting some control over alternative medicine and educating the public on the difference between medicine and pseudo-medicine”. The group also puts people’s spiritual beliefs, and in particular, creationists, under their microscope; “the impulse to religion is a bit like masturbation...” writes a life member.

The Australian Skeptics group has spawned a number of offshoots. Peter Bowditch, a ruddy faced man with a blunt military manner is the vice president of the group. He keeps busy running a number of websites, one of which is www.ratbags.com/rsoles. Not one to trifle with social niceties, he has compiled an extensive list of persons and organisations that he states on his website are, “a collection of a thousand arseholes”. Among those targeted are Christian websites, anti-vivisection and animal welfare organisations, alternative medicine and environmental groups. He invites anyone to contact him by emailing “The Proctologist”. His targets, however, are not accorded the right of reply. Bowditch makes no apologies; “owners of sites linked to from here may be offended and feel that I am holding them up to ridicule by calling them arseholes.” Furthermore, he makes it clear that those displeased enough to consult a lawyer about defamation will have their law firms; “immediately placed on the arseholes list and linked from this site.”(11) Normally, Bowditch, the website and the Skeptics could be dismissed as just another group or a byte in cyberspace, were it not for the fact that their spur leads into the corridors of political power in much the same ways as Steven Barrett’s Quackbusters do in the US. Bowditch appears to be the professor’s most publicly outspoken supporter and he issues a veiled warning to those who would dispute the academic’s views. New Scientist reviewed the professor’s book, The Body at War, wherein the reviewer pointed out a number of alleged errors. On his website Bowditch relates a conversation that allegedly took place between himself and the professor: “…Professor Dwyer successfully sued the New Scientist for defamation over the book review and, as the Professor put it to me, ‘made more money from the defamation action than from book royalties’”.

Let the Games Begin
"Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all." - Peter Drucker

Sydney-siders suffered from a bad case of Olympic fever in 2000, when few had their eyes on other State issues. Until then it had been unclear what Bowditch, the professor, the Skeptics and certain others had in common, apart from a compulsion to “reform” the healthcare system and a seemingly systemic opposition to alternative and wholistic medicine (18). The events of the next two years however cast a glaring public light onto many alliances that led directly to the inner organs of the State Government. That got the attention of the general public and raised issues with the voters themselves about the identity of shadowy groups, unelected and beholden to no-one, that would decide what kind of health care is for the public good and which practitioners needed weeding out. The electorate was beginning to wonder how decisions were being made and who was making them.

Australia is one of the most bureaucratised nations on earth, with a committee, a government department or a commission for almost everything. Consumers can complain to any number of government departments for any number of reasons. Any patient dissatisfied with a health care practitioner, treatments or devices can lodge a complaint to the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), a bureaucracy with wide ranging powers of investigations and actions. The definition of a quack is a pretender to a skill. Anyone who believes they have been treated by a quack may complain and have that person investigated and dealt with. If unsatisfied the patient may exercise their right of appeal. Any patient may exercise the right to question their practitioner as to their qualifications and registration details with the appropriate professional boards. They may (and probably should) ask to see studies that support any treatment or device that is offered to them. The health professional, whether he is an orthodox or alternative doctor or practitioner, should be willing and able to oblige. If patients are not satisfied they will seek other options. On the other hand a duly qualified practitioner who uses a treatment supported by scientific evidence in an appropriate manner should experience no harassment from authorities. Many patients now conduct considerable research themselves before choosing a particular modality or practitioner.

It would surprise health care consumers to learn that they are considered by some special interest groups as being too feebleminded to know what kind of health care they want.

And no serious person would rely on a special interest group or a social club to police the entire health care profession.

Bizarrely that is exactly what occurred in Sydney in November 2002 when the then NSW Health Minister Craig Knowles announced a “crackdown on ‘miracle cures’, ‘wonder drugs’ and misleading health claims and advertisements to protect people who are sick and vulnerable.”

For most practitioners the move came unexpectedly, and the public could hardly have expected the move in the vacuum of a non-issue. For a while there were few clues until Bowditch confirmed on his website that a “trigger” for this government action was some “work” done by the Australian Skeptics. The “work” referred to was outlined in the Skeptic magazine, Summer 2002 issue, which described Skeptic Ms. Cheryl Freeman, as having gathered an astonishing array of alternative treatment devices and treatments, (often gleaned as a pretender by using false identities). Freeman’s acquisitions were propped on a display table at the Sydney press conference on November 8, 2002 when the then Health Minister announced the crackdown. He was joined by Professor Dwyer standing to his right and on his left stood Ms Amanda Adrian, Commissioner of the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), an organisation that handles complaints from patients about health practitioners and their treatments. The Commissioner’s presence puzzled many observers, since no actual patient appeared to have made a complaint about any alternative practitioner or treatment. The “evidence” for this alleged “widespread quackery”, had been solely provided by members and affiliates of the Skeptics who seemed the only ones tied in knots about alternative medicine. 

