SPEAKER_01 0:00

Dr. Naveen Naidu.

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Nice to meet you. Yeah, no, it's great to be here, guys. Yeah. For the listeners and the viewers, we're not related, no connections. We just got the same surname. Naveen, doctor turned lawyer, turned diamond something, miner or dealer, turned cannabis practice owner. Dare I say South African turned Australian? I don't know what what you regard yourself as. No, I still I think I I still got roots in South Africa, but I am Australian.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Yeah. I've got my um my Australian citizenship, which which is nice to have. But I still have got affiliation and and a love for South Africa that will be How long have you been living in in Oz? Uh 17 years now. Sure. Okay, that's okay. 17 years. Yeah, it's been an interesting journey. Um so uh I think I'll start from the start. So I'm from from Lodium. Right, okay. Uh Lodium, the the born in the years of apartheid. So Lodium is the Indian township in Pretoria. Uh everybody was segregated, so all the Indians stayed in Lodium. There was there's a separate color township, separate black townships, and then they were all of the white areas. Uh so I went to school in Lodium. Uh Jacarenda Primary School was the first, and then Lodium Secondary School.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Uh how did I choose medicine as a career?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Well, well, don't go that quick.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

So take take us back. Who are your parents? What did they do? So my dad was uh my dad was a teacher, and then he was an inspector of schools, and then he eventually ended up being a lecturer at the local teachers' college. And that's where he sort of ended up uh taking his up until his retirement. Uh my dad passed away a few years ago. Uh he always taught me education. Number one. Rack up as many qualifications as you can. Education is the is the number one way to to consolidate your your way your way forward and and the future. Uh so I think it was with the with the backing of my dad that I've always had that as an um as an objective, is to accrue as many uh as many skills and and qualifications as I can. Um so my mom, my mom worked in a bank. My mom is very resourceful. She did, she sold saris and she did uh uh she made samusas and things all to put myself and my brother through sort of school. We started with very humble beginnings. Uh my brother passed away, unfortunately. This is just over 1994, the year that I my final year of university uh in a car accident. But my mum and my dad gave us a very nurturing sort of uh uh childhood. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of uh uh my mum is don't mess with the with my mum in a in a slipper type of thing. So she kept us in in line uh and but also gave us the freedom to do whatever we we wanted to do, but within a a protective environment. Um So did they say you must you want you should become a doctor? No, no, no. I think that I think my mom always wanted that route. Uh when I was 13, uh unfortunate childhood accident. I got stabbed in my left eye.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

So it looks yeah, and uh syringe and a needle. Myself and another guy were messing around using it as a as a water pistol. Oh, just friends, playing around. Just friends, and then we were wrestling with it, and unfortunately I took a took the needle to the eye type of thing. Gosh. Uh and it lost your vision and everything. It wasn't immediate, but I I did I at the time I didn't realize it was the needle that hit me. I thought it was a a punch in the a smack in the face type of thing. So I I kept quiet and I didn't actually tell my mum.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

And we we understand that because then you get in more trouble for getting you'll get hurt for getting like we also have a story, one of our cousins who were wrestling, yeah, and we we toppled him over and then he went to bed crying. Do you remember that with sevension? The next day he was still crying, and they took him to the ER back in Johannesburg in a Buddha fracture. Oh, but we all kept quiet about it.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

So we totally get the thing off you don't tell your parents because you get in more trouble for missing glass. Okay, yeah, but go on.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

So it so uh after about a day or two, uh no, I think it was actually a full two days or so, I then told my mum. Uh she'd just come back from work. So I think it it had happened over a weekend, and then my mum was was she'd come back from work, and that's when I told her. So she took me immediately to the to the local GP. This was already at the end of the work day, and the GP phoned and arranged for an uh ophthalmologist to see me urgently. So I was I was a kid, 13, uh, that was in Pretoria. So she took me to to the she took me to the ophthalmologist. I think my gr if I remember correctly, my grandmother was with, but my mum sort of almost like ambulance driver style through Praetoria to the place. And then uh as part of the initial treatment, I needed three intraocular injections. So there was, I mean, I was there, it was there was no tear or anything, so it was Jesus. My mum holding my hand. It was was not the the most pleasant of experiences. However, at the end of it, there was just too much of damage. Lost the the vision. And I think then going through Matric and through the rest of it, coming up to the end of Matric, making decisions about which way you're you you're gonna go. I applied for uh electrical engineering in Cape Town, and I applied for medicine as the first choice at Witz, and engineering as a second and third choice. So I got accepted for engineering in Cape Town, and I got accepted for medicine in uh at Wits. So I think I was still very much uh uh uh very much family oriented, and all of my mates were in in uh still in Pretoria, my brother who was my my biggest compadre and and henchman. Uh so I I decided to stay in in uh in Pretoria and I went in and before injury.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Before you uh you know we navigate more towards the academic side of it, I just want to circle back to the to the injury. Yeah, yeah um obviously for for you know my my purposes as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

But please explain the context, your purpose.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Uh yeah, okay. So I mean uh we spoke about it earlier. I had an amputation on my right hand. There was quite a big adaptation from from my perspective in especially fine motor skills. Yeah, yeah. Um and I mean what I was like twenty-eight years old when it happened. So thirty-eight years old of knowing, taking for granted this is what is is the norm, to suddenly overnight having to adapt to not even be able to button your shirt. How was that for you? Because 14 years of sight and then having all of a sudden have to automatically adapt to loss.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah, it was it it was a big change. Uh I mean immediately the loss of the of of three-dimensional vision, uh binocular vision was b immediate, like things like table tennis. You know what I mean? Just being able to judge depth and depth and distance perception, and that was immediately off. Uh however, I uh remarkably I see I I think I I think everybody who loses an eye or a limb or whatever, you you adjust. Uh so I I managed to get through medical school and I mean my using microscopes was was challenging. Um dissections can be challenging. However, you can adapt, you can you can stabilize your hands on on so even stitching now or or using a slit lamp. So using sort of uh removing foreign bodies from somebody's eye using a slip slit lamp and not having the binocular vision, you I think there must be plenty of one-eye doctors out there. Uh, but you you stabilize, you use your hands on the patient's face. You obviously get consent and warn the patient that look, this is a delicate procedure, I'm gonna put my hand on your face and use that as a stabilizer so that if you move your head, my hand moves with you as well. So things like that. Um uh and even just pre-hand stitching and things like that. You you if you've you if you've lost your your binocular vision, it becomes a lot more challenging.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

When when you applied to medical school, and did you have to disclose that there was this?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

I think the the it yes, I did disclose it. The injury was was obvious. And then you uh as part of the admission procedure at Vitz, the final final hurdle was a uh a face-to-face interview at one of the I think it was Prof. Wadi that did my my interview. So so yeah, it wasn't considered to be a uh an insurmountable impediment. And I think what's happened in Australia, there's a there's a doctor was who unfortunately became paraplegic but went forward and is now an advocate for uh uh an advocate for practitioners who may have some sort of physical disability. Yeah uh so yes, certain, I mean, that fine motor skills for fine surgical sort of techniques in it would be essential, but now I think that I mean the robots and things, you've got a human operator, AI and robots are certainly uh uh uh making a big impact already in medicine and dentists.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

The kids at school in school in Lodium, how did they treat you? You were different, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:08

You must be. You know what? I got a long nose and I got one eye. Okay. So I got the nickname Long Nosed One-Eyed Bastard, was my step.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

Yeah, I have to ask because kids are brutal, eh? You know what? Very original though.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Yeah, I know. But it was the easiest one to to hit me with. So you know what? You come from Lodium, you're gonna get I I immediately I knew this is gonna be an issue. So you take the punches as they come.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Long nose one-eyed bastard was your nickname. Okay. We might might make that the title of this podcast episode. I don't know, no, we'll see. So but you got through it.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

I mean, you know what? Word I I I think, and this is a message to everybody out there, words water off a duck's back. You know what I mean? The thing is I don't know, easier said than done. Yeah, I mean Yeah, I suppose in some circumstances bullying in medicine is a big thing. It's one of my pet subjects about to to actually deal with and to and to uh and to try and actually uh uh change people's what attitudes and and and hopefully personalities even. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

It's getting a lot of airtime actually recently on on social media and things, you know, the the culture of bullying and um pressure by seniors on juniors, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

It's a big deal because I mean the the there's a lot of people that actually kill themselves.

SPEAKER_04 11:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Uh the pr you know what I mean, the the the pressure within the medical fraternity. And that goes doctors, paramedics, nurses, dentists. Yeah. The there seems to be a real big issue with bullying within the within the industry. The consequences are devastating. To to individual people, mental health issues just general general decline in their health and and everything else. And the and the the you guys are dentists. I'm an emergency medicine practitioner in terms of suicide rates and in terms of of all of the all of the really bad things, divorce rates, substance abuse, uh sleep disturbances, all of those things unfortunately come with the with the territory. When you throw the bullying aspect in it, and then you've got people that are still junior and haven't yet even made their careers out, it's devastating. It's terrible. And I think every single practitioner should should stand up to the bullies that are there and make it known that, you know what, this is not acceptable. And sometimes those nasty people in medicine need to be challenged. It's difficult for a junior doctor to do that because that may be career destroying. Yes. Uh but anybody who's got any any kind of seniority or any kind of a spine should stand up to the bullies and actually make their make their position known. So and make it known that this is not okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah. I I see, you know, talking about it helps and and getting it getting more publicized and people discussing it. I think that's that's a step in the right direction. But probably not not enough yet.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Yeah, but one of the things, one of the benefits of social media is actually exposing that kind of those kind of issues. And you're quite right. I think when people do speak about it, there's the the nice thing is there's protected channels, uh doctor-only channels and and or or medical-only or dentist-only channels, where those kind of issues can be discussed.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Uh and yeah, it's it's it's important for people to realize that this actually happens. Uh uh You know what I mean? Administrative bullying, the the the smiling assassin from the HR department, where uh if the junior the junior doctor was been embarrassed and and made to cry on the floor, goes to HR about the the the head of the department, chief specialist that's that's breaking in millions of dollars for the institution. Very often it's that junior doctor that's going to be pushed out. Uh anybody who makes complaints against senior doctors or administrators, I mean, I've experienced it in Australia, I've experienced it here. Uh it it's pervasive within the industry. And a lot of the times to actually try and challenge that, people end up having uh vexatious complaints made against them. You get you get internal administrative reporting is a very important thing. Oh, so the whistleblowers are getting uh victorious. The whistleblowers get get get hammered all over.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

