Maryanne Demasi: Popular ABC TV science show presenter claims she was discredited and fired after pharmaceutical companies complained

She was absolutely right. There are big doubts about statins. See for instance below:

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-grave-statin-side-effects-lower.html

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/2007/05/dangerous-scare-about-cholesterol-i.html

A former ABC presenter has slammed the national broadcaster and TV medic Dr Norman Swan after claiming she was axed, censored and silenced by her bosses.

Maryanne Demasi was one of the hosts of popular ABC prime time science program Catalyst when it was pulled off the air in 2016 after her reporting sparked a furious backlash.

Her two-part expose in 2013 on an alleged over-use of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs was a ratings success - but was later banned from ever being shown again.

It claimed some people were taking the heart medication without need, but the ABC's Dr Swan warned people risked a heart attack if they stopped taking their prescribed drugs.

Three years later, a further report on the alleged health risks of wifi and 5G sparked so much outrage the show was axed completely in its then-current format in 2016.

Now Dr Demasi has compared the furore over her stories with the mainstream backlash against anti-vaxxers during the Covid pandemic.

In a speech to an 'Australians for Science and Freedom' conference at Sydney's University of New South Wales earlier this month, she blasted her former TV bosses.

Dr Demasi said health industry critics had hit back after the statins show aired and said 'the ideas in the program were 'dangerous' [and] expressed by 'fringe experts'. '[They] assured the public that statin drugs were 'safe and effective'.'

'Do those phrases sound familiar?' she asked the conference audience. 'The phrases became a fixture of the pandemic.

'One commentator at the ABC went on national radio and claimed that people would die if they watched the program,' she told the audience.

'Australians will recognise this character - Dr Norman Swan. He rose to prominence during the pandemic.'

She said the outrage against that show had been led by the pharmaceutical industry.

'Within days, all three of the major statin manufacturers complained to the network,' she said.

'So did the Heart Foundation, which was criticised in the program for its outdated dietary advice on heart disease, and of course Medicines Australia, the body that represents the Australian pharmaceutical industry. '

She said the media had jumped on the bandwagon attacking her after Dr Swan spoke out against the show.

'His comments about my programs sparked a slew of national stories,' she said.

'[They] accused the programs of killing people, claiming that ABC had blood on its hands, and asking people to sue the ABC if they'd had a heart attack after stopping their statins because of the programs.

'To enforce the narrative, the School of Pharmacy at Sydney University came out with a study claiming that the programs would be responsible for up to 2900 deaths because around 60,000 people would quit taking statins.

'Basically, they were accusing us of mass murder.'

A six-month internal review found the show had been factually accurate but the second part of the report had slanted unfairly against the statins industry.

'I gave more weight to the view of experts (such as Harvard's Prof John Abramson and UCSF's Prof Rita Redberg), that statins were over-prescribed,' she said.

'Which was rather ludicrous since the point of the program was to highlight the problem that statins were over-prescribed.'

She claimed TV bosses told her they'd been ordered to make the problem go away and took the episodes offline, apologised and vowed never to air them again.

Dr Demasi claimed TV bosses were deliberately silencing her from defending herself in a bid to stem the controversy

'This gave the false impression that we were admitting the programs were misleading,' she said. 'Consequently, I was attacked in the media, I was characterised as 'pseudoscientific' and any attempt to defend me was censored. 'I became the target of an orchestrated campaign to discredit me.'

She said TV bosses were deliberately silencing her from defending herself in a bid to stem the controversy.

'I was unable to challenge the criticisms against me,' she said. 'I was effectively silenced by my network and they were cancelling film shoots.

'They'd send me emails saying that I was not allowed to comment publicly or privately about these issues, or else they would consider it a breach of my employment conditions.

'I was told to stop emailing my concerns because my emails could be FOI'd and become part of the public record, so if I had anything to say, I had to do it by phone or face-to-face.'

She said the pressure was huge and she regularly faced internal investigations into her work before it went to air.

'Often it would take longer to defend a program than it would to make it,' she revealed. 'Because we were on tight budgets, this was simply unsustainable.'

'And finally, I learnt that the ABC was willing to silence its own journalists in order to appease industry. This had a chilling effect on other mainstream journalists.

'The message was that it would be career suicide if you tried anything similar.

'And it seems to be a very effective strategy because I don't think I ever saw another story challenging statins in the Australian media again.'

She added: 'I think the standards at the ABC have continued to slip. 'It's a shame, because the ABC was once considered a great institution.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12798713/Maryanne-Demasi-ABC-Catalyst-censored-Norman-Swan.html

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Some better ways to net zero

Australia’s ALP/Green government and their media mates are using subsidies, taxes, and propaganda in a lemming-style attempt to move the whole country to 82 per cent ‘renewable’ energy by 2030 and ‘Net Zero Emissions by 2050’. Canny Aussies are buying diesel generators.

