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17 traditional medicine modalities discriminated against
The 2016 federal elections are really about the control of Australia’s health system. And many special interest groups are using the elections to further their agendas at a time when the election polls are showing a “neck and neck” result between the major parties. One little drama played out recently was the Victorian legislation enacted…
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Politics and Health
As if the Victorian Government doesn’t have enough on its hands at the moment with some demarcation issues, the recent Health Complaints Act heralds an effective abolition of the right to practice a total of seventeen natural health therapies. This must be one of the most discriminatory Acts since the Middle Ages. What is happening…
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Let’s Apply a “BREXIT” to Australian Vaccination Policy
‘Vaccination: the facts, the experts’ and the Telethon Kids Institute Review of the Telethon Kids Institute Vaccination Forum (Part 1) On the 30 May 2016 the Telethon Kids Institute in Western Australia held a public vaccinationforum titled ‘Vaccination: the facts, the experts’. The experts on this panel included Dr. Christopher Blyth and Dr. Tom Snelling,…
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Why is there a need for the Health Australia Party (HAP)?
Many Australians rely every day on natural medicines and/or the services of a natural health practitioner to maintain their health. Yet this significant contribution to the well-being of grateful ordinary Australians goes largely unacknowledged by politicians, the news media and mainstream medicine. Rather instead we see an extraordinary bias against these therapies, to the point…
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A Patient’s Real Cost – Their time Involvement and a future cause for health system collapse
For some time we have seen media references portraying GP’s as overworked, becoming more stressed and now being underpaid due to the freezing of Medicare rebates. It seems GP’s have now been put on the same treadmill as pharmacists. Welcome to the real world that we pharmacists already inhabit! But what is not identified within…
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A Professional Conundrum
What a fascinating standoff has developed over the role of the pharmacist in advising on the use of complementary medicines. The Blackmore’s Institute is urging us to understand the complete medication profile of our patients, to ensure that we drive optimum health outcomes. Many of our patients fail to mention their complementary medicine use (often…
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The Perfect Prescription
In the world of pharmacy we have evolved from basically a practice that dealt in compounded prescriptions of herbal substances at an affordable cost to a plethora of synthetic drugs supported by dubious evidence. And it has happened in my lifetime. My query is that if we have a situation where so-called solid evidence exists…
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Another Big Yellow Box Format
For some time the name “Big Yellow Box” has been the unofficial title given to a certain warehouse-type pharmacy group. Psychologically it has been determined that the colour yellow in association with retail environments creates a flow-on effect of “cheapness” or “low cost” in a consumer’s mind. Many major retailers include large slabs of the…
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Salad May Cause Autism? If Johns Hopkins Says So, It MUST be True
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, May 18, 2016 If you believe the media (and golly, doesn’t everybody?), pregnant women should not eat leafy green vegetables. Well, that is the gist of Johns Hopkins’ May 11 report that “Too Much Folate in Pregnant Women Increases Risk for Autism” (http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2016/too-much-folate-in-pregnant-women-increases-risk-for-autism-study-suggests.html ). Okay, the study actually targets supplements, but let’s…
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Avatars May Take Over Patient Communications – Where to from there?
Global Pharma’s are known to be funding the development of systems to deal directly with patients. These systems will involve the use of Artificial Intelligence and the use of Volumetric 3D immersion technologies. The former will allow delivery of technical information through well modulated voice transmission, while the latter will provide an “avatar” transformed from…