Anger At Natural Therapies 'gag'
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday July 12, 1995
HEALTH professionals who speak out against the establishment say they face expulsion from their unions, deregistration, closure of their practices, and personal harm.
Health practitioners, including doctors, dentists and optometrists, have told The Northern Herald they feel their freedom of speech is restricted.
They are frustrated by resistance to change and suspect some authorities have an informal policy of clamping down on outspoken practitioners.
The clash has occurred over the use of natural or drug-free remedies, such as homoeopathy, herbal medicine, acupuncture, naturopathy, chiropractic, hypnotherapy and massage.
Many health professionals dispute the scientific reliability of these remedies, saying they may raise false hopes.
But some mainstream health professionals are calling for a return to a more natural, "holistic" approach to health care which makes the most of these treatments.
While these professionals acknowledge the success of orthodox medicine, they want to encourage more talk between complementary and mainstream health practitioners. But they say their pleas for a turnaround in the thinking of the medical community have been silenced.
The practitioners did not want to be identified, fearing a backlash from their unions and colleagues.
"In a way, it's like a modern witch hunt," says Dr X, a lower North Shore GP who uses homoeopathic medicines, medical acupuncture, and clinical hypnotherapy in her daily practice.
She had heard of doctors receiving threatening phone calls and feeling forced to close their practices after speaking out in favour of natural therapies.
Although it is legal for doctors to train in and use the therapies, the medical community describes many such therapies as unproven and unacceptable.
Dr X says that by making natural therapies a priority in patient care, her colleagues "view people like me as having lost the plot, thrown away all my medical training".
But she says that by promoting complementary options, the medical profession could reduce the number of people needing expensive, hi-tech surgery and hospital stays later on.
Dr X believes several like-minded doctors have been victimised for trying to have their views heard.
"Some of my colleagues choose to (speak out in public), and I've seen them suffer a lot of hardship, and their patients with them," she says.
"But they may have brought some of it on themselves by being too emotional and confrontationist."
Some dentists too, are unhappy with the situation.
"Just about nothing dentistry does is natural," says Dr Y, a North Shore dentist.
Dr Y frequently refers patients to naturopaths to gain more information on their nutritional status in an effort to identify the sources of their dental problems. He believes some dentists would never have thought of doing such a thing.
"Dentistry is a technical profession," he says. "We don't know a lot about bodies."
Dr Y's struggle has been in promoting biologically-compatible dentistry through the Australasian Society of Oral Medicine and Toxicology. Alongside promoting preventative health care through natural methods, he has also been concerned with the continued use of mercury amalgam tooth fillings.
In 1991 a World Health Organisation report revealed patients and dental personnel were endangered by prolonged exposure to the mercury used in fillings.
"For a lot of dentists, it's inconceivable that they've done harm to patients all these years - they hate the thought," says Dr Y. "Most dentists I've met are well-meaning fellas. They're a well-regarded profession and probably deservedly so, but they're incredibly conservative."
Despite many studies into mercury toxicity, Dr John Kaufman, president of the Australian Dental Association, says "mercury amalgam is perfectly safe".
Neither does he believe that ADA members suffer any detrimental restriction on their freedom of speech.
Dr Kaufman says members are expected to conform to the by-laws of the association, and are to ask permission before taking on dentistry-related speaking engagements or media interviews. In any case, he says, it is not compulsory for dentists to belong to the association.
Dr Y attributes his colleagues' resistance to change as a fear of possible litigation and a fear of lost reputation.
"When you threaten people, they don't wonder why they're feeling threatened. They just reach out and attack," he says. "It's not right. I didn't care about it for a long time, but it's starting to get to the point where it's against the community's interest."
The Australian Traditional-Medicine Society, which supports the training of natural therapists, says more Australians are seeking out natural ways of improving health.
Its secretary, Ms Marie Fawcett, said the society's growth rate over the past five years had been enormous.
© 1995 Sydney Morning Herald
