JUST as a replacement for health minister Sussan Ley was announced, Ken Harvey, Monash University School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine Adjunct Associate Professor has marked her abrupt departure with a comment about Ley's 2015 rejection of recommendations from then chief medical officer Chris Baggoley.
A committee chaired by Baggoley produced a draft report saying some 17 natural therapies showed "no clear evidence of health benefits," but the recommendations were not adopted by the health minister.
Harvey writes: One can speculate that the reason Sussan Ley rejected Professor Chris Baggoley's evidenced-based report was because of her embrace of numerology; she has said she added an extra 's' to her name because numerology theory said the additional 's' would give her an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would ever be boring!
Presumably her resignation confirms her theory.
One can only hope that Arthur Sinodinos will be more interested in evidence-based policy and will revisit the Baggoley report.
Of course, as it turns out Greg Hunt has ended up as the new Health Minister, but we are sure evidence will play an equally important role in his thinking.
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