There doesn't seem to be uh a consequence for the offender. Unfortunately not.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

So vexatious reporting. So vexatious reporting, this is one of my pet hate subjects. Uh uh uh doctors and nurses that make vexatious reportings. There's uh I've had two vexatious reportings made against me, one by a doctor and one by a nurse. This this is in Australia, two OPRA.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Uh well just pause there. Opera is is is the Australian equivalent of our health profession's.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

So Opera's the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation regulatory authority, uh akin to the health practitioners. Council of South Africa. Council of South Africa. Um Do you want to tell us about those vexatious complaints? I think I'll give you just a brief sort of thing. Um it's very interesting. The first one that got me into trouble was I set I I'd referred a patient, there was a patient with congestive cardiac failure, and we had a myelo pro uh myelodysplastic condition where he would just drop his hemoglobin from 120, 130 down to 80 or 70, you know, over a weekend. So this bloke was getting um he was getting transfusions on a regular basis every two to every two to three weeks. If he developed any sci chest pain or any other sort of science, they were transfusing. But he's still alive. This this incident happened 2012. Um I got a I was busy working. I just started in GP practice in uh in Australia, and then I got a I got a call from a pathology lab saying to me there's a critical hemoglobin finding. So I think it was around about 84 or something. I stand to be corrected. I'm I'm I'm I intend writing up this story because it's a really interesting story to to doctors and nurses with regards to vexatious reportings. Um so I went I got a phone call, I couldn't get hold of the patient. The next morning I arranged to go and do a home visit because by the lab calling me, the responsibility had now shifted to me. I needed to act on this, on the reporting. Uh so I went to I I contacted the guy and basically said, So, how are you doing? Uh I managed to eke out of him that he was having a bit of exertional chest pain. So I went and seen him that morning to go and, you know what I mean, just make sure that everything is okay. Examined him, he had a bit of pedal edema, so subtle signs of congestive cardiac failure, but he was having exertional uh exertional dyspnea as well as chest pain. So I said to him, You need to go back into the emergency department. Uh he was reluctant. I mean, he was getting he was getting jabbed and transfused every two to three weeks. He was not very keen on on having it again. Uh but I seen him, he was with his son, gave him the instructions, and then I went back to the surgery. So he did eventually go to the hospital. That would have been about, say, three o'clock in the afternoon. So while I was busy consulting, I got a phone call from the doctor at the hospital, uh, uh an ex-colleague of mine. So I was under the impression that this is going to be a collegial discussion about a treatment plan. So I took the call in the treatment room with with where there wasn't any other patients, and I picked up the phone call, and the first thing that happened is she screamed at me over the phone, Naveen, what do you want me to do with this patient? So I was very taken aback, and I and I basically said, Well, I want you to do your job. You know what I mean? The guy needs to be transfused. Um so there was this big argument about the hemoglobin level and whether he met the criteria for transfusion and all of that. And then I said, it may not be PG rated, but I said, Why are you busting my balls? The guy needs to be admitted. And the phone conversation sort of ended there. Uh so she didn't admit him, she sent him home. So he phones me that spitting mad because he'd gone, they'd driven into town, gone there, sat in the waiting room, and they sent him home. So I asked him, Do you do you still have chest pain? So he said yes. I said, We'll go back. Which he wasn't very keen on. I so I spoke, I think I spoke to the son as well, and I said, he needs to go back. It doesn't matter what they've said, if he's got chest pain, he needs to go back. So he went back the next day, got admitted, got transfused, all of that kind of stuff. A few months later, a similar thing happened again. He had to go. I uh I was I was working at uh Bundaberg Hospital, so I've got a uh a staff grade emergency department consultants position, so a non-FACSIM, so non- non-a fellow specialist position, but uh uh a staff grade consultants position. So I was there, I got a phone call from the from the lab again to say there's a drop in the hemoglobin. I contacted the practice manager to say contact the patient, send them into the emergency department. So he went in again, it was the same doctor that seen him again. So I had no further interaction with that. But again, he got told by the by the department that they're not admitting him, they're sending him home. At that stage, I had an issue with the with the hospital. It was a bullying sort of issue, which is why I left that particular hospital. Uh so he so the patient asked the doctor, is there a problem? Do I need to go down to another hospital to get admitted? And that was what it got left at that. I can't remember exactly whether he got admitted at that time, but the week following I got an opera reported.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

That's the uh that's your regulator sends you a report. No, not the regulator. So the regulator basically sent me a letter saying there's a doctor who's made a complaint against me.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Oh, so you've got notified that there's a complaint in the company.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

There's a complaint for a regulator.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

So the no the the basically out of the blue. Yeah. About this whole incident, the the busting my balls was in the reporting.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Oh, so the use of that phrase was unprofessional.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

But that so that was the first part of it. But the second component of it was the fact that the the the patient said to the doctor, Do I need to go to another hospital because you've got a problem with my with my GP was the second component of it. Okay. So the the the reporting for a practitioner is supposed to have four criteria to it. If you if your practice is so out of out of uh uh so dangerous that it that it presents a danger to the public, whether you're practicing under the influence of of uh uh any sort of substances, whether there's a sexual sort of uh uh overstepping any sexual boundaries. And are you listing these things? There's four of them.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Are you listing these?

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Is this Australian uh those are the criteria within which uh uh a practitioner can report another practitioner.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Oh, so you guys have guidelines which guide how doctors may report other doctors. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Okay. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, those are the three of them are similar to our guidelines. I would imagine they're all very similar. If someone's life is in danger.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

No, well, let me just because In South Africa we don't have guidelines on how to report another doctor. Okay. Trevor Burrus, So what's happened recently is that vexatious reporting And I'm and when I and I mean it there's no guidance on one doctor reporting another doctor in South Africa. So Australia has that kind of detailed. Oh okay. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

So the mandate under the mandatory and reporting sort of criteria, there's these four criteria. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Exactly. It's very general, but not like as specific as you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Trevor Burrus, Jr. So with this here, the imp the imputation was that I put the patient in danger by suggesting to the patient that there was beef. That there was a beef and that the patient may need to go to somewhere else. I mean, that was all fabricated type of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

In any event, it was a hit. This was an organized hit. So I'd made a reporting on safety standards against this very department.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

This is where the g this particular doctor was working. And at that stage, that doctor was in a romantic relationship with the director of the department that was needing to re that was needing to respond to the allegations of safety that I'd made against him. So I made a uh the so the whistleblower act. There's a whistleblower act that gives you protection. One of the things that I did, the allegations of safety that I'd made previous to that were some heavy duty allegations. There were there were the the the allegation was uh a discrepancy in safety statistics and death statistics that were getting sent to the central department. Okay. They were being sanitized. Okay. Um So who represented you at this up? I was I I I represented myself. So I because the You know that's not the worst thing to do, right? I contacted my indemnity insurers. The indemnity insurers were basically didn't there wasn't very much enthusiasm to get involved in anything. It was let's see what UPRA says. Oh, that's interesting. So I did uh the good thing is I I did my my LLB and I went to the Pretoria bar and I did my my pupillage and I've been litigating since 2004. So you were legally qualified in South Africa, so you had experience? And I was litigating. I was so I'm still currently litigating. So from 2024, uh when I when I got admitted to the bar and I got my uh my dual qualification. So I did my I did my own response to that. And I mean it was a comprehensive 200-page response, but it got kicked out on the first go. So when it comes to these reportings, what's Wait, pause? What got kicked out? The complaint. The complaint. Got kicked out as b b I addressed every aspect of it. Okay. Yeah. I got it kicked out. I got it kicked out immediately. Now, normally what happens is that it goes before an opera committee and things, and if it doesn't get kicked out on the first go, it then goes through that whole channel where it takes years before it actually eventually gets settled.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

That's similar to South Africa.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

Yeah. So so basically, my my I've defended people in front of the HBCSA before. Okay. The strategy is is to try and is to try and actually kill the complaint at that first stage. Yeah, yeah. The problem though is that the indemnity insurers don't want to get involved in that. This is in Australia. This is everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

They don't want to get involved in the first stage because it involves costs.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Oh, that's interesting. Well, I must say, I I mean, I must say I work for an indemnity organization, and I've that's why I find your story interesting, is because you know I know that organization gets involved from the beginning, right at the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

So so my experience with in so so I litigate against insurance companies. This is this this was what I was doing before I left to Australia and in the first decade of of being in Australia. Um so in terms of when is a claim vested. Okay. So a lot of the times the indemnity insurers will say if there's a complaint, they don't want to want to employ uh uh counsel and an attorney just yet. They want to see how it unfolds because it may it may get sort of kicked out on its own. But if it doesn't get kicked out on its own, then it becomes much more of a problem. If it then gets into that that that uh mechanism of of either HPCSA or OPRA, it becomes a lot more complicated, and then that's where the expenses start racking. I get you, I get you. And then if you lodge a uh uh uh any kind of a claim with your indemnity insurer and they have to incur any expense, your your your the cost of your indemnity insurance is going to escalate.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

So what's happening with the with the medicinal cannabis industry in Australia at the moment? There's been an enormous amount of doctors that have been reported. The the cost that to the regulator. So a lot of the reg a lot of the indemnity insurers have basically stepped back and said to a lot of these doctors, we're not providing indemnity.