If they persist in their rush to Net Zero, we have a few ‘Net Zero’ suggestions for them.

‘Net Zero Immigration’

Every migrant adds to Australia’s emissions by consuming food, electricity, transport fuels, and housing. Thus, to reach Net Zero emissions, the rest of us must be rationed further to cope with these additional emitters.

‘Net Zero Tourists’

Every tourist adds to our emissions for transport, food, electricity, and accommodation. To achieve Net Zero emissions in the face of millions of immigrants, tourists, and foreign students will need slick carbon accounting, or penury for the rest of us. Victoria’s Dan Andrews was accidentally right for once – he cancelled the Commonwealth Games.

‘Net Zero growth of welfare and the bureaucracy’

Net Zero will not allow us to import hundreds of foreign workers for our mines, factories, and farms while we maintain battalions of bureaucrats shuffling files in air-conditioned ivory towers in the capital cities. Nor can we accept growing armies of able-bodied idlers sipping green smoothies at the beach.

We must get all healthy Aussies into real jobs.

‘Net Zero growth in locked-up land’

Wind and solar energy are sterilising huge and growing areas of land to produce their intermittent electricity. This greatly reduces the land available to grazing, forestry, fishing, exploration, and mining.

It’s time to call a halt.

There must be a net zero increase in land devoted to national parks, marine parks, world heritage playgrounds, locked-up Native Title area, or carbon credit and green energy wastelands.

‘Net Zero lies about electric vehicles’

They have a fanciful plan to replace our petrol and diesel cars, trucks, dozers, and tractors with fleets of yet-to-be-built battery or hydrogen powered vehicles. Where are the fast-refuelling stations for them all? And who has counted the extra emissions to mine and refine the metals for batteries, electric motors, turbines, and power lines? And where will we get the extra electricity for overnight re-charging of battery-powered vehicles as coal generators close, the sun sets, and the wind drops? (They have discovered the answer in ever-green California – electric powered trucks are being recharged with diesel generators.)

‘No Subsidies for Hydrogen’

In this unplanned rush to all-green energy some extol the coming of hydrogen powered vehicles. To produce green hydrogen requires large amounts of electricity plus nine tonnes of water for every tonne of hydrogen produced by electrolysis. Some even think that it makes sense to use large amounts of electricity to desalinate sea water to make green hydrogen. Such a process is not even ‘net zero’. It is hugely energy negative. Obviously the main goal is to harvest green subsidies or votes.

‘No Subsidies for ‘Pumped Hydro’

Greens think taxpayers should fund giant dams and turbines to generate electricity when green energy is on strike – at night, on cloudy days, and during wind droughts.

Does that mean that Greens believe we can steal water from every river system for green energy stabilisation while reducing the water stored for towns, farms, and orchards?

Let’s have the first dam on the Franklyn River in Tasmania (they want to be ‘the battery of the nation’).

‘Full Accounting of all Emissions’

Who is counting all the emissions being generated to manufacture, transport, and erect an ugly intrusive spider-web of roads and power lines to collect intermittent solar and wind energy from mountains, flats, seas, and roof-tops? Where is the carbon and dollar accounting for the metals, concrete, and hydrocarbon fuels that are needed?

We must also count the emissions to manufacture and erect all their planned green energy stabilisation schemes involving pumped hydro and giant batteries. All of this is a dash into the unknown without a coherent plan of how it will all work, or its full cost.

‘We need a Climate-Exit Referendum’

We are locked into never-ending climate conferences and all the costs and eco-babble generated by Paris Climate Agreement.

They want us locked into 15 minute cities with bicycles, walking shoes, oat-milk coffee, and fake meat burgers while they jet off to a new well-fed tourist destination every year. We have copped these annual climate-fests for 26 years now. The last one catered for about 40,000 delegates and hangers-on for 2 weeks of talk-fest that achieved nothing useful (as usual).

Let’s have a Clexit (Climate Exit) Referendum and abandon all liabilities under the Kyoto and Paris Climate Agreements.

‘The Net Zero Prize’

Our reward for reaching our 2030 Net Zero Emissions targets will be a precarious population with industry operating on the whims of the weather and an angry, urbanised, locked-down population faced with food, fuel, and electricity rationing.

There is no global warming crisis, but Blackouts Bowen (Australia’s Minister for Climate Panics and Zero Energy) is determined to create an electricity crisis. Power grid failure will be followed quickly by failure of food and water supplies to cities. Hopefully Canberra, (Australia’s Green Capital) will be the first to suffer.

The rest of Australia must vote no to this dangerous Net Zero delusion.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/the-net-zero-lemmings-rush

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How Australia's world-first crackdown on smoking - introducing plain packets and hiking them beyond $50 - has backfired

As a libertarian, I could say "I told you so". Banning things is usually destructive

Australia's world-first crackdown on smoking has had a series of unintended consequences as illegal tobacco sales reach epidemic proportions and Chinese-made disposable vapes flood the market.

