One of the great things about Australian politics is the ability for people to organise and form political parties provided you can get at least 500 members and pay a $500 application fee to the Australian Electoral Commission. This is a pretty low barrier to entry but it means minority groups and interests are able to have a larger voice which is overall a good thing. However when a minority group, such as Anti-vaccination campaigners have an interests that are against the public interest this low barrier to entry quickly becomes a double edged sword.
There is a new political party in Australia deceptively calling itself the Health Australia Party (HAP) a conspiracy driven pseudo-science based party that unsurprisingly has the support of many well known anti-vaccination campaigners.
The HAP believes that natural medicine should be placed on an equal footing with pharmaceutical medicine. Australians should be able to choose between pharmaceutical medicine practitioners and natural medicine practitioners without being disadvantaged financially for their choice. –Health Australia Party policies.
By “equal footing” I have to assume they mean “Special Privilege” whereby they pretend that crooks and charlatans have the same validity as science based medicine. Because they are already on “equal footing” in that anyone proposing a medical treatment must have it subjected to scientific scrutiny. In all areas of science there are claims that can be proven and claims that cannot be proven. If a claim of cure cannot be proven and supported by evidence then it is not science and should not be treated as such.
Medicine or “pharmaceutical medicine” is supported by evidence and is subject to rigorous scrutiny and regulation. So called “natural” medicine on the other hand is unregulated, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and is not supported by evidence. Therefore the Health Australia Party is proposing to grant undeserved recognition to pseudo-science at the cost of public health.
The HAP recognises with great concern the attempts by well-resourced and influential lobby groups to stifle academic freedom within Australian universities and research institutes. The HAP will expose and oppose such attempts to prevent researchers from undertaking and publishing potentially controversial research, and will support the heads of institutions who stand up against individuals and groups who oppose academic freedom. –Health Australia Party policies.
The University of Wollongong has received extensive criticism for awarding a PhD to an Anti-Vaxxer who submitted a paper full of unfounded conspiracies. The poor academic standards of Wollongong rightly deserve criticism as universities are supposed to uphold a higher standard of academic integrity, especially when awarding the highest academic degree.
However anti-vaxxers consider anyone who challenges their ideology to be part of a big brother conspiracy to silence them. Opposed to the more rational explanation that their claims simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.
The HAP recognises that our country suffers when medical research is manipulated to produce results which serve vested interests, but which is then used by politicians to form the basis of public health decisions. The HAP will expose deliberate corruption in medical research using the considerable body of evidence which already exists in professional journals and elsewhere, and will support the recruitment of researchers with proven independence and integrity to undertake needed medical research which will then be published, whatever the findings. –Health Australia Party policies.
More unfounded conspiracies. If the data from your research isn’t proving you hypothesis it’s likely that your hypothesis is wrong. That’s not to say corruption doesn’t exist. For example Andrew Wakefield poster-boy for the anti-vaccination movement was outed as a fraud a few years ago and stripped of his medical license.
If Health Australia Party has a “considerable body of evidence” for corruption within the medical community then I’m sure the media and health regulators would like to see it.
The HAP believes that until nuclear energy can be produced with complete safety and until nuclear waste can be rendered completely harmless then Australia should not use nuclear energy, and instead focus on safe renewable alternatives. –Health Australia Party policies.
At last something that I do agree on and in fact I have some good news for The HAP. Nuclear Energy is completely safe and the by product is reusable fuel. I have already covered the topic of Nuclear Energy and why environmentalists need to embrace it.
The more I look into the Health Australia Party the more obvious their pseudo-science, conspiracy driven narrative becomes. Perhaps the most damming of all is the response they sent to the Australian Vaccination Network following Meryl Doreys email.
HAP understands that the overwhelming majority of the huge amount of submissions both Federally, and in Victoria, were against this legislation, and that many of these came from well-respected legal, healthcare, and social justice organisations.
HAP echoes their views and opposes this legislation. It is predicated upon several demonstrably false assumptions, and flies in the face of what would be considered best practice in almost any other Western nation except the USA. –Health Australia Party responce to AVN
Not actually true. The majority of the response No Jab, No Play was supportive it was just the highly vocal anti-vaccination campaigners doing the only thing they know how to do, which was to bombard the Federal Government with phone calls in order to jam the phone lines, a crime in Australia.
So given The Health Australia Party’s position of valuing pseudo-science over medical science, and use of big brother conspiracy theories to excuse their lack of evidence. This party would be more aptly named “The Pseudo-science Party” as it is clear that the they have adopted a deceptive names just as the Australian Vaccination Network did in order to confuse people into thinking they are pro-health when in fact their pseudo-science is more likely to harm public health.