SPEAKER_04 27:02

Oh, that's scary.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Either because you did it via telehealth or you don't have a fellowship, but any number of reasons. So a lot of these, a lot of doctors have had then gone or have ended up in the position where they're needing to either defend themselves or pay somebody else to assist them putting their cases and things together. So that first one of the vexatious reporting, I'd I'd uh lodged a public interest disclosure about the uh the the safety standards that I that I'd reported because I could see what was going to happen. I reported a public interest disclosure that's supposed to kick in the whistleblower protections. This eventually, this case, uh uh once I got it kicked out of OPRA, my biggest concern was was the local health ED and hospital was trying to run me out of town because I was I was bringing up the safety issues and all of that kind of stuff. So if one reporting had been made while I'm acting as a GP, referring a patient into an emergency department, it made me very aware as to how precarious my situation was. So this is like the exactly that bullying within the medical industry.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

It sort of almost uh uh scares you into silence, sort of, or not really. Well, I come from Lozing.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

That's her I come from but you know what I mean. Bullying is one of the things that I would rather get a bloodied nose and stand up than bullying just irks me to no end type of thing. I teach, I've told my sons though, you stand up against bullies, but you don't ever go and fight a dinosaur. If there's a you know what I mean, you stand up for yourself or whatever, but if you're gonna get punched and killed in the ground, keep your mouth shut and walk away. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

But when it's seems like institutionalized bullying. I mean, this is a whole different story.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

So I was working at the hospital when I made the allegations. So and you were part of the system, actually. And then I I mean the thing is that it became a situation where I had a target on my back. So I left the hospital and I went into G into GP practice thinking, okay, that will that will sort of insulate me to a certain degree. And then I got this this this first reporting to uh to opera made against me while I'm acting as a GP. It made me very acutely aware as to how precarious my your position is if practitioners are making vexatious reportings. Um so I took I took the I took the medical superintendent and the doctor that reported me. I took them both to court.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Doctor, um can I pause you here? Yes. So I uh we'll probably like circumvent back to the story, but I just want to get a brief background as to, I mean, you are representing yourself here as as you've mentioned in this this whole uh debacle. Yes. So I mean, before you left to Australia, so you finished your medical degree and then you did a law degree subsequent to that.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

I I finished my medical degree, that was in 94. I did my internship in California in 95. That's it, one of the Praetoria circuits. So I went from the Joburg English speaking circuit to the Pretoria Afrikan speaking circuit. So it was like a bit of a baptism of fire type of thing, you know what I mean? Extra reports, ultrasound reports, everything in Afrikaans. Uh, a nir. I never knew what a nir was, but a nir is a kidney. Uh but uh so yeah, after I did my internship, I then went uh I went to go and work in the UK for a couple of years. I met my beautiful wife. Um and then we got married in South Africa, but I came back and we set up a practice in Pretoria. She was from the UK. Yeah, she's a she was a nurse, uh, orthopedic syntroma nurse, theater, theater train as well. Uh but once we got married and we came back to South Africa, we set up a GP practice in Pretoria. So in the heart of Pretoria in 1998. And Sandra was a practice manager. I was a solo GP and we we built up a practice in in Pretoria. Uh I'd start very shortly after that, I started doing uh uh an LLB degree. It became you it became available to be done as distance education. Okay, so that's a that's a law degree. Yeah. Why why what happened? So at that time, while I was doing uh GP practice, I w uh I I realized I needed to be studying something, something additional. I needed either to go get into a medical specialty or do something. A lot of the a lot of the doctors at that time were doing an MBA. Which I I was not inclined to, but the the law thing seemed interesting and and I I started it to see what it was like. It was challenging. I mean the the it's a whole different way that your brain has to be wired to to to study law. I mean, the the long paragraphs that you have to break up and understand, it's a different form of understanding that you do for medicine or or you know what I mean, anatomy, physiology. Uh but it was interesting. And uh there were lots of in reading in reading all of the cases in it, I could reflect on life experiences where all of those principles actually, if I'd known them or understood them a lot better, I would have been able to have dealt with them uh a lot more effectively.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

I mean, look, I got into law because I just knew I didn't want to be a dentist for the rest of my life. And I thought I wanted to be a patent lawyer because I liked gadgets and things like that. Right. Where does this idea of LLB just come from out of the blue? I mean, actually, I wanted to pause you earlier because you said you you applied for engineering and medicine. Did you just thumbsuck there or was there something that inspired you? I was interested in everything. Or was it just I mean so why you picked those two difficult things in the first place? Was it we did you were you doing well in school and you wanted to a secure job or status?

SPEAKER_02 33:02

I liked the but the engineering part, like the the prospect of building robots and and and you know what I mean, and and gadgets and stuff was intriguing.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Aaron Powell And it was uh you said electrical engineering. Yeah. Was it light or heavy current? Which one?

SPEAKER_02 33:14

It was gonna be like electronics, like like I think maybe the idea of burning.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

That's an interesting one for the engineer.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

I don't know what you're talking about, light and heavy current, but anyway, go on. Yeah. So so you you like building things and then you also thought maybe I can heal people. Was it just I i Yes. I I did you job shadow anybody? Did you No. No, it was just a thing that people did, apply for medicine. If you're doing well.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Because you know what there's another joke. I think maybe the loss of my eye. Okay. And and seeing how all of that unfolded and that that probably had a uh an integral part to play with with that final decision to go uh to to choose medicine. Uh and then once I started medicine, I I suppose you don't actually really do much.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Yeah, how was studying at BITS? It was Witz, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first two years. Why didn't you go apply for to tax?

SPEAKER_02 34:05

That was that was still in the apartment years. So that was 1989. So I know there's a lot of people, but I I didn't want to I I wanted to go to an English institution. No, but I think it's important to explain why. Yeah, so I think it was I wanted to go to an English institution, and uh and that probably was the biggest factor. I didn't I didn't apply to tax.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Was fully Afrikaans, you couldn't study in English at all at the time or I think there's a few people that did.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Okay. That there's a there's a few uh uh uh yeah, there's there there were a few people that that I did my internship in California that I was with in primary school that Oh, so they allowed people of colour and things like that. Yeah, uh I think uh Priya Soma, she's a prophet. Oh yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Soma Pele, I think.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Yeah, she was we I I was with her in primary school. Okay. Um and uh who else was from the Tucs?

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Um Cause you know when I think of tax in during apartheid times, I'm thinking it must be hectic, they don't allow non-whites. Well, look, I grew up in Pretoria.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

So Pretoria was was Pretoria was a difficult town to negotiate when you were uh a teenager or as a young adult. Of color. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

And uh you Afrikaans is fluent, you can speak fluent Africans.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

So well now I can. When I was in when I was in high school, I didn't like Afrikaans. You know what I mean? It uh I I I it was like the indoctrination of the of the oppressors, oppressive sort of uh uh regime type of thing. However, once I fin even even in university, I found that communicating with a lot of uh uh patients of color, Afrikaans was the go-to language. And then even when I went back to when I went to uh California, it was Afrikaans. I needed to you needed to do your wardround presentation in Afrikaans and all of that. So it was it was a big change. Once I did my uh once I got into GP practice in Pretoria, the majority of communication was in Afrikaans. And that's even with even with with black patients from all over the country. Okay. Um and when I when I did the law degree, and then I went to the Praetoria bar, I I then needed to learn how to litigate in Afrikaans. So you needed to stand in front of uh of an Afrikaans litigator arguing in front of an Afrikaans judge. So it it it was again a a baptism or fire type of thing. The Pretoria bar is is where advocates practice. Yeah, so you've so you got uh in terms of the law, you got two routes you can go. You can go the attorney's route and then the advocates' route. So with the advocates route, when I did it, uh there were there were various bar councils, the Pretoria Bar, the Johannesburg Bar, Cape Town Bar, and and so and so and so forth. And there's also an independent bar where you can actually get join a bar, or you can actually you can practice independent of a bar and just uh uh independently.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

And then you need work, you need to get work from attorneys as an advocate, right? They need to refer work to you.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

So how do you how do you So that's where joining a bar is so important? Uh when I started, when so I I did the law degree in um I finished it in 2004. While practicing as a GP. Yeah, while practicing. I finished it in 2004. And then 2004. How was that? How was it working and studying and it was challenging?

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

It was challenging, it was very challenging. And we we I mean we we started the new practice. So I was working six days a week.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

And you had a family at that stage? Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

So I had my uh my my stepson was three, uh, and then we uh my first the first son that myself and Sandra had was in 1999, Reese, and then Dylan was born in 2001.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

So three boys at that stage. Yeah. And you're practicing and you're studying in LLB. I mean, hats off to you, you you know. Thanks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Um it it was challenging, but I had good support from my from my wife. I had to make the play it was at night type of thing. It was it it it was challenging. It it wasn't easy, but it was doable. And uh and again, I I I said to myself, even though I I I love being I love, I still do g a lot of GP work, but I I wanted to do something else as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

So you qualified and then you just left GP practice?

SPEAKER_02 38:28

I left GP practice for six months while I did the pupillage. That was the in 2004, was the last time the pupillage was going to be six months. Okay. After that, it's become a year. And you don't get paid during pupillage, so where does the money come from? You I had to give the bar an undertaking that I would leave practicing medicine to join the bar.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

You've got to do that. But that's even I had to do that when I was a.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

However, there isn't actually a uh a rule that prevents you. Basically, the rule is you can practice any other profession as long as it doesn't bring the bar into disrepute.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Well, I don't know about that. We'll have to double check because I think it's it's more about remuneration and being a good idea. No, no, no, no, not during the pupillage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

I'm talking just generally. Once you finished your pupillage, during the pupillage, yeah. During the pupillage, yes. You can't be working. Yeah, you're supposed to dedicate your entire time and and and effort to the to the practice, which which is what I did. But then once I qualified and I got my and and basically I passed the by exam and I got admitted as an advocate, there's nothing that stops you. And I was getting people, uh I was getting people bring sick children to me. You know what I mean, at my house where you're forced to, you know what I mean, there's a duty of care on you that you have to act. So with that, I basically I went back into doing uh uh a live a little bit of GP work, but more emergency medicine work, and then I was doing litigation for for the rest of the of the week.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

So it was Yeah, wow, this is it's fascinating because I mean one degree is hard enough. You've got two, and then you just also decided to go to Australia, where I'm sure at that stage was quite heavily regulated with people coming out.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

No, don't go ahead. I mean, let's pause there. You're a doctor that's doctoring, and you're an advocate that's being in ad I mean really This is happening. This is really happening. So there's there's a few people You're running two practices at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 40:14

Yes, there's there's a few people that uh that recently and from sort of the time of COVID, I haven't been doing much litigation. There's one big case that I'm still finishing off in Pretoria. I s I drafted the the particulars of claim for that case in 2006. Yeah. So we've eventually reached uh uh uh we we on we're at the tail end of the of the case. So the the costs battle is set down for February of next year.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

So you still registered as a practicing advocate? So I'm yeah and and uh doctor with the HPCSA.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

No. No. My my HPCSA, uh I wasn't doing any medicine here. Okay. So I'm registered with OPRA, but I've I my HPCSA uh uh uh registration has lapsed.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Why did you let it why didn't you just keep paying?

