Several days ago, we learned that our magazine What Doctors Don’t Tell You had been slated by a drive-time radio host in Australia, and that his statements led to the magazine being pulled from two store chains: Coles and Woolworths.

Now, I have to tell you: this is not really our fight. But it raises a number of issues about wholesale censorship now occurring in all the media you read, which is why I bring this up.

You may or may not know that What Doctors Don’t Tell You, which my husband Bryan Hubbard and I have published in some form in the UK and the US for 30 years, is also licensed by foreign publishers for release in 16 other countries. They are obliged to publish at least 80 per cent of our content.

One of the new licensees was Nuclear Media in Australia.

Stirring up outrage

The radio host in question, Ben Fordham, an ex-sports reporter, is a shock jock. His job is to slap awake his listeners during their morning commute, so he’s on the lookout for anything he can use to rustle up a campaign of outrage.

Taking a cue from Ben’s campaign, here’s what the website of his radio station 2GB recently wrote about us:

“The magazine ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’ is stacked page-to-page with conspiracies, dangerous misinformation and dodgy medical advice.

“On the front page, hydrogen gas is advocated as a heart disease treatment, and it warns of dangers associated with 5G and Wi-Fi networks.

“The magazine’s website contains further unfounded claims linking vaccines with autism.”

That so-called ‘dodgy information’ of ours largely derives from medical and scientific journals. Although written for consumers, each issue of WDDTY is packed with hundreds of medical references, placed at the bottom of each article.

Every article is meticulously checked by a production team, with our chief copyeditor a PhD from Imperial College, London, one of the top science universities in the world. She also edits many prestigious medical journals, and one of her jobs with us is to check every last medical fact and reference, which she does painstakingly.

Hydrogen gas as a promising therapy is nothing new: there is a good deal of evidence supporting its use, and many doctors around the world are treating patients successfully with it.

The latest story we reported on vaccination and autism concerned the fact that the  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been forced to concede that its reassurances to parents that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism are not based on any scientific evidence.

“The admission followed a Freedom of Information request lodged by the vaccination campaign group called Informed Consent Action Network (Ican), which had asked the CDC to produce all the studies it relied on to claim that a host of vaccines (not the MMR) do not cause autism,” we wrote. “The CDC could not produce any evidence to support their claims.”

‘We’ did not and do not say that vaccines are linked to autism.

We reported on evidence showing that one of the world’s leading health agencies is lying to the public.

That, to us, is a story that you, the public, need to know about, particularly as it was not covered by any of the mainstream media.

The 5G story is an extract of a book written by Dr. Joseph Mercola, containing both scientific evidence and sensible advice about how to limit your exposure to Wi-Fi (such as turning it off at night).

It does not, by the way, link 5G to coronavirus – nor do we.

But this is not a story about Ben Fordham or his belief we should be banned – a position proving very unpopular, judging by the hundreds of listeners shouting about it on his social media pages and to other publications.

This is, pure and simply, about censorship, the shutting down of any point of view other than the official government and mainstream medical line about issues relating to your health and medical treatment.

Shutting down any debate

I am increasingly shocked by the wholesale willingness of today’s journalists to automatically disparage any evidence or point of view other than the official ones fed to them by the government and other authorities.

Anyone who simply questions whether a vaccine is safe or effective, or even offers evidence suggesting that a vaccine may not be well-tested or that a government may have lied and covered it up is immediately branded an ‘anti-vaxxer.’

This is particularly worrying considering the rush to find a new vaccine for COVID-19. Will no journalist be willing to investigate whether it is safe or effective?

I am astonished that social media companies are now allowed to determine what is or what is not worthy of public consumption when it comes to health.

Recently, after interviewing a prestigious UK doctor, who is part of a worldwide team of medics studying the effects of  high-dose vitamin C both on prevention and treatment of COVID-19, our Facebook post about it got labeled ‘Fake News.’

Who is determining this? And what is the agenda behind shutting down any reasonable and open debate? (I remind you that Facebook has just bought two drug companies.)

What is the difference between these kinds of ‘for-your-own-good’ tactics and the kind of censorship employed by China today or Pravda under Russian communist rule?

Why, finally, are we the public willing to passively stand by and allow freedom of information, particularly about health, to get massively eroded so that the only news allowed to reach us parrots the position favored by governments and by the drug industry – an industry routinely found guilty of a host of lies and confiscations?

I had thought that after the ‘have-you-or-have-you-ever-been-a-member-of-the- Communist-Party?’ 1950s trials we learned our lesson, figured out that closing down freedom of speech leads to the ascendancy of demigods like Joseph McCarthy, who are able to operate with impunity and to destroy lives, all in the name of acting in the ‘public interest.’

In its Universal Declaration of Rights, the United Nations wrote that the right to freedom of opinion is a basic human right and includes: “freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

So Ben is entitled not to like our magazine. What becomes a problem for you and me and everyone else out there is when he, his radio station and shops like Coles believe that they have the right to determine what sort of information you and I can have access to.

I had thought we’d long ago figured out that freedom of speech is where all other freedoms start. “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech,” wrote Benjamin Franklin.

Because when you thumb through history, you discover that shutting down free speech is exactly where every kind of oppressive move against a free society begins.

PS:

If you live in Australia and want to complain to Coles:

Coles Customer Care number: 1800 061 562,

Or write on their Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/coles

Or fill out the customer service form:

https://www.coles.com.au/customer-service/contact-us

Address your comments to Steven Cain, the managing editor and CEO.

For Woolies:

Telephone:  02 8885 0000

Or fill out the form:

https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/page/contact-us/general-enquiry/

Address your comments to Brad Banducci, managing editor and CEO.