And the proliferation of illegal products easily available in suburban shops across the nation has seen a disastrous rise in teenage smoking and nicotine vaping not seen in other countries around the world.

When the laws were introduced in 2012 by the Labor government, they were hailed as a historic win against Big Tobacco.

The laws saw plain packaging introduced and huge increases in taxes that will see the average packet pass the $50 mark in 2026.

The measures were supposed to be a victory in health policy intended to stamp out nicotine addiction in future generations of Australian children.

The plain packaging now includes pictures of extreme disease caused by smoking, such as gangrenous toes and rotting gums.

The most disturbing pack features Bryan Curtis, a 34-year-old American who smoked two packets of Marlboro Reds a day for 20 years, close to death from lung cancer.

The federal government also removed any point-of-sale advertising and cigarettes must be hidden from view at all times.

But as the legal sale of tobacco has been squashed under draconian laws and taxation, the sale of illegal tobacco and vapes has flourished.

Smoking and nicotine-based vaping among 14-17 year olds in Australia has multiplied six-fold and 15-fold in the last five years.

And according to a leading academic and researcher in smoking cessation and tobacco harm reduction, it's due to the availability of black market nicotine products from suburban shops.

The rise in nicotine consumption among Australian teens has coincided with a fall in smoking in the 15-18 years age group in the US, the UK and New Zealand.

Dr Colin Mendelsohn, who founded the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, cited alarming data from the Roy Morgan Institute and the Cancer Council of Victoria.

The statistics say that in 2018 just 2.1 per cent of Australians aged 14-17 smoked, and 0.8 per cent used vapes - mostly nicotine vaping.

By 2022, 6.7 per cent in this age group were smoking and 11.8 per cent were vaping.

In the first quarter of 2023, the number of teenage smokers had risen to 12.8 per cent and vapers were at 14.5 per cent, which Dr Mendelsohn said included a significant number using high nicotine concentrated vapes.

He told Daily Mail Australia the rise was due to the proliferation of black market tobacco/nicotine products.

From the sweet smell of vapes outside offices, to empty packets of 'branded' illegal tobacco on the streets, the evidence of black market smoking is everywhere.

And despite Australia 'declaring war' on vapes and cigarettes with tougher smoking bans for pubs, clubs, more young people are lighting up.

The statistics show a staggering 30 per cent of Aussies between 14 and 30 have used a vape.

While there's no data on how many smokers are turning to illegal tobacco, the proof they are is everywhere: from the shops selling them to the people smoking them.

One Sydney smoker, Tom, regularly buys a packet of black-market cigarettes for $12 - or splashes out and pays $20 for an illegal packet of Marlboros.

He says they are sold in every suburb - and blames the federal government's policy for their rise.

'I know hardly anyone who buys legitimate cigarettes; and I don't blame the little stores from selling them.

'Go to any pub and have a look around at the cigarette packets on the table - few are the legal, plain-package variety.'

Tom said the illegal cigarettes tasted the same as the legal ones because 'they all come out of the same factory'.

'Marlboro are Marlboro, they are just packaged according to the rules of the country. A $1 a packet in Cambodia is the same as a $40 a packet in Australia.'

With rising living costs, the temptation to do so is increasingly mainstream.

Daily Mail Australia has obtained catalogues with price lists supplied to prospective suburban retailers of cigarettes sold with brand names such as Marlboro, Benson & Hedges, Winston and Camel.

A catalogue of cigarettes from a company in Shenzhen, China which manufactures counterfeit cigarettes in Cambodia, is offering the smokes for $260 a carton, or ten packets of 20 cigarettes.

The packaging, which carries the brand name and emblem, and doesn't have the health warnings Australian laws mandate, indicate the cigarettes are sold without excise and are part of a criminal enterprise.

The price compares with legitimate Marlboros being sold for between $339 and $446.50 for a carton of ten packets each of 20 Marlboro Gold cigarettes.

To put the prices into context, a pack-a-day smoker (20 pack) would currently spend $14,600 on cigarettes per year, compared with $9,490 for the Cambodian smokes.

The Australian Federal Police, the Australia Tax Office and Australian Border Force spend considerable resources to combat the brazen tactics of Australia's illicit tobacco racket.

The racket means billions of dollars of potential tobacco excise will never reach government coffers.

But as the price of food, electricity and fuel soar, the illegal tobacco industry will continue to make a mockery of government policy of plain packaging and steep tobacco excise.

The health.gov.au website states that 'The Australian Government taxes tobacco products to make them less affordable through excise on tobacco products' and cites its Illicit Tobacco Taskforce set up in 2018.