SPEAKER_02 41:01

I wasn't doing I wasn't doing any medical work. So I mean it what's it? What's what's the cost of HPCSA registration? No, it's a book.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Well, I mean, for for Australians is not bad. It's like three grand a year.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

You know what? I I carried on. It's fine. That's pocket change. I I've I've often thought about re-in you know what I mean, uh b uh uh uh reinstituting it, which there's no there's no impediments to me doing that. I think I have to pay a big lump sum or retrospectively or whatever. Uh but it hasn't been necessary. So I've got my registration with with Australia and and that's where I practice most of but I practice all of my medicine there and I practice law. Uh I don't in Australia when I went over, they I had to redo a law degree. So I did a jurisdictor degree. So that's a uh uh sort of covering everything, postgraduate law degree. Um and then I uh I I also got my fellowship to the Australasian College of Legal Medicine. So the College of Legal Medicine is mainly forensic specialists, but people that specialize both in in medicine and law, but there's quite a few um uh uh practicing doctorslash practicing barrister or or solicitors as well. So it has developed into its own subspeciality. That's fine, that's fine. Yeah. When are you starting?

SPEAKER_00 42:23

No, don't intend to.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Don't don't rush ahead because tell us about what it was like being a doctor and advocate in South Africa and what who was what type of work were you doing? Who was briefing you?

SPEAKER_02 42:36

So initially, uh the the I did I did a murder trial. So initially criminal law. Yeah, criminal law. So so I'm uh basically I was initially I was doing pretty much anything and everything. Yeah. Uh I did one one murder trial and one rape trial. Shh. So the murder trial, I I managed to get an acquittal, which was really nice. Okay, so defense for the defending uh somebody. The rape trial was so distressing. The the perpetrator of what the so so we all all the advocates and and legal people and the whole gallery, you know what I mean, victims and and and family members, everybody sitting there together, and then the roll call happens where the judge calls out the the case, find out whether the people are there, who's ready to start. The two victims, two two children, like I mean, they would have been, you know, I mean, not even teenagers, but they were in this courtroom and started in Armin. It was it was just a emotionally horrible experience type of thing. Um and what unfolded on that day, uh uh it's just so easy for people to get off on a rape allegation. And it was uh it uh and I was doing defense work, so I c I couldn't reconcile myself. With certain with certain sort of uh uh kind of work, so I decided uh this the the criminal criminal work isn't for me.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Yeah. If I can ask you are the you are in defense, so you are protecting the defendant who's obviously who's been accused. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

So the thing is is that uh the the say the the the rape case it was uh it was a I think it was a s it was a minor. It was a uh uh teenage boy, teenage girl. The medical evidence didn't support a rape. The J eighty eight, the the the actual medical uh documentation basically confirmed that there wasn't a rape. Uh uh so I was going to get my guy off. But he did he was a he was a youngster from a rural community, he didn't pitch up to court. So he had a uh arrest warrant and by default he would have gotten charged and and convicted. Uh but if he had been there, I would have gotten him off on the basis of the evidence not supporting uh uh not supporting the the state's allegation of a rape and the victim as well. The victim's version didn't support a rape either. It was the family that had gone and done the the reporting. So even though I I didn't successfully defend the guy, but it it m I just found criminal law not to be. Yeah, it was not for you, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't for me. So then I did quite a bit of uh uh I did a bit of banking stuff, but the mainstay of the work that I did was medical legal stuff. Anything where there was um a medical aspect.

SPEAKER_01 45:38

So there's a I mean, medical legal litigation is big. And it's a no-brainer. I guess the attorneys think, okay, here's a doctor and he's an advocate, let's brief him because he'll understand the law and the nuances of medicine, right? Oh well yes. But how do you get your name out there?

SPEAKER_02 45:52

How do people know that, hey, I'm a doctor that's now uh I think with the bar, the benefit of having the bar as a as a backup gives you that. You get you you basically you w when you're a member of the bar, you you got the privilege of walking into anybody's door and literally going and asking about advice. Uh uh it's it's actually advised that you go and introduce yourself to everybody, tell them what you specialize in and all of that.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

For the purposes of just me not being in law and listeners, what is the bar?

SPEAKER_02 46:21

The bar is the institution that governs the advocates. So so you've got a law society. It's government, it's like being a public. It's like an administrative body. Yeah. So you can you can be a member of a bar, like the Johannesburg Bar or the Pretoria Bar or the Gramstown Bar or uh uh Cape Town, wherever there's a high court, there'll usually be a bar association. And then you've got the National Bar Association that governs all of the all of the advocates. So they've got their own set of rules, and and you can be held accountable to the bar.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Are you part of the bar?

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Yes. No. I'm an attorney. But so but you you a member of the law society? Yeah, yeah. It's now called the Legal Practice Council. Yeah, I'm not sure. Legal Practice Council.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

So uh uh so the bar specifically deals with the advocates fraternity. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Um so where does Australia factor in now? How do when do you decide okay, I'm leaving all of this now?

SPEAKER_02 47:13

So w uh uh in 2004 is when I went did the advocate stuff, 200 2005. Uh having gone to the bar wiped out a lot of the financial reserves that we had. So I went back to England.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Well, exp explain that. Because you you know, money is not people just think lawyers are coining it, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:32

Well, but I I had to leave my practice for six months. Yeah. We had a young family. You know what I mean? Yeah life is is expensive type of thing. So I needed to uh I needed to somehow supplement my income. So I went and did uh uh a f uh a couple of months of locums in 2005 and 2006 in England. So I was still registered with the GMC and I and I'd done quite a bit of work there, so it was easy enough for me to actually get work. Um and then when I in so in 2005, when I came back and I was driving back from the airport back to to home, uh the one thing that I I I realized So from Jobuk too? From the Jobog airport down to we were living in a place called Erasmia at that time, just next to Logan.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

I know it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

And I uh something was on the radio and I think there was a big billboard, but I I decided mining law is where the money is. J just on a trip uh just just coming back. Look, I was I was I'd gone to England because I was uh you know what I mean? There was no I needed to to I needed to start earning Yeah, money's on your mind, yeah? Yeah. And I got the advocates' qualifications. I was I was a member of the bar.

SPEAKER_04 48:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

The next natural thing was to try and get into mining law because that's where that's where the money is. Okay, okay. So so that's what I had in my mind. And then at the end of 2005, this opportunity to get into mining sort of happened. I I was in a shadow board meeting at at one of the other advocates' uh chambers. It was it was uh I was invited to this because of the medical and the legal qualifications. It was a project that needed that kind of input. And then somebody approached me uh uh after that meeting to say, listen, there's this, there's this uh uh there's this project in the Northwest, three diamond mines, that there were it was there was just chaos. There was issues with the with the DMR, the permits had been suspended, the there was a huge bank overdraft, there was a land claim over the area, just every kind of disaster that you could think of that would put an investor off. But I've read the documents, I read the the old geologicals, I went through the history, I did my due diligence to to check whether there would whether there was the possibility of a valid land claim, all of those aspects. At the end of it, I was sitting as somebody uh uh as a as a as a person from humble beginnings from Lodium with the possibility of getting involved in this diamond project. So I I I gr I jumped at it. There was a lot of there was a lot of administrative nightmares to actually get through type of thing. But I said, well, you know what, this is an opportunity of a lifetime. I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in and and get involved. Jesus. You've got a brick wall that I can bang my head against. It's been challenging. Yeah. Um so come 2005, going into 2006, I started doing a big police corruption trial in Pretoria. So um stolen cars, stolen cars getting uh uh put through the the the testing centers and and basically cleared and all of that. So I was needing to and I was acting for the I was acting for the state. The four perpetrators had been arrested and and and uh uh and been charged. Some of them were cops. And I was and they'd been charged and then they'd been acquitted on a technicality. So then they sued the state for wrongful arrest. So I was acting for the state and defending on the on the wrongful arrest uh uh uh portion of it.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Yak, you're still following? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

So there were some bad, bad people that I needed to put up on the stand and cross-examine.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

So uh you know what I mean? Uh so I see what's happening now at the moment with assassinations of of legal people in terms. So as this case was unfolding, it became apparent to me that the that some of the people that were my witnesses and some of the people that I had to cross-examine that these were nefarious, dangerous people. Um and then I got involved in this mining thing. And at that time with the mining thing, there there were a lot of interested, uh uh nefarious entities that wanted this mining project. So we got hit with a with a um a court application by a law firm based in Pretoria, the Bura Mafia. All of this is uh whoever is interested enough can actually go and track back in the archives and find these these documents. But there was an application that was made against the three mines where I sort of I put a deal together where we acquired an equity stake. But there was an application made at the ICOurt to prevent the government giving us our permits.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:28

So that was the beginning of this this This mafia that you mentioned, is that like a a legit term or is it It's a legit term in Pretoria.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:36

So I got I found out about this only afterwards when I went and spoke to my my my colleagues in it to say, look, this is the case that's that's come. I need to hire a a senior counsel.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

So they don't call themselves that.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Well I'm asking. Well, a lot of my very highly qualified Afrikaans barrister colleagues said to me no uncertain terms, you're going to this is your opponents, this is the Buddha mafia you're going on.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

And not to mess with them or uh it was basically know your opponents, but they they litigated decently. We won, we we beat them in court, we got a cost order, and that was the end of it. So what does the win mean? What what what is the thing? We basically got the application kicked out. They were they it was this weird application. It was a third party making an application to prevent the Department of Minerals and Resources giving us our permits.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:31

I mean, what was the what was the intended outcome? Did they want that contract? They wanted that contract. Yeah. So at the item, I wouldn't call them mafia though. It sounds like a very uh legitimate way of going about it. Well uh they went through an application process.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

Yes. I think when I do write up the story of Diamond Lakes, Diamond Lakes is my pet project. What is Diamond Lakes? Diamond Lakes is a mine. Okay. So do you own a mine? Are you a mine owner? What's the thing? Well, I'm involved in a company that's got an equity stake, and I'm a director on the mines. It sounds a lot more glamorous, and there's no money coming in at the moment. It sounds very glamorous. We've we've we've managed to secure the ownership, the new order mine rights, all of that. No, no, no, no, no. I I've got a personal aversion to Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_04 54:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:17

Uh uh and what he stands by and all of that kind of stuff. Uh uh Yeah, I think the USAID uh demolishing by Musk is gonna end up with many, many casualties, unfortunately. In any event, we'll get we'll we'll we'll move away from that. But yes, I'm a director of of three diamond mines. Two of them are functional, but not producing very much at the moment. Um it's come to a point where trying to to to to to manage this from abroad has been just overwhelming. So we're looking for big equity partners to come in and take over and and and and run the operation.

