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The Move Towards PBS Privatisation – It is a Possibility and Could Provide a Wrecking Ball for Community Pharmacy
I am always suspicious of government motivation when they move the chess pieces around the board without an appropriate explanation. Dating back to the start of the Coalition taking power there was discussion that highlighted the poorly defined role private health insurance plays in the funding and delivery of Australian health care, and how government…
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Alliance Boots will Spearhead a Global Onslaught with our Goverment’s Assistance
The news broke last week that Alliance Boots was making plans to enter the Australian market. This appears to be another step in the global concentration of community pharmacy, which Australian pharmacy has been able to withstand. Until now. The original Boots pharmacy group, a UK-based company, was recently taken over by the largest retail…
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Diluting the debate
When we are asked what sort of tea we want at a cafè, we select an option. We know what we want – English breakfast tastes different that Earl Grey, Green Tea and others. So, we acknowledge that teas have different properties, different tastes, different “actives”. What is it then so hard for pharmacists to…
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BMJ Suppresses Information – Informant Responds
Please see below my email to Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of The BMJ. This is also relevant to other aluminium-adjuvanted vaccines, e.g. HPV and pertussis. The more I look into vaccination policy and practice, the more appalled I become. Vaccination policy has been effectively hijacked by the vaccine industry. Children all around the world are…
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Make the Right Turn at the Next Crossroads
In the latest edition of Drug Topics, senior pharmacist Truman Lastinger describes a scenario for what he describes as Retail Pharmacy in the US. Because US pharmacy is a bit ahead in evolution than Australian pharmacy his comments are very relevant for today’s Australian pharmacy, the practice of which has split into three components- Retail…
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Trust – It Always Has to be Worked at
Pharmacy always appears in national polls measuring trust, and always in the first three, with results for pharmacists, nurses and doctors all highly ranked and all close together. Trust is an elusive concept to quantify and when evaluating, only a subjective opinion can be formed as a measurement. But in human beings it is something…
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Japan stopped recommending HPV Vaccines in 2014!
All Australian adolescent girls and boys participating in school-based HPV vaccination programs need to be aware that the Japanese government placed a moratorium on the use of HPV vaccines (Gardasil) in 2014 and many other countries are considering similar action. This was due to its unproven outcomes. Gardasil and its GlaxoSmithKline equivalent, Cervarix, are vaccines which claim to…
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Murdoch Press Continues to Drive an Alarmist Zika Virus Agenda
The Murdoch press is at it again trying to stir up a bit of panic over the Zika virus being found in a Rockhampton visitor, which seems to i2P just a bit of a nonsense campaign to promote the way for a new mandatory vaccine to appear in the market place. In my last detailed…
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Opportunities for Clinical Services
I was interested to read that Chemmart had introduced a genetic testing system designed to tailor drug treatments to an individual patient. At least that has been the promise of these types of tests as they have gradually made their way into the market-place. With the introduction of the myDNA test into a pharmacy environment…
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Dumbing us Down with the Zika Virus
When a television report was released on Australian TV showing a number of Brazilian infants affected by a condition called Microcephaly, a condition in which infants are born with smaller than normal brains, alarmist media reports surfaced simultaneously. The Brazilian ministry for health linked the microcephaly with the Zika virus, a mosquito borne infection. Then…