According to a Skeptics editorial it was time for the alternative health profession to be “called to account”. Something had to be done about all the “quacks” out there who used the paraphernalia that lay strewn over the Minister’s table at the press conference, on “innocent victims”. The Minister wasted no time in acting on this problem by announcing his appointment of Professor Dwyer to head a special committee, the Health Claims and Consumer Protection Advisory Committee. Later, the professor wasted no time by announcing in the Australian Doctor; “We are going to make it much harder for the mongrels who sell this stuff”. And “doctors who offer miracle cures will be deregistered as part of a crackdown on shonky medical practices”.

Soon after the press conference the committee members were chosen, their qualifications being primarily linked to orthodox medicine and pharmacology. Meanwhile in the month it took the professor to assemble the members, there were 4166 Australians disabled by conventional doctors and hospital treatments and 1500 Australians died as a result of conventional medical treatments in the current health care system (22,23,24,41). Amazingly, the committee was not set up to enquire into the high death rate of conventional medical treatments but rather to target alternative and wholistic health treatments and practitioners, including doctors using nutritional supplements. There had been no deaths resulting from alternative medicine in
Australia during that time.

“This is not a witch-hunt” claimed the Minister, when he appointed Professor Dwyer to conduct the crackdown that came in the wake of no public complaints. Indeed, the public seemed to be well pleased with alternative medicine and much to the dismay of the Minister, the professor and the Skeptics, the public has continued to part with over a billion dollars on natural health care each year. What meant health freedom and choice to the majority of the public who used complementary medicine became a problem to the health care “reformers”, and it needed fixing.

Tiresome Warriors
“It is a damned and bloody work, The graceless action of a heavy hand” King John IV, William Shakespeare

Cheryl Freeman is a former nursing sister in her 50’s, whose face still shows the signs of past ill health, but she is undaunted in her quest to “reform” the health care system. Dwyer refers to Freeman as a “tireless warrior for change”, and the two have often joined forces in the past to bring about “health care reform” (9). In what must be a full time endeavour, Freeman compiles her laundry list of victims from someone having scoured the Yellow Pages and the internet for alternative practitioners, devices or natural remedies. Once her sights are set she pens voluminous complaints to the medical watchdog, (HCCC) (14). In the absence of any consumer complaints, Freeman lodges her own home grown variety.

In what must be an exhausting trek around the State’s alternative health care professionals, Freeman often gets up close and personal when she attends the clinics of alternative practitioners using fictitious names such as Michelle Trueblood. Freeman complains of bogus ailments, and seeks treatment from the practitioner before she lodges her complaints about the treatment she received for her bogus complaint, with the HCCC (15) (14).

The HCCC was designed to address authentic patient complaints from genuine patients, and it is difficult to understand why the Commissioner of the HCCC would take a complaint seriously from a person making random allegations about scores of practitioners. Normally complaints from habitual or frivolous complainers end up in bureaucratic wastepaper baskets or in the busybody file. Inexplicably though, not in the case of Freeman. Her net is cast wide to include medical doctors who practice nutritional or wholistic medicine (18). After Freeman’s complaint Professor Dwyer has on occasion followed up with his own complaint to the consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) or the Department of Fair Trading. The hapless practitioner is now a target, especially if he/she uses a therapeutic device or is the manufacturer of one, even if professionally qualified and the device is duly listed with the TGA (12) (13). This is often followed by an op-ed piece written by either Freeman or the professor, opining about; “shocking practices” or “quackery”. (12)

Levelling the Playing (Killing) Fields
“There is no sure foundation set on blood, No Certain life achieved by other’s death” King John, William Shakespeare

"Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The “health reform” pincer movement has left a trail strewn with victims, including alternative practitioners, inventors of devices and manufacturers of natural products (12). Mysterious complaints to various authorities from parties other than patients all too predictably heralded myriad events such as bankruptcies, loss of professional reputation, deregistration, depression, public humiliation, fear, nightmares and odd visits from various unknown persons. One inventor recently died of a stress-related illness. Another manufacturer, who has been vindicated, has erected a high perimeter fence around his property (8) (12). Even after a concerted purge, few genuine quacks appear to have turned up. Many unfairly accused have been vindicated after being dragged into expensive litigation. They have shown the merits of their modality by providing the scientific evidence on which it is based, a simple matter that could have avoided expensive court proceedings. “Victory”, however, came at a cost. Some have lost their homes, practices, reputations and research grants. 