SPEAKER_01 54:55

Oh yes, you mentioned abroad. So are you in Australia now? Where do you live?

SPEAKER_02 54:58

Yeah, I live in Australia. So I come back to South Africa infrequently. Check on the mines. Check on the mines, check on my mum.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 55:05

Uh previously, so the first we after the the the the this police corruption case, getting into the mining, life started becoming dangerous. So there were death threats and all of that kind of stuff. Uh we were staying in Erasmia on a beautiful property out in the in the in the Halisburg Mountains. But it was like the Wild West. In an area of 3,000 hectares and a population of 3,000 people, in the six months before we left, there were six murders. Uh our neighbors were we had a home invasion, but you know what I mean, fully armed, just just horrible. But it became apparent that we were the targets that night. Is this just because of the nature of the business that you're in?

SPEAKER_01 55:49

I I mean you're mentioning mafia.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

So at that at that stage, I uh my practice was still running. I was litigating things, things were nice, you know what I mean? Things were going well. Uh the the the legal practice was building up really, really well, type of thing. Um and then this incident happened with the neighbors. And my wife had a pet boa constrictor.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Oh, that explains the the snake profile picture on WhatsApp. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 56:19

So it started off as a baby boa constrict. We did. Yeah. It was my wife's pet snake, Nabini. So the boa s like it it started off small, but started growing, you know what I mean? So I I was quite happy for the snake to be in its tank in the bedroom until it like was longer than like, you know what I mean, almost as long as my body type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

But in that home invasion incident that happened with our neighbors, the first question these guys asked when they got into these people's house, where's the snake?

SPEAKER_01 56:51

Wow, that's scary.

SPEAKER_02 56:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

So it was it was intended for you.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

So we we I I I've always been paranoid about security. So our house, we had nine dogs, uh, a double electric fencing around the house, burger bars on the inside and outside of the house, a separate sort of security, uh what's it, like a safe room type of thing where where we would be, armed response, all of that kind of stuff. So we were we were touch wood, we were fortunate.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

We never got we never got hit. I mean, I was gonna joke when you mentioned the snake and ask you if that's also a security measure, but it's yes. I I think just South African criminals, right? Isn't isn't that like a known thing that criminals in South Africa are afraid of snakes?

SPEAKER_02 57:32

Well, I I think the fact that these guys, the first question they asked is where's the snake?

SPEAKER_01 57:37

Not because they and you know, an Australian viewer might be thinking they're trying to target and steal the snake. Yeah, no, no, no. More because they're afraid of the snake.

SPEAKER_02 57:43

Yeah, somebody if there's if you if if somebody knows there's a snake there, they want to know where the snake is. So that you know what I mean, you know.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

That's why I wanted to give that context, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:52

But that that sort of uh gave us the realization that we were probably the targets. And then, even though we had all of the security and things, our kids were needing to come in and out for school when we were at work. It was it was probably in my mind, it was only a matter of time before we did get it. And that night that the neighbors got hit was when we made the decision. Look, uh and and with this the the police corruption trial, all of that was still unfolding. That the mining saga was starting to to develop and all of that kind of stuff. So it was it was with the it was for the concern for the family and things that the decision was made. In the first 10 years, I made 50 trips back to South Africa.

SPEAKER_01 58:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 58:36

So when I left, I think I had about uh uh close to about 30 trials that I was doing. Uh and the I accepted a job at Gempi Hospital basically with the um uh they accepted my terms. My terms were if I needed to go for trials, I'll take it as unpaid leave, but I these are these are obligations that I'm forced to that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

How did Australia factor in?

SPEAKER_02 59:01

Um Australia's been nice, it's been comfortable. Yeah, but I mean wh how'd you pick Australia? We needed to go to a place where uh was English speaking, that I didn't have to shovel snow. Yeah, yeah. And that's not Canada, yeah. Yeah, and where I could get my uh registration and all of that. My wife is English, so and I was I had full registration with the GMC and that, but I think we we were looking at So you didn't have to write exams and conversion exams and things like that. For Australia, I did. I redo the law exams and the AMC ex everything.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

And Okay.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

Yeah, so uh but but we I I we chose Australia because the weather was gonna be very similar to South Africa and and and all of that. So I think it was the weather, English speaking, the the registration, um, and the lifestyle is is is very similar to you. So that's how Australia became the the default uh uh the default destination. And Gimpe became the final default destination because we the Osville accepted my terms. So we we decided we we're gonna go go to the first place and then we'll travel around and find where we're gonna where we're gonna set down routes and how did they treat you there as a foreigner, immigrant? Australia can be challenging, yeah. The uh it's been w myself personally, it's been good, it's been a good integration. There's a lot of racism, there's a lot of racism. Anybody who says there isn't racism in Australia is deluding themselves. Um the the statistics speak for themselves. Australia's got the the the putrid reputation of having the highest pediatric suicide rate in the world. So you got kids under the age of 10 that hang themselves. And and one of the big problems with this is this whole um institutional these institutional problems, there's this whole racial situation that that's just terrible.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

There's an undertone of loss of identity, I think, because they're really Yes. I mean, from a government perspective, I think they're very welcoming. Um especially just recently, um Australia acknowledged Palestine as being an independent state.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:18

Australia's great. You know what I mean? The vast majority of the population have got no issues with race. You know what I mean? I'm I'm in the privileged position where as a doctor, and you're seeing somebody, uh it it changes it, it changes the dynamic very much. But but I think there's a lot of uh there there is a lot of race issues within the medical fraternity, violence within the out industry, you know what I mean, in emergency departments and GPs.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

And lots of um South Africans in Australia, huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:47

There's a lot of South Africans, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

Somebody was saw somewhere on Twitter or something, but people were joking that, you know, South Africa exports a lot of their races to Australia also.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

So look, I think everywhere's got their problems. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I mean? But it's been good for you. Yes, it has been good. It's been good. It's been good for the for the family. I mean, my kids experienced racism, even uh, you know what I mean, growing up in school and that it it was pervasive. Uh however, I think growing up in South Africa, it it taught me resilience, and basically, it you know what I mean, it it and I think all South Africans have learned that as well, black and white. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter what the adversities are, you you get on and you get over the the issues and you and you do what you need to what you need to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

From a geographical perspective, where where is Gympie actually?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

So Gympie is about an hour and a half to two hours north of Brisbane. So it's on the east coast of Australia. Yeah. It's sort of smack in the same uh uh latitude as Durban.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:50

So that the the climate in Gympie is is like Durban. It's very simple. You know what I mean? It's a coastal town. It's about uh say it's 45 minutes inland.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

30 minutes as a crow flies, but by road it'll be about 45 minutes. It's rolling green hills, uh uh uh uh banana plants and mango trees and and parrots. You know what I mean? Beautiful birds and parrots. So it's a it's a beautiful area of the of the world. Uh it it can get very, very hot. I mean, Australia's heat is is is a different is a different sort of uh it's a different type of heat to contend with. Uh, but then the southern part of Australia during winter gets freezing cold in the in the winter, you know what I mean? Minus minus 10, minus 15 degrees in the in a in the the the southern part of Australia. In the summer, they go up to 45, 46 degrees type of thing. So there's big there's a big swing in in terms of the of temperature. Uh drought is always a problem in Australia. Along the entire coast, there's usually really good rains. I mean, when it rains, it it comes down like like Jesus, you know what I mean, uh monsoon or more type of rains.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:04

And snakes and spiders and things are always I'm afraid of Australia. Everything wants to kill you in Australia, it's not there. Well, that's true.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:13

Well, South Africa, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:15

Let's let's take it into perspective, type of thing. So uh Australia, the there's a lot of venomous venomous snakes. They're beautiful. Yeah, I I love snakes. We've got a lot of snakes. You've got snakes in the backyard and that and um and a lot of the backyard and stuff. Yeah, but you no, no, no, no, no. That that live there. I can't do that. No.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:35

Well, my wife and I go and do some environmental work on an on a on this. I it's called Ghari. Used to be called Fraser Island before. It's the uh it's the biggest sand island in the world. It's it's it's a magnificent place, but it's got it's rich in Aboriginal culture and and history. Uh and you go in the bushes where you're looking for weeds and it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:57

So, I mean, you're walking grass and it up to you, and there's a lot of venomous, venomous snakes there. But you make a lot of noise and things, the snakes normally will move off.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:07

You know what's really interesting is one of my interests is snake bite management, acute snake bite management. And the Australian snakes, the venom is transported by the lymphatic system. Okay. So if you get bitten, and as long as you use the effective first aid, which is splinting with a with a with a compression bandage, uh compression bandage the the limb, and then splint it, it buys you many hours of time to get to the emergency department. And it's really effective.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:40

Um you guys don't run out of anti antidote, eh? Um because that happened in South Africa.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

