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Why are educated parents choosing not to use all the recommended vaccines?
I feel it is time to start properly fighting for our health rights. The Australian government has recently removed the right for many Australians to choose how many vaccines they use in their children by implementing coercive welfare legislation. Similar legislation is also being adopted in many workplaces for adults. Yet there has been no…
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A Healthy Relationship?
The 2nd Annual Blackmore’s Institute Symposium 2015, held in Melbourne late last month, was titled “Translating Research into Practice”. The speaker line-up was impressive, as their workbook states, “catering for the clinical needs of a wide spectrum of healthcare professionals, including general practitioners, pharmacists, naturopaths, nutritionists and complementary medicine practitioners”. I was therefore surprised at…
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Mandatory Over-Vaccination Bill likely to pass in Australia
The Australian Senate Inquiry into the ‘No Jab No Pay’ legislation which will remove parents choice in the number of vaccines they use in their children (up to 20 yrs of age) for the receipt of welfare payments, has been passed by the Australian Senate. This is despite the thousands of submissions against this policy…
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The National Centre for Research on Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIM) – What is it?
The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) recently changed its name. It replaced the word ‘Alternative’ with ‘Integrative’, to reflect both the “growth of integrative health care within communities across the US” and its research focus. This is the third time this agency has been re-named. Is this just another attempt to give…
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Our Thinking and Thought Leadership is Reflected
I2P has long espoused that community pharmacy has deep roots embedded in patient centering and engagement and has won all of its “stripes” on the basis of all the things that our antecedents did right. Those “roots” were responsible for our unique style of “over-the-counter prescribing” as well has building a market in compunded prescriptions…
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A New “Social Enterprise” Wholesaler
A new generic wholesaler has formed up as a philanthropic venture designed to apply its total net profit evenly between two organisations – the Breast Cancer Network Australia and Breast Cancer Institute of Australia. This ‘social enterprise’ company is called For Benefit Medicines (FBM) and it will negotiate generic drugs under a generic label with an FBM suffix.…
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Phoctors and Docpharms
In these days of constant change or business disruption we often find ourselves in a constant state of anxiety. This is not good for mental health and is probably the underlying reason why mental health issues have shown such a massive increase across the spectrum of entire populations, over the past five years As a…
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Health Fund Managed Care – Will it be a short-term positive or a long-term negative for Pharmacy
There seems little doubt that the Australian government is setting out to introduce a US style of healthcare management using health funds to “front” for some of their objectives. Despite the fact that the US has the worst health system in the world (as well as the most expensive), government seems to think that by…
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Health Disruption to Health Care – by Health Funds and Major Investors
Health funds are beginning to look at disruptive or innovative acquisitions that will help in their objective of converting as many health systems as possible to become part of a managed care consortium. While the process promises lower health costs, low health insurance premiums and a five star system for patients to rate their health…
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A Constant Stream of Expensive Drugs
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, November 16, 2015 It would be novel indeed to see a news media report entitled “Life- Saving Vitamins.” That’s a headline about vitamins that would be true for once. Instead, I see folks on TV speaking about those drugs they so desperately “need” while they plead with drug companies to just…