Good journalism comes from trade journals – Computer Weekly famously broke the story of the UK post office scandal and Inside Housing, warned of the Grenfell tower fire.
Heather Saxena of Australian Doctor has covered this week’s Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearing in the case of Jereth Kok, who could be stripped of his licence to practice medicine because of social media posts.
Kok’s online comments on Abortion were at the core of the Medical Board’s case for suspension.
“Benjamin Jellis, the Medical Board of Australia’s barrister, offered some examples of Dr Kok’s comments during his opening statement to the tribunal,” Saxena reported.
“He said Dr Kok had described doctors who performed abortions as ‘serial contract killers’ and ‘butchers’ and then added: ‘What’s wrong with capital punishment for serial contract killers?”
Kok had also used the word “desecration’ to describe the use of cell line HEK 293, originally derived from an aborted fetus in 1973, used for the production of some Covid vaccines.
“Stephen Moloney, Dr Kok’s barrister, said his client agreed that language such as ‘murder’, ‘slaughtered’, ‘industrial-scale massacre’, ‘butcher’ and ‘mutilate’ was inappropriate.
“But he said Dr Kok ‘absolutely’ stood by his religious beliefs that abortion was morally wrong and that gender could not be changed.
“’There is no law in this country that says he is not allowed to say that abortion is morally wrong,’ Mr Moloney argued.
The Other Cheek can report that Kok has walked back some of his language – agreeing not to use the word “murder” when talking about abortion. He promised that he would not use terms like “serial killers” again to describe doctors who take part in abortions.
But he maintained that as a Christian, he had a right to his opinions.
Kok was questioned about a post that the Medical Board suggested meant he endorsed genocide. Kok maintained the board had mis-interpreted the post. Kok explained that he was talking about Australian aid that supported abortion – and that he regarded the aid he opposed as a form of genocide.
“I believe, when we send money to poor countries to carry out abortion, which I obviously disagree with, and give them contraception to reduce the population … we’re engaging in genocide and extermination,” Saxena recorded him as saying.
The Other Cheek can report that making a comment about “serial killers” in public on Facebook is something that Kok regrets. Making comment to friends only would have removed the Medical Boardd’s concern that a member of the public could stumble upon Kok’s postings. Although, from The Other Cheek’s perspective, desuetude overcomes Facebook posts fairly quickly. (Desuetude means obsolescence through disuse.)
Kok told the tribunal that the vast majority of his comments were shared with friends only.
While maintaining his Christian belief that man-woman marriage was the only place to “express sexuality,” he accepted a need to rephrase some of the emotive language he had used to describe same-sex parented families.
While maintaining opposition to reassigning gender, Kok would not use the term “butchery” again to describe transgender surgery. He had not intended to denigrate other doctors, Australian Doctor recorded him as saying.
Kok’s barrister told the court that the five-year suspension had effectively ended his career as a doctor. Kok has since been working as a software developer.
Correction: to make it clear the “serial killers” comment was one he regretted making public on social media.
I don’t know the ins and outs of this case other than snippets l have picked up over the past year. This will be a very important test case even though sadly for the community Dr Kok may not be able to practise as a doctor.
I am assuming he will be vindicated, though clearly he has acknowledged some of the hyperbole was inappropriate. Thank you for John Steenhoff and the counsel for representing Dr Kok.
I’m a retired Engineer who attended all 5-days of Dr Kok’s VCAT hearing.
My overall impression was that AHPRA is more concerned with enforcing political correct woke ideas, as dictated by bad legislation, rather than allowing doctors to follow their conscience based on their beliefs and/or evidence-based medicine while always seeking to do no harm. As a result, ‘evidence’ in the hearing majored on facts of law and current (woke) medical opinion, while facts of objective evidence-based medicine were virtually ignored.
Dr Kok was my GP from 2009 to 2019 but has been suspended for 5 years so far. His prosecution or persecution by government funded ‘lawfare’ effectively has convicted him as ‘guilty until proven innocent’. That’s career-destroying punishment executed before the case was even tested.