Yeah, I know. It's crazy. I mean, there's a whole lot of uh uh geopolitical factors that that determine the availability and the cost of uh of of of anti venom. It's a disease of poor countries. You know what I mean? Is that so Australia's death rate from po from venomous snakes is maybe four to six in a year. If you go to PNG, which has got a smaller population, but it's much more jungly in that, and uh and they there isn't such an effective Papua New Guinea. There's about eighty sixty to eighty thousand deaths. Sure. I I stand to be corrected about the statistics.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

Big rate.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:24

Yeah, but but a lot more. And even in India, I think India has got like 80,000 deaths and 200,000 loss of limbs, sub-Saharan Africa, similar kind of statistics. But Australia, with a big population and the majority and such a such a large amount of venomous snakes, there's not that much of a of a death rate. So you won't get killed too easily, Josh. Yeah, I'll be fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

Yeah, my parents are on a flight. Well, I think they just landed uh to Australia. Oh, yeah? Yeah, they're going to visit family and things. That's why I was mentioning. Where about? I I don't know where about, but I know they went to Sydney because the flight is fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:56

So look, most people that go to Australia go to the cities. They fly between the cities in it. I mean, it's a massive, massive continent. And uh there's a there's a lot of wild bush in it. So I think in those areas where there's a lot of bush and things, it it may be a little bit more dangerous. Uh I think the most dangerous animal uh okay, perceived dangerous animal are the saltwater crocodiles. Yeah. So they they eat nastier than the Nile crocodiles. I mean, they're known to to hunt humans and they're protected species. They they're heading further south.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:31

So Is it like Florida where you get the croc, you know, they've got alligators and they're so.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

So you get salties and you get freshwaters. Yeah. But yes, in areas where and uh what's really crazy, in s in some areas, coastal areas where there's the big floods in it, you get sharks and crocodiles in the in the town.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:50

I saw a video the other day of a shark circling a crocodile.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:55

That's all your AI stuff. Come on, yeah. No, no, it's real legit.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:58

So and you know what? It's not only those. So you've got the crocodiles, you got the sharks, you got sting rays, you got all sorts of other rays, and then you got the stingers. Irukanji, uh um, and and other jellyfish that sh if they don't kill you, you'll remember them for the rest of your life in terms of the of the pain and and uh so apart from avoiding uh venomous and deadly animals in Australia, what do you do there now?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:25

What are you doing? Uh uh I read somewhere about a cannabis clinic or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:28

So yeah, my my wife, so I've been working from from the medical fraternity, I work as a G as a conventional sort of GP in in one setup, and then I work as an emergency medicine consultant in another setup. And about four years ago, uh I got involved in medicinal cannabis prescribing. It was basically I'd I reached the end of my of the end of the line in terms of treatment options with a with a dementia patient, and I had a she was on two antipsychotics and a benzodiazepine, a woman in her mid-80s that needed those to just to keep her settled and prevent her from running off and and injuring herself again. And then I had a a very pers a very persistent uh MSL, medical science liaison, come and say, Well, look, she'll do the the administrative paperwork and all of that. And she did she did just that, did all of the administrative paperwork in that for the for the TGA, and it was for a CBD product. There's a lot of acronyms you're throwing around. Your TGA, C B D. TGA is the Therapeutic Goods Association, so they control uh any unscheduled.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:36

So like SAPRA in South Africa, South African health products regulatory? Probably. So it what's it? It's GP TGA. TGA.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:43

Therapeutic Goods Association. Okay. So they regulate cannabis and and everything about cannabis. So there's a joint sort of regulatory capacity. Joint and in the pun not intended. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:54

Go on.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:54

Um so the TGA regulates most everything about how doctors can prescribe uh uh these unregistered products. Where was I heading with this story?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:06

Yeah, how you got into it because you said that.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:08

Oh, yeah, right. CBD. So with within medicinal cannabis, you've got THC, which is the one that's got the psychoactive effect. You've got CBD, which is which doesn't have any psychoactive effect, but it's got a lot of therapeutic benefits on the body. There's over 150 cannabinoids. THC and CBD is literally just the tip of the iceberg. But with this particular product, it was this it was a CBD full spectrum product. It was a minute amount of THC in it, but it had all of these other incredible chemicals, the terpenes and the flavonoids and everything in there. So I put this, I put this patient onto a small little dose of CBD, 10 milligrams, uh as a as a test dose type of thing. Um, which it is a very, very small dose, but she's in the 80s, she's on all of these other medications, so always start low and and and and see where you're going. The effect was immediate. Within 12 hours, she didn't need her normal mid-morning antipsychotic. Within 12 hours. I mean, it was just that the it was it was the the response was incredible. Within the space of about a week or two, I'd managed to drop her pull load to about half of what it was, type of thing. And she was doing just so much better. So that was that was and my wife knew this patient. My wife had seen her when she was on the on the double antipsychotic and the benzodiazepine preparation, where she was very she was she was just knocked out and and and mainly unresponsive, proling sort of from the from the side of the mouth and to going onto the CBD, dropping the antipsychotics and the benzodiazepine to becoming lucid and recognizing my wife again and having a bit of a conversation within the space of of say a month and a half.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:54

And was that, if I can ask, uh more some more symptomatic relief, or do you was that a cure?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:01

Did she have to continuously become? What it worked for, it worked for the agitation. It worked for the so so the main the main two components with that particular patient was the insomnia, the severe agitation secondary to the to the um to the dementia. So in the this was in two in 2021. We started the the clinic in December of 2021, in August of 2021 with this particular patient.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:29

Wait, so you started the clinic, the the I I was thinking that this patient inspired you to start a clinic. So this was my GP patient.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:38

Okay. The clinic we set up separately because you have to we had to get separate licensing. Oh, so it's quite heavily regulated. Yeah, the the the the principal, the owner of the clinic that I was working at was not pro-cannabis at all. So they weren't interested in getting involved in cannabis. So so that those were the seek set of seek I I I spoke to the practice manager and said, Look, I I'm going to start doing this. I can't I can't I can't ignore this. Yeah. It was it wasn't inspired by like, okay, this is gonna make money. It was No, no, no. It was it was so basically it was my wife and I say, we we can't ignore this. You know what I mean? This is just profound the difference that with in that one patient. And that's what started it off.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:19

So, what is this now? What does this clinic do?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

It's called empowered medical monitoring. But what we we did is we set up a face-to-face medicinal cannabis service that acts only within that space. We don't take patients as direct referrals only from their GP or from their specialist. So what we do is that we we make sure that we we maintain uh a relationship with the referring doctor. One of the big, one of the big issues with the telehealth services or with the cat with the medicinal sort of cannabis uh prescriber is who's responsible for the rest of that patient's health. Okay. So the way that we've set up our clinic is to is basically we we maintain a relationship with the with the various GPs and they continue the the the regular care of the patient. Yeah, so you're not just a glorified weed dealer.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:11

I mean is this is this my my grandmother will be very she probably she was cremated, but she's wherever our ancestors go to, she's probably not very happy with however.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:21

No, but I'm I was gonna ask, is this a controversial thing in Australia?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:25

Did you know Queen Victoria in the 1850s used medicinal cannabis? Okay. No, I'm just asking. No, wait, wait, wait. There's an incredible history to this. So her physician was a bloke by the name of O'Shaughnessy, an Irish doctor who went and uh went and worked in India. Right. And that's where he got exposed to hashish being used as as a as a therapeutic uh for therapeutic uh uh purposes. And he took that back to Europe. This is in the 1850s. He was the physician for Queen Victoria as well as the Queen of Belgium at the time, and as well as a lot of other royal so medicinal cannabis has been used extensively in the Western world up until the 1930s. The the colonial world that were the colonial ships that went and took over the world, from the Dutch, the Portuguese, the British, all of it, those big colonial ships used hemp for their sails and their ropes. So there were big cannabis plantations all across Europe during the colonial years. Uh stuff I never knew about. What seems to have been the main reason for the illegality kicking in, uh, up until the sort of late 1800s, the British had set in place uh draft legislation to control narcotics, so mainly the opium trade. But they included cannabis within that draft legislation. It never got taken anywhere else. But after the First World War, so after 1918, they started growing hemp in the states as part of the war reparation effort for paper and for textiles. And it grew so cheaply and so prolifically, it became a major economic challenge for the richest people in the states. The the cotton, the people that owned the cotton industry, the textile industry, the timber industry. And then at the at sort of the beginning of the of the uh what's it 20th century, so of 1900s, the petroleum industry started. So they started making synthetic um textiles from the petroleum industry. So it the illegality thing in America started around the early 1930s. There was a bloke by the name of Ainslinger that was in charge of the, I think it's the FBI. At that stage, there was a lot of anti-war protesters in America protesting America's nefarious dealings in Central and South America. Um there were lots of uh non-white immigrant groups from South America, the Mexicans, Nicaraguans, everybody, and and and and the Negro populations, Indians, Chinese, everywhere, but a a lot of the a lot of, including the white population, a lot of people use cannabis. They've been using cannabis historically for thousands of years. It became a really convenient way to control population groups and to appease the richest people in the states. And so the legislation by the states to criminalize cannabis was effected in the early 1930s. The Americans were funding the United Nations, so that was incorporated into United Nations policy globally. And that's how the illegality seems to have been pushed. Up until then, the what's really interesting, empowered medical monitoring, our clinic in Gempi is on the high street in Gempi. It's a brick building that was a pharmacy in the 1930s or pre-1930s. So you could actually buy cannabis legally from the building that we're in historically. So it's it's it it's I never knew much about this, but I mean uh since I've since I've gotten into cannabis prescribing, I've I've I've studied it, I've done uh uh as much as I can in terms of the learning process. It's been a it's been a fascinating uh and interesting story. We probably should do another podcast on that at another time specifically with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

Does it carry uh any stigma or like controversy?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:15

Yes. So the medical field is very polarized. You know what I mean? The a lot of the colleges put out statements on their college websites to say there's no evidence that cannabis works. That's that's a load of rubbish. Any doctor who makes that kind of statement is ill-informed and is risking being called uh ill-informed, I suppose. There's the the one of the problems, doctors, people are gonna be using cannabis even if it's not prescribed to them. Within the element of doctors prescribing cannabis, there's a lot of people that are self-medicating. So within this whole medicinal cannabis sort of spectrum, um harm reduction prescribing is one aspect. Where people that are that are sort of uh victims of cannabis misuse disorder, trying to actually regulate how they use it, how to use it sensibly and all of that, and to manage symptoms, is one of the strategies that that is used within medicinal cannabis prescribing. But the but the medical field is is completely polarized.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:23