With such an extensive purging of alleged quackery from Australia, it would be expected that the fatalities due to health care would have plummeted. In the year since the Dwyer committee has been in operation the figures are as follows: Deaths from alternative medicine amounted to one Melbourne woman who died after an alleged reaction to Kava Kava. It is not known whether the woman was taking liver-toxic pharmaceuticals at the time. No practitioner was involved.

Meanwhile, 50,000 Australians were disabled that year by conventional medical treatments in the current orthodox healthcare system. 18,000 Australian deaths occurred that year, in part, attributable to conventional medical treatments. (22,23,24,41)

The Dwyer Committee continues to look for quacks in alternative health care. There has been no governmental investigation into the 68,000 deaths and disabilities from orthodox doctors practicing conventional health care in our current medical system since the antiquackery committee was founded. Meanwhile Freeman is continuing her quest to expose alternative medicine and “reform the health care system”. For her efforts Freeman was named Skeptic of the Year in 1999.

Much ado About a Committee
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. – Thomas Jefferson

If the citizens neglect their duty, and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes. - Daniel Webster

Twelve months after its formation, the Dwyer Committee remains a hot issue. At its inception the professor allegedly recommended to the then Minister Knowles that Freeman and Bowditch become “advisers” to the committee. This was apparently approved, as Bowditch states on his website: “I am an advisor to the committee, which means that I don’t receive any payment for my involvement but I am available to offer
suggestions about the matters the committee should consider, the directions it might take”. Bowditch also has a link to a restricted access discussion group that is only open to “approved” members. The discussion group, QuackbustersOfTheIlluminati, states its purpose as being: “This is a meeting place for the anti-alternative-medicine committee of the Illuminati, where we can meet and consider our attack on health freedom within the broader agenda of world domination.” (16) It is not known what relationship Bowditch
has with this group, why it is secretive or why it was formed. 

The original formation of the Dwyer Committee attracted widespread community concern for a variety of reasons. The committee members’ backgrounds tended to be either in administration, orthodox medicine or pharmaceuticals. There were no members with expertise in complementary or alternative medicine until some time later when Dr. Mark Donohoe, an expert in nutritional, complementary and alternative medicine was appointed. Community meetings were gathered where the public asked about the suitability of the other persons on the committee, their qualifications and their potential for objectivity. Parliamentarians raised questions in Parliament as to the professor’s capacity for objectivity on the issue of alternative medicine. The Honourable Alan Corbett asked the NSW treasurer in NSW Parliament: “Is the Treasurer also aware that Professor Dwyer is a longstanding critic of complementary medicine and that he does not have the confidence of practitioners in this area?

The Honourable Richard Jones stated in the NSW Parliament: “ It would appear that Professor Dwyer has been hired by the Minister for Health to conduct an unprecedented attack on complementary medicine in this country. It would appear from Professor Dwyer’s various pronouncements that he has a total antipathy towards complementary medicine.”

Other MPs raised equally serious concerns, but some of the gravest doubts appeared to centre on the appointment, as advisors, of Bowditch and Freeman. Overall, five Parliamentarians questioned the Health Minister’s choices. Incensed, Bowditch retaliated, and listed those Members of Parliament on his website, referring to them as “fringe dwellers”. Of the Parliamentarians of Asian descent he alleged that “such witchcraft [as alternative and Chinese medicine] was a traditional part of the cultures in the countries their forbears escaped from”. Bowditch labeled others who raised issues about the appointments, as “kooks”, “hypocrites” and “liars”. Various Members of Parliament asked Bowditch to provide evidence of his qualifications. Bowditch claimed harassment and replied: “My qualifications are that I am a scientifically-literate, concerned citizen with a particular interest in medical quackery. I am sick of seeing liars and thieves get
away with their lying and thieving…” (17).

Peter Bowditch and Cheryl Freeman still serve as advisors to a committee that has wide ranging powers to change people’s lives by deciding what the community can or cannot choose by way of health care. They have the power to influence Australians’ health Freedom by their right to: “offer suggestions about the matters the committee should consider, the directions it might take. Allegedly nominated by Professor Dwyer and appointed by the NSW Health Department, the State Government deems them as individuals of integrity whose advice is vital to the public interest. Public concern has been dealt with on Bowditch’s ratbag/rsole website by targeting concerned persons, but so far the State Government has not addressed public concerns.

Meanwhile, Professor Dwyer was nominated in 2000 as Skeptic of the year.