Australian doctor to remain banned from practice after condemning abortion and calling trans surgery 'medical butchery'
Dr Jereth Kok, a Melbourne-based GP, had his medical licence suspended by the Medical Board of Australia in 2019 following two anonymous complaints about personal social media posts dating back to 2010.
On Friday, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal published its findings and upheld the ban, ruling that Dr Kok had disparaged doctors who perform abortions, referring to abortion as 'massacres of babies' and 'baby killing,' and calling abortion providers 'butchers.'
He also described the Royal Women's Hospital as ' Melbourne 's premier publicly-funded, baby killing facility.'
The Medical Board of Australia said the comment denigrated, demeaned, and slurred medical practitioners at the hospital who provided abortion treatment to patients.
While Dr Kok accepted that his commentary was 'discourteous' to people who worked at the hospital, he submitted that he was expressing his views and beliefs about abortion in a discussion on a Christian website.
He later told the tribunal that he would avoid this type of language in the future but said he had strong views about abortion being immoral as a Christian and believed he was required to speak out about the issue.
The Tribunal also found that Dr Kok, a born-again Christian, denigrated the LGBTQI+ community by suggesting homosexuality was a medical disorder and referring to gender dysphoria treatment as 'medical butchery' and 'sterilising disfigurement to healthy young bodies.'
One post that drew attention was a satirical article from a conservative Christian US website titled: 'Instead Of Traditional Warfare, Chinese Military Will Now Be Trained To Shout Wrong Pronouns At American Troops.'
The Tribunal also found that Dr Kok expressed violent sentiments and made derogatory statements about racial and religious groups.
In one post, Dr Kok claimed that when we send money to poorer countries for abortions and provide contraceptives, we are engaging in genocide and extermination.
In another post, he replied to a friend who had joked about 'ordering some Zyklon B from Amazon' and 'inviting the inferior races over' for a shower, using the hashtag '#illridewithyou.'
Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the 1920s, used in the Holocaust to murder around 1 million people in Auschwitz.
In relation to the COVID-19 pandemic response, he was found to have denigrated people who obeyed public health orders by likening them to followers of totalitarian regimes, including Nazi Germany and the Taliban.
He also suggested that God alone has the power to end the pandemic or that the blood of Christ would protect from COVID-19. He also suggested vaccines were made of 'body parts' of aborted babies.
VCAT found Mr Kok's posts were 'disrespectful' and 'not sufficiently balanced,' despite acknowledging that many were political or religious in nature and unrelated to his clinical practice.
The Tribunal said that while there are professional values that underpin good medical practice, all doctors have a right to have and express their personal views and values.
'However, the boundary between a doctor's personal and public profile can be blurred,' the decision read.
'As a doctor, you need to consider the effect of your public comments and your actions outside work, including online, related to medical and clinical issues, and how they reflect on your role as a doctor and on the reputation of the profession.'
In his witness statement, Mr Kok acknowledged that the language he used was unnecessary to communicate his views and said he had removed these posts where possible.
Mr Kok stated that while he accepts abortion has been legalised in Australia, he believes it is morally wrong.
'I believe that aborting a baby is unjustly destroying the life of a vulnerable human, and can accurately be described as an act of killing,' he said.
'I see no difference between the abortion of a foetus and the intentional homicide of any other human being, apart from the size of the victim.'
On the topic of gender, he stated it was immoral to actively seek to change sex and immoral to help someone do so.
While Kok accepted that his commentary was 'discourteous' to people who worked at the hospital, he submitted that he was expressing his views and beliefs about abortion in a discussion on a Christian website.
Family First national director Lyle Shelton slammed the Tribunal's decision, calling it a gross injustice and a chilling attack on freedom of speech.
'Dr Kok has harmed no patient,' he said.
'His only 'crime' was to express his views online, many of them satirical or Christian in nature, and for that, he has been punished with the loss of his medical career.'
The Human Rights Law Alliance, which represents Dr Kok, is considering an appeal.
The matter is expected to return to the tribunal for an administrative mention in September.
The alleged conduct occurred between 2010 and 2021.
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