So are you not at risk of getting more opera complaints?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:26

Yes. So how do you navigate that? So so this is one of the things is that from day one has been looking at at all of these really uh uh treacherous positions that a doctor can find himself in. It's one of the teaching that it's one of the sort of uh the the educational evenings that we do. That's what I deal with. It's basically how do you actually uh uh prescribe responsibly for the sake of your patient's health and safety, but also for the sake of your licensing and your and your credibility and all of that. So that's what we did with the empowered medical monitoring. We built this model specifically with me wanting to protect myself from the, you know, I mean from from reportings. Yeah. Um in terms of medicinal cannabis, there's certain contraindications. Anybody with a previous history of psychosis, it's considered to be a contraindication. So the so there's a lot of reasons why somebody can have a previous history of psychosis. It could have been sepsis induced, it could have been uh methamphetamine induced, there's a whole lot of different reasons. But that's that's that's looked at as a complete exclusionary criteria by the by the psychiatric fraternity.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:41

I mean, if patients just come there and say, I just want to smoke a blunt, so for emotionally.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:46

That's well, the that that's that's one of the reasons why we we insist that a person gets referred by their GP. In terms of legally prescribing cannabis, there needs to be certain specific criteria that need you you can't use it as a first-line treatment. The criteria is relatively soft. The person needs to have been tried, they need to have a chronic medical problem. They need to have been tried on other uh uh conventional treatments that have either failed or the side effects have been intolerable. And then in those cases, that opens up the doorway to actually uh uh to start prescribing to them. But you get another group of pop another group of people that are already using Canon.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:31

Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask. How do you then regulate these the other you know pre-existing users from just abusing the system and you know having these prerequisites for the So we don't entertain any of that?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:46

One of the ways, or uh one of the the ways that we set up our clinic is by insisting that the patient needs to have their GP referring. So the first part of their journey into getting prescribed cannabis is them going and making their disclosures to their GP. With the understanding the GP's understanding is they referring that patient to us. It places a responsibility on me to communicate with the GP, what the treatment plan is going to be, our details, if there's any sort of issues, we've got a direct uh uh uh channel. And it's a doctor-patient relationship that gets. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:20

Yeah, and and one of the things in terms of our consent document, we insist that the patient maintains their regular follow-up with their with their GP.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:29

In certain circumstances where GPs have left and No, but I'm asking is the clinic, you also have a doctor-patient relationship with the patient.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an established doctor. So so the the if if they didn't have a GP and I was accepting them off the street, like you say, the bloke who comes in saying, you know what, I'm a recreational smoker and that um it it first of all it puts you at at a higher risk. But saying that, the whole harm reduction prescribing is is is something that that is obvious, is sustainable, and is already being used in people that are heroin addicts. Uh people that go onto the methadone program or or uh the buprenorphine, there's a few other sort of opiate substitutes to basically get people off met yeah, and that's referred to as harm reduction prescribing. Now, what what the what the psychiatric fraternity and a lot of the the anti-cannabis fraternity seems to think, they seem to have this impression that cannabis prescribers are grabbing people off the street and shoving cannabis down their throats or yeah, we're glorified drug dealers.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:42

And here I'm just playing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:43

Yeah, I know I know you're playing devil's advocate. I know you're the attorney being Lastach at the moment. I hear that.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:49

So there's a lot of people that are self-medicating because they've either they can't sleep, they've got sort of social anxieties or whatever, and they're medicating themselves with cannabis and functioning. You get a situation that's called cannabis misuse disorder. Okay, so you basically have got you it it must be recognized by anybody who's a prescriber. So within cannabis misuse disorder, you're gonna get those patients. You're gonna, I'm I mean, I get a lot of patients that are using a lot of cannabis. So, what my duty as a prescriber is to actually try and regulate those people, bring them into a regulated prescribing uh um arena where you, first of all, combustion smoking and bongs are extremely damaging to the lungs. And any type of combustion burning actually destroys the majority of all of these nuanced uh uh chemicals, the minor cannabinoids, the terpenes, the flavonoids, none of them survive the 600-degree burn. So, what's the recommended way to consume? Is is with something called dry flower vaporizing. So, dry flower vaporizer is basically a vaporizer that it's got a ch it's got a chamber where the cannabis flour is crushed and goes into, and that's heats up to a maximum of 220 degrees. So basically, it actually activates all of the essential essential oils because that's what, you know what I mean, what what these things are in, it's it's essentially an oil sort of matrix, and that's how it gets inhaled and gets the maximum bioavailability in a person. So if somebody smokes cannabis, they destroy all of I'll I'll give you this. So you've got the main three components in cannabis. You've got your cannabinoids, THC and CBD are the two main cannabinoids, but there's over 150 minor cannabinoids. There's cannabinoids now that exist, that never existed historically. They've actually been created by selective breeding of the plant and these fancy growing techniques in it. The quality of medicinal cannabis is judged very much by the amount of terpenes uh uh that are in there. Not the not just based on the cannabinoids, it's this whole concoction of all of these other compounds. So you've got your 150 cannabinoids. Your next big group of compounds that you get are called terpenes. Terpenes are the are the chemical sort of constituent in the plant that gives it uh um physical properties, color, taste, texture, but very much the aroma. The aroma from cannabis comes from the terpenes. There's over 300 different terpenes. And what we know now is the terpenes interact with all of these various cannabinoid receptors and other receptors in the body and demonstrate uh uh uh clinical benefits, even without any uh any any THC or cannabinoids. So you've got your 150 cannab uh cannabinoids, 300 terpenes, and then the next big group of chemicals you get in cannabis are called flavonoids. Flavonoids have got this really profound anti-cancer effects. So there's there's a lot of research that's going on them. So within any particular strain of cannabis, you'll have a you'll have a uh some cannabinoids, some terpenes, and some flavonoids. When people smoke cannabis, and if it's if it's the conventional way that people normally smoke cannabis, which is either in a joint, a bong, a pipe, a carrot, a watermelon, I've heard some incredible stories from patients of mine. But that 600-degree burn destroys all of the terpenes, all of the flavonoids at the interface.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:32

Okay, so the extraction process is what is of utmost imperative.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:37

Yes. So there's there's different ways that people consume cannabis. So the first way, which is the inhalation route. And and even the scientists have acknowledged the inhaler, even with conventional uh uh smoking methods, in terms of getting the highest levels, the highest serum levels, yeah, the uh the the speed and the highest levels in the blood are from the inhalation route. From a medical cannabis perspective, We want people to use vaporized cannabis versus combustion cannabis. The next route that you can use is oral ingestion. So gummies and oils and capsules and wafers and all of those kinds of stuff. With the oral ingestion from the from basically from the from the stomach, everything gets absorbed. Everything gets absorbed. However, the first pass effect goes through the liver and gets and gets broken down. So you lose about 30% of the initial dosage through the first pass effect. Yeah. But using prescribing medicinal cannabis, combining the two forms of the most common forms of ingestion, which is uh inhalation route plus the oral route, is where you get the maximum benefits. And that's what I've seen in terms of my clinical practice. With empowered medical monitoring, we've seen over a thousand patients. We've got probably about a 60% retention rate. So we've got nice long uh uh case studies with people that have the the one of the ways that we we gauge our uh the benefit of it is a reduction in in opiate medication being one of them. The reduction in sleeping tablet medication. One of the best applications that I've found for medicinal cannabis has been insomnia. Chronic pain, insomnia, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD. And one of the really peculiar applications in patients that use methamphetamine, keeping people away from methamphetamine and actually getting over methamphetamine addictions and the acute withdrawal, uh medicinal cannabis oils is just in 30 years of clinical practice as a doctor, 17 years in Australia where I've seen a lot of methamphetamine sort of use in it. The most effective treatment that I've seen with actual patients of mine that are still patients of mine has been a combination of the of NL cannabis. Most of these guys smoke cannabis in any event. But putting them into a regulated sort of uh regime where you switch them to to So what's really interesting, the dry flower vaporizers gives a cannabis consumer more of those active ingredients than the conventional smoking. But it it a lot of people are very uh don't want to change, but we say to them, look, you don't have to change immediately. However, that education part in terms of explaining to them why they're burning, you know, then the majority of their product is actually ending up going into smoke. When you say that to people and you actually, this is where Sandra comes in. So in terms of our consultations, I think. Sandra is your Sandra's wife, but she's the best manager and troubleshooter and everything else. But I spend at least half an hour with the patient going through where I go through all of the administrative checks, checking the uh the registries and that making sure that what they on, what what scheduled substances they're being prescribed, and all of that kind of stuff. So there's that duty of care on me to make sure I've got that all in my initial consultation.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:06

Um I'm gonna get a free consult from you afterwards because I've got insomnia and the it's the worst results of its NSC.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:14

Well, the the South African industry is actually is is is now starting. So I think the next uh the next phase of the South African medicinal cannabis industry is a better regulated system of doctors prescribing. And that's the that's the best way to do it. You know what I mean? The thing is, is that I think Australia and Canada and a lot of even Germany, all of these progressive destinations have looked at the evidence that's there and have come to the conclusion that this is not the heinous, uh uh the heinous sort of demon weed that that it's been made out to be. Have you have you tried the your own product?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:50

No, I don't have a product. I I prescribe. Okay, so so it's basically, I mean, it's it's sort of like a um Yeah, well, basically a prescription. So you are getting the product from a third-party client.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:03

No, no. So the way that we do it is our clinic, we don't, we we we've got everything to demonstrate to patient what the products in it, but we don't have any active active sort of products. So the the pharmacies keep the they're basically it's a it's a system. We give the the prescriptions, they go to a pharmacy, and it's a pharmacy that deals with the old dispensing and and all of that kind of stuff. It it uh if you rural enough a doc you can set up a dispensary and things like that, but uh that's a whole other world of administrative responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:35

