Dr Peter L Johnston
MBBS FRACGP
September 26th 2021,
To: President and Board of RACGP
Dr Karen Price and team
Dear Karen and fellow members of the Board,
I feel for you all in your situation, which must feel like being between a rock and a hard place. While your letter says that the majority of readers agree with mandatory vaccinations in the workplace, your mention of ‘much internal discussion’ tells me the College position was far from a unified consensus.
I would ask you please to accept these letters of mine, albeit opposing this stance, as a sincere effort to seek truth in what is the most divisive issue I have ever seen in medicine. We are participating in the greatest experiment ever conducted on humanity. One third of the world has had a vaccine, the long term effects of which we have no way of knowing. Yet I am hearing only one side of this debate. Experts are being muzzled, and that’s a red flag for me. It sounds like dogma, not science.
To introduce myself, I graduated in 1965. After a residency at St Vincent’s in Melbourne, I spent another two years at Royal Perth Hospital. Still unable to decide on a career path, I joined the army for a year, most of it spent in Vietnam. I enjoyed looking after the health of the diggers so much, I decided to be a GP.
Back in 1966, general practice had little status. Hospital residency was not compulsory. Once you obtained your MBBS, you could practice, and there was no post-graduate training for GPs. Choosing general practice suggested you lacked the intelligence, money or ambition to specialise.
What changed that for me was joining a newly forming body now known as your Royal College of General Practitioners. Meeting and listening to dedicated GPs like Rex Walpole, Neil Carson and Monty Kent-Hughes inspired a sense of pride in being a GP. It led to my fellowship in 1973. This year marks my 50th year as a member of the RACGP.
General practice in 1970 lacked some of the sophistication we have now. X-rays were the only form of imaging. We relied more on physical examination for diagnosis. But while the science of medicine wasn’t as strong, the art of medicine was important. And it is more important than ever in these times, when it is being assailed by what politicians in the western world are referring to as science. Dedicated scientists are indeed at work but they are not found in multinational drug companies, who are not abiding by the established scientific method.
A guiding principle to the art of medicine can be summed up in a sentence based on the teachings of Hippocrates.
“To cure sometimes. To comfort always. To harm never.”
I am writing to you because the College is supporting policies that run contrary to this guiding principle. Graduates of our College are injecting experimental drugs into healthy young people to prevent them getting a disease – a disease which if they were to actually catch, would give them mild flu-like symptoms at worst – in most cases, no symptoms at all.
We all became doctors to bring health to the diseased. I now see my college supporting a National Vaccination Program that threatens to bring disease to the healthy.
The issue of mandatory vaccination only adds to my concerns. I look at nurses and receptionists, who give such valuable service to the community for little financial reward. These frontline healthcare workers, including doctors and paramedics, were the heroes and heroines of the pandemic in 2020. Deservedly so, as they put their lives on the line in a spirit of compassion for others. The scenes on television of people applauding them every evening, using their pots and pans as cymbals, was the most moving and unifying event of the early pandemic.
Now I see videos from overseas of nurses being vilified for endangering the lives of their patients by refusing to get the jab. They have gone from heroes to villains because they have dared to listen to their gut instincts telling them something’s not right with this ‘vaccine’. They have then irritated the mainstream media by having the temerity to stand firm in their convictions.
In my eyes, all that has happened is that these heroes and heroines have shown they have moral and spiritual courage to match their physical and emotional courage.
Many of our frontline healthcare workers are young with no pre-existing disease? They have zero risk of falling ill from Covid-19. But they have enough scientific or intuitive knowledge to be concerned about their future health and fertility should they take into their body an experimental substance, a drug that has been inadequately tested, and is irreversible in its effects.
How much comfort is the RACGP policy of mandating vaccination giving to them? Is the ultimatum ‘jab or no job’ a sign of our compassion as a College? Or is it old fashioned bullying?
I see the policy to mandate the taking of this ‘vaccine’ as showing a lack of trust in our health-workers and an attempt to undermine their integrity. It basically violates their human rights. Worst of all, I see the policy of vaccinating the young as reckless, futile and dangerous. People younger than forty with no pre-existing conditions have a miniscule risk of getting ill or dying from Covid-19. Yet the college policy not only encourages them to have the jab, but goes along with the government policy of trying to enforce it.
I do understand your desire to protect people from this virus and I know you are all doing the best you can to achieve this by following the National Guidelines issued by our politicians, but are you not missing something here? If you go into your hearts, is this really the sort of care you want to bring to your patients and colleagues? And are politicians and multinational drug companies the sort of people you should be trusting to guide GPs through this, the greatest health challenge in history?
When you put your faith in politicians whose vision rarely extends beyond the next election – or drug companies, who put profits ahead of people, are you not putting your trust in shifting sands? Worse, if this grand experiment goes pear-shaped, the RACGP will be on the wrong side of history and will be seen as aiding and abetting a crime against humanity.
Surely it’s better to put your trust in Hippocrates. At least his principles have lasted over two thousand years.
I realise I am chucking a grenade in your direction. But I do have genuine concerns about the direction of a College of which I have always been proud. It is my intention to do everything I can to undermine this policy of injecting young people with a drug that can interfere with their immune systems.
I respect the extreme difficulties you face in these extraordinary times, but if you could read my letter to Ahpra in a spirit of openness, with respect for the scientific method and evidence-based medicine, I’d be very grateful.
Many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
Peter Johnston
