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On the sanctions imposed on Dr Andrew Amos by the Australian Health Practitioner and Regulation Agency.

Every now and again, you’ll read something, and it will just be so outrageous and so egregious that it simply cannot be allowed to stand without a response. For me, this was learning of the Australian Health Practitioner and Regulation Agency sanctioning Dr Andrew Amos for his work advocating against the medicalisation and mutilation of children under the guise of “gender-affirming care”.

I had the privilege of meeting Dr Amos when he visited Hobart last year to speak on these very issues at a forum in Parliament House hosted by The Hon Carlo Di Falco MP. I commend his talk to you.

For speaking up for children who are being harmed by doctors (and we should note AHPRA has done NOTHING about the doctors medicalising, mutilating and harming children), Dr Amos has been placed under restrictions, meaning he must stop making public statements about this issue, and he has had his ability to do any clinical practice restricted, possibly completely, if I understand things correctly.

Meanwhile, doctors like Michelle Telfer, who has been found by an Australian court to provide poor ideological advice rather than sound evidence-based best practice, remain free of any sanction whatsoever.

A Question of Evidence and Ideology

This whole situation is bad enough, but to have the regulatory agency act in what is such a partisan, ideologically driven manner is perhaps even more chilling. The board is supposed to keep us safe by regulating medical practice and practitioners in Australia. But today, in the sanctioning of Dr Amos, we learn it does no such thing. Rather, it is completely ideological in its application of the law.

The only logical conclusion one can draw from this is that you and I can have no trust in the medical status of any health professional we see. We have been reduced to using our own judgment rather than evidence. For though our health professionals may tell us they’re AHPRA-approved, what does this mean? Simply, they toe the ideological line approved by our government regulation board. Nothing more, nothing less.

It seems no better than you or I assessing whether or not we like our doctor based on their ‘vibe’. To arrive at this place in Australia, where health regulation seems no longer evidence-based, but instead based on who holds the levers of power on the board and whatever their ideological whims might be, is dangerous for every single Australian.

This cannot stand. We must be better than this. I pray AHPRA will quickly reinstate Dr Amos and remove his restrictions. I pray the board will relent from its drift away from evidence-based medical regulation and will stop its drift towards ideological capture, which is harming not just children, though that is bad enough, but all of us.

What can we do?

1. Pray.
2. Submit a complaint to AHPRA about this decision.I’ve published my submission on X, which you can use as a basis for your own.

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Republished with thanks to Chris Bowditch. Image courtesy of Adobe.