Public Health : an unhealthy conceit by Gary Johns and Samara McPhedran
Paperback, 322 pages, $39.95
ISBN 9781923568280
Mid-March 2026 Release
This book nails the nonsense of public health, from trans affirmation to COVID-19 to climate change.
Dr Monique Ryan, the Federal Member for Kooyong and a TEAL, wants to name killer heatwaves. She claims that ‘heatwaves are Australia’s most deadly climate hazard.’
That is some leap of logic, but many medical professionals use their credentials to push into non-medical matters.
Public health types who want to save the world will use all means necessary, particularly taxpayers’ money and government fiat, to achieve the population health outcomes they define.
The result is a highly prescriptive environment in which health is valued above all else and health practitioners rule the polity. Society is not a hospital ward or a medical clinic.
This book not only names the culprits but also provides a plan of action to defeat them.
Hon Dr Gary Johns is chair of Close the Gap Research and played a prominent role on the NO side in the 2023 Australian Constitutional Referendum on the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament.
He served in the House of Representatives and was a Minister in the second Keating government. He served as Commissioner of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.
Dr Samara McPhedran is a Research Fellow at Close the Gap Research. She holds qualifications in psychology and law and has published widely in areas including mental health, suicide, homicide, and domestic and family violence.
She has held positions in government, academia and the private sector, including as the Founding Director of the Griffith University Homicide Research Unit.