The ITTF says it does this 'by proactively targeting, disrupting and dismantling serious actors and organised crime syndicates that deal in illicit tobacco'.

But, meanwhile, the trade goes on.

Illegal operators in South Australia have been identified as particularly shameless marketers of illegal cigarettes and vapes.

The SA government went on an enforcement blitz on illegal vapes in June, announcing stringent new licence conditions over nicotine e-cigarettes.

These require retailers to show proof vaping products being sold are nicotine-free, and to provide information about their e-cigarette suppliers, importers or manufacturers.

Enforcement blitzes over the previous financial year resulted in the seizure of about 15,000 illegal nicotine vapes.

In September, the NSW government announced it would spend $6.8million in cracking down on illegal vapes.

From January 1 to June 30 this year, NSW Health seized 187,000 products, up from 61,000 in the same period in 2022.

The health body has also conducted more than 5,000 inspections and seized about 369,000 nicotine vapes and e-liquids with an estimated street value of more than $11.8million.

According to a tobacco industry source, illegal products now account for about 25 per cent of all tobacco consumed, and the percentage is rising.

Just days ago, a top health official blasted e-cigarette makers as 'vendors of death' as Victoria mulls over introducing a tobacco licensing scheme that could make buying the items a lot harder.

Tom said despite the will of the Federal Government to crack down on the illegal trade, he did not believe they had the resources.

An Australian Post Office contact told him that 'tonnes and tonnes' of illegal tobacco and cigarettes are mailed into the country each year, but that 'like illicit drugs' plenty of tobacco still 'made it through'.

Dr Mendelsohn criticised new legislation proposed by the Health Minister Mark Butler - to ban disposable single-use vapes, and make personal importation of vapes or e-liquids from overseas - as likely to drive up the black market.

'History has repeatedly demonstrated that blanket bans and punitive measures simply don’t work,' he said.

'Butler’s approach will only fuel the black market and drive it underground. The losers are adult smokers seeking safe and effective alternatives and young people who will continue to have access to illegal products.

'The winners are organised crime and Big Tobacco.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12797989/Australia-smoking-vaping-crackdown-backfired.html

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Former Labor cabinet minister lashes government over green litigant funding

Former Labor cabinet minister Joel Fitzgibbon has lashed the Albanese government over its decision to hand millions of dollars to help green litigants, accusing Labor of “financing job destroying legal challenges”.

In a speech to forestry industry leaders, the former Hunter MP said Labor had “handed taxpayers’ money to activists”.

The attacks come after Labor fulfilled its election promise to reverse funding cuts to the Environmental Defenders Office, providing $10m in funding to the community legal centre over the forward estimates.

The EDO is an legal organisation well known for its environmental advocacy, running high-profile cases against coal and gas developments.

Mr Fitzgibbon, the chair of the Australian Forest Products Association, said it made no sense for the government to fund activists to take legal action “against the very government that gave them the money”.

“Activists funded by rich donors - and indeed governments through the Environmental Defenders Office - are challenging value-creating projects in the law courts,” Mr Fitzgibbon said, in a speech delivered earlier this month that has been obtained by The Australian.

“In a wealthy, liberal democracy it makes sense to use taxpayers money to ensure all Australians have legal representation when they face a criminal conviction. But it makes no sense to hand taxpayers’ money to activists so they can take legal action against the very government that gave them the money.

“To challenge in the courts approvals processes the government rightly argues are as robust as any in the world.”

Labor pledged to reinstate funding for the EDO ahead of the last election in order to enable Australians to have access to the law.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek told The Australian Labor was “proud to be restoring funding to the Environmental Defenders Office, reversing cuts made by the Abbott government.”

“Every section of our community deserves legal advocacy. As does our previous environment. Unlike the Liberals and Nationals, we are not afraid of scrutiny and accountability,” Ms Plibersek said.

Government officials pointed out that the EDO was also funded under the Rudd and Gillard governments of which Mr Fitzgibbon was a Cabinet minister.

The Abbott government cut funding to the organisation following allegations of activist lawfare.

The EDO, first established in NSW in 1985, has used the courts to delay or squash major projects including the Adani coalmine in central Queensland, Santos’ Barossa gas proposad and forestry developments in Tasmania.

The body has received grants from groups including the Myer Foundation.

In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Fitzgibbon also attacked “extreme environmental activists” who he said “would destroy our sovereign capability in this country and destroy the jobs of the people who provide it”.

“AFPA provides me with an opportunity to do another thing I did for many years in politics – to take on the extreme environmental activists who, given the chance, would destroy our sovereign capability in this country and destroy the jobs of the people who provide it,” he said.

The EDO was contacted for comment.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/former-labor-cabinet-minister-lashes-government-over-green-litigant-funding/news-story/6ed0c6823e6baa2df5c276c186fcb7d2

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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