Should a doctor who describes abortion as murder and describes colleagues who perform them as butchers and contract killers be allowed to practice medicine?
What if he says that assisting the gender transition of kids will “cause permanent, brain and bone altering, sterilising disfigurement of healthy young bodies” that will one day be viewed as a crime against humanity? What if he argues that the doctors who facilitate this are involved in genital mutilation?
Or what if he writes that homosexual orientation is a disorder and equates homosexuality with sexual brokenness?
Or what if he criticises COVID public health measures by saying things like: “2020 will be remembered as the year when the facemask replaced the tinfoil hat as a symbol of paranoid hysteria?”
These were the question before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal which – as you read in last week’s Catholic Weekly – found that the social media posts described above and others like it denigrated, demeaned or slurred abortionists, doctors who transition children, members of the LGBT community, and those who observed COVID restrictions. The tribunal ruled that they constituted “professional misconduct.”
It did not matter to the tribunal that the comments had not been made to colleagues or patients or otherwise in the course of the doctor’s medical practice, but rather on his personal Facebook page.
Nor did it make a difference that the doctor had never received a complaint from one of his patients, and that these social media posts came to the attention of the Medical Board of Australia through anonymous complaints.
It didn’t even go in the doctor’s favour that the 42 posts found to have been professional misconduct spanned a period of 15 years from 2008-2022.
It didn’t even help the doctor’s case that some of the “offending” posts were clearly satirical, like sharing Babylon Bee articles titled: “Instead of traditional warfare, Chinese military will now be trained to shout wrong pronouns at American troops,” and “Congressional prayer lasts two days as Democrat includes all 5,787 genders.” The tribunal was satisfied that these and others were derogatory and disrespectful and that posting them amounted to conduct substantially below what is expected of a medical practitioner.
As a result of this decision, the poster, Victorian GP Dr Jereth Kok, now must wait to see if he will be deregistered, suspended, fined or have other conditions placed upon his medical practice.
In many ways, a punishment like a suspension or fine would be redundant because Dr Kok’s medical registration has already been suspended for the past six years while this investigation and prosecution proceeded. It has cost him and his family much more money than a sizeable fine.
In this case, the process has already been the punishment – and there is more to come.
Was the meticulous investigation of more than a decade of social media posts and the dogged pursuit of an anonymous complaint to the Medical Board really the best use of everyone’s time and efforts?
With reported five-week waits for a routine GP appointment in Victoria and a projection that by 2031, Australia will have a shortfall of 10,600 GPs, does anyone really believe that patients in Victoria are “safer” now that Dr Kok is on the bench?
Is this really in the best interests of patients? Or has something gone awry?
Now, don’t get me wrong. In addition to having a medical degree, it seems that Dr Kok has also graduated from the Israel Folau School of Evangelisation. Any sane friend or family member should have convinced him to get off social media a long time ago.
But I can’t see why the Medical Board prefers that Victorian patients wait even longer for their medical appointments rather than see a competent doctor who posts “incorrect” views on his social media accounts.
It makes no sense.