There was no allegation that any of his patients ever complained, or were harmed, or offended: only claims that his media posts, which were mostly private or on Christian sites (where he was not identified as a doctor) were notionally traceable to him as a doctor and hence considered inappropriate for a registered medical practitioner. My interpretation is that AHPRA wants to make an example of Dr Kok so that other doctors will be intimidated into treating patients only in accord with AHRPA’s politically-correct/woke ideas, rather than allowing doctors to treat their patients according to their conscientious beliefs about what is the best evidence-based do-no-harm medical treatment. Sadly, it seems AHPRA wants to dictate what doctors can and can’t say about abortion, covid treatment, euthanasia, gender ideology and gender reassignment, etc.
The 5 days of hearings made it clear to me that current official medical opinion had radically changed in recent years; not because of changes driven by objective evidence-based medicine, but driven by changes in political opinion. E.g., an expert witness, who affirmatively treats adult transgender people, confidently stated on oath that if a genetically XX person (‘assigned’ female at birth) said they were male, then the fact was that they were actually male and hence such beliefs were by definition expressions of fact, and hence could not be due to delusional psychiatric disorders. This reverses millennia of common-sense understanding – i.e., it fails ‘the pub test’ – as do claims that XY genetic male athletes should be allowed to fight, swim, ride against XX genetic females simply because some men claim to be women to gain unfair competitive advantage.
An expert witness also stated that genetically XX people (commonly known as women or girls) could receive testosterone treatment at government (read taxpayer) expense because the doctor prescribing the hormone could ‘tick a box’ declaring that the patient had a testicular problem. The expert witness admitted that the authorities ‘turned a blind eye’ to this creative semantics and commented that while the XX person had no testes, that was no different to a castrated man who wanted testosterone support.
Dr Kok was castigated in the hearing for social media posts describing sex-reassignment surgery as “mutilation”. But removal of a healthy clitoris for religious reasons is called “Female Genital Mutilation”, so isn’t it ‘mutilation’ to remove healthy ovaries or testes, for reasons of belief.
An expert witness against Dr Kok’s opposition to same sex relationships, criticised the use of the term “Gay Lifestyle”, stating that they were not necessarily promiscuous etc., yet he stated that LGBTIQ+ people suffered from high rates of mental illness and suicide ideation. But no evidence-based facts of actual suicide rates or causes were presented explaining what difference, if any, transition was likely to make. Such evidence ought to be available as a duty of care so that potential transitioners are fully informed of benefits and risks.
So, what are the benefits and risks? Swedish public data records allow nation-wide longitudinal studies, but sadly trans people often disappear from those records – with no record of their death or cause of death. Such record gaps do not help us discover whether transitioning has positive or negative effects on general or mental health and suicide ideation. In other words, transitioning is somewhat experimental with a scarcity of reliable evidence-based long-term data; yet in Victoria and elsewhere gender dysphoric people can be encouraged to transition but it is a criminal offence to discourage transition. Is that full disclosure or will the future see class actions from patients who were misled about possible undesirable outcomes?
The Medical Board’s arguments criticising Dr Kok’s posts re same-sex relationships were politico/legal rather than medical. But evidence-based studies support his opinions. E.g., D. Paul Sullins analysed the data from a massive USA longitudinal study that examined how well various family structures support children over the years. His report: “The Unexpected Harm of Same-Sex Marriage: A Critical Appraisal, Replication and Re-Analysis of Wainright and Patterson’s Studies of Adolescents with Same-Sex Parents”, includes his comments: “The longer a child has been with same-sex parents, the greater the harm. … opposite-sex marriage is associated with improved outcomes, but same-sex marriage is associated with lower outcomes” … “On every measure, well-being for children with same-sex parents is lower if those parents are married than if they are not.” Sadly, the data shows that girls parented by married same sex couples reported significantly more forced sex than girls in heterosexual parented households.
Clearly, much of this is hotly disputed. But I think AHPRA’s actions here, combined with Hate Speech and Anti-Conversion-Therapy laws, denies medical practitioners’ freedom of speech and conscience and risks denying patients receiving full and open information on risk/benefit analysis of proposed treatments.
Thank you for your eye-winess account