I'm conscious of time because I know you gotta run and so do we, but and you were right, we could do a whole part two on this. Yeah, we should maybe we should, yeah. We should. Uh I want to start rapping and totally on off the topic. Well, let's stay on the topic in South Africa we call it dachazol what's the what are the Aussie colloquial speech for it? Weed. Weed just call it weed.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:55

Weed. Yeah. Most people most people call it weed.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:58

All right. So I had the d the I uh people referred to me as the weed doctor. Okay. Which I think will make my dead grandmother even more distressed. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:08

She'll be rolling in the grave, quite literally.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:11

Rolling, yeah. Pun pun intended. But yeah, I think what's what's changed is initially I I did not want to get involved in cannabis prescribing. Not that I'm anti-cannabis or anything, not at all. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:33:22

Why?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:23

It was more thinking about all of the stretchers, legal, legal aspects and and opera and all of that kind of stuff. But when that first that that clinical response from that first patient with just the CBD, I you know what I mean, it it it it clinic evidence like that, which is a smack in your face as a clinician. You can't ignore that.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:46

Well, look, and if you're doing it and you're not getting struck off the roll and things, clearly it's a legitimate.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:51

Yeah, look, that it the the the cannabis industry in Australia is only escalating logarithmically.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:57

Yeah. So the Do you see that happening in South Africa? Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:00

Yes, it's happening all over the all over the world. The biggest demographic of new patients that are starting to use cannabis are old people, cannabis naive, old people that are fed up of opiates and can't use NSAIDs because they've got ulcers or they've got a bad heart or bad kidneys. And now with the Americans coming out with paracetamol and and whatever, the there's not many options that you've got for elderly people that have got many comorbidities except morphine-based medications. You know what I mean? Oxycodone and MS contins and all of those. So the future is brighter, and it's probably going to happen in South Africa also. It's already happening. So there's a lot of doctors that are put. So in South Africa, the the the prescribing uh pathway is through a a I think it's Section 21 application. Yes. So you make an application, I think it's an SAP.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:50

SAPRA or the Medicines Control Council. Is that for unregistered or one of those, it's an application processor?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:56

I think it's a Section 1 application process.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:58

I think you might be right.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:58

Yeah. Uh in in Australia, it's a TGA. Okay. You know what I mean? There's two routes. You've got the something called a SAS B application. Any doctor can prescribe cannabis. You don't even you any doctor can prescribe cannabis. You don't even need to have done too much of additional learning, which is which that is one of the problems. You need to have that good education part, as well as the the medical legal aspect.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:23

How do you deal with minors? Somebody was smoking cannabis already, but is a minor. You know what I mean? Do are you able to prescribe to them or not? So these are all controversial kind of stuff. What happens to a person, a woman who's being prescribed cannabis who then becomes pregnant? So you need some training and skill. Yes, yes. What what do you do in people that have had a previous history of psychosis? So technically the psychiatrists say you can't prescribe to them, but they're already using street cannabis. How do you you know what I mean? So so my take on that. I might have downplayed it, you probably need a lot of training and skill as well. My play in that as a medical legal litigator is there is room for harm reduction prescribing. I've taken guys that have been smoking 8 to 12 grams of cannabis, an enormous amount of completely dysfunctional. The guys just smoking the whole bloody day. We've taken guys like that and put them onto vaporizers, oils, and the guy's gone and found a job. Can you overdose on weed? No. No. So no, you can't. I thought it was a myth that you can't. No, you can't. So the thing is that the really interesting thing about cannabis, um, the the way cannabis interacts with your body is through receptors. You've got CB1 receptors and C B2 receptors. CB1 receptors are the receptors that respond mostly to THC and are very heavily concentrated in the brain and the spinal cord. Uh CB2 receptors, which respond mainly to CBD, the rest of your body, your your bones, your skin, your GIT, uh, your immune system, all of them, all of these organ systems are full of CBD receptors. The toxic dosage for THC in a 70 kilogram man is estimated to be 50 kilograms. So it's impossible, it's physically impossible. Okay. And one of the reasons for that, the way people die from drug overdoses is respiratory suppression. The area of your brain, the ponds in the midbrain that controls your breathing and your sort of breathing respiration, has got a conspicuous lack of cannabinoid receptors.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:28

So it doesn't cause respiratory suppression. And that's that, you know what I mean, that's the reason why why it it why it's so safe. Okay. You know what I mean? And the the the question is cannabis addictive or not? So people that people that suffer from cannabis misuse disorder, obviously there's a component of of of addiction in there. But the vast majority of patients, the vast majority of patients that I've actually am dealing with and have been dealing with over the last four years, are certainly not addicted to it. You know what I mean? People can stop and start, and all of that, and and what we do, what we often say to patients, the tachyphilexis, so at a certain point, people that are using cannabis may find that the the response is is muted. We say to them, just take a cannabis holiday, one to two days of not using anything, and basically what happens is all of those receptors get flushed out. So when they restart, they get the previous efficacy starting again.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:27

Cannabis holiday, I like that. It's like the opposite of what I think a cannabis holiday would be going to one of these islands, Amsterdam. Speaking of speaking of holidays, I mean, let's let's rap now. We won't need to rap. You're running out of time. So what do you do for fun? I mean, just work work what.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:43

You've got family, kids, so I got a few bonds as that are quite neglected.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:49

Uh I I do a little bit of gardening with my wife. Right. I'm hoping to try and get into a cooking.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:55

Are you growing? No, don't go.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:57

No, no, no. We already grow I tried growing vegetables. Yeah. I tried growing vegetables in Queensland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew two tomatoes after spending a thousand dollars on water and everything else. It's exchange rate, ran to exchange rate. Ten to one. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:12

That's about where it is, about ten to one.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:14

So it's nice to come to South Africa, eh? It is.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:16

Yeah. Not just for the currency exchange, just South Africa's just. They're family and stuff, yeah. My mom is here, and then I've got my uh my b my brother and my dad passed away, but I've got all of my uh there's cousins and aunties and uh Lodium and A lot in Lodium, but also in Jobuk.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:31

Our last guest, I think, was from Lodium. And we you um you maybe maybe her father was your dentist, uh Douji. Her name is Mary Douji. Her father was a dentist, prof Dowji.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:41

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if I remember correctly, they stay in the or he stayed in the street next door to to where I grew up.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:49

Yeah, he passed away, I think, five years ago. Marble Street.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:51

If I if it is the same person, then it's then it's a practice at his house and the his father was my school teacher.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:59

Oh, okay. I wish you said the father.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:01

Yes, yes. Then it is the same, yeah. So they lived in in Marble Street. We live in Jewel Street. Marble Street is is literally the street.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:07

You heard about that urban legend about ELODIM having the highest concentration of the state. It's not an urban legend. BMW is in the serious means.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:14

Yeah, no, no. It was in the it's not an urban legend. It was in the it it was in the Guinness Book of Records. Really?

SPEAKER_01 1:40:19

Yes. No, you've got to send me a link to this or something. Find it too. I'll try and find it. But no, but that's that's been known for a long time. Okay, if you find it, send it to me. Because I, after that conversation with Dr. Dauji, I went and, you know, went up to Pitty and then they said there's no real evidence to show this, and there's places. I'll go and see if I can find something else. And then you what is it, three sons?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:40

They still are are they practicing? What are they doing? No, no, no. So uh t two of them, uh two of them do sort of like middle management kind of work. Yeah the youngest one was the only one I could get to go to university. But he he recently graduated as a uh civil engineer slash architect or architect.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:58

You didn't want them to be a doctor slash lawyer, slash if you know. Somebody comes to you and says, I want to be a doctor, what would you tell them? Uh now, at this time. If somebody just comes to you and says, I've watched your episode, I really want to be a doctor and a lawyer, what would you say to them? Go for it. Go for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:13

Go for it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:14

No regrets, yeah? Yeah, no regrets. No regrets whatsoever. Uh I was actually wanting to write a book why every doctor should do a law degree. Okay. So I started it off in and whatever. Maybe you can install it.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:26

Well, why do you think why do you think that they should?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:27

Because it gives you an in enormous amount of protection against the world. Okay. One of the reasons why I did. Do doctors need protecting? My man. Yeah. You're joking.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:38

No, but I'm serious.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:39

Doctors are easy targets for everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything from bullying within the health industry to somebody, some cop trying to extort money from you at a at a traffic stop.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:50

To the bank trying to extort money from you through some stupid stuff that they've made mistakes on. Right. To the tax men. And patients? To everybody, even patients. I mean, the thing is, is that it's it's changed. Uh uh, I suppose it's I I've been doing, I've been admitted now for over 20 years. Um but it certainly has changed the way that I practice. I still practice frontline emergency department work, you know what I mean, as as an ED physician. So you're still doing all of the stuff, but uh maybe some areas of my practice are a little bit more than a little more.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:25

Too defensive.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:26

No. Uh well, probably, yes. Okay. But but I I can def I can defend practicing defensive medicine when it when if it means recently there was an article that was written by uh a bunch of radiologists criticizing emergency doctors about the amount of CT scans they do in patients.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:45

Yeah, too defensive.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:46

Keep in your plane. The thing is, is that one of the things that people don't, all of these people criticizing EDs and stuff, when you're working within const constrained finances, staffing, you don't have a working uh primary health system where if you see somebody for a headache today, where they can follow up with their GP tomorrow to make sure that his eye is not pointing in that direction or whatever, if you don't have those facilities, you do what you need to do at that time because that responsibility is gonna be with the with the ED physician. If I'm in Australia and I've got a bloke that's living 400 kilometers west and he's come in to me with a headache and his blood pressure is high and all of that, you could actually say it would be negligent for me not to CT scan him if he's not gonna have access to to to diagnosing a small subdural or a meningioma or something like that. So a lot of doctors criticize what emergency departments do in the emergency department.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:43

In Australia, all over the world. Yeah. Unless the only person, so it's like it's I can't come criticize a dentist. I know bugger all about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:52

You only it's it's peer-reviewed criticism that should be allowed. So only emergency department physicians should criticize emergency department physicians. So ever the radiologists come and pass judgment like that, it creates a bad impression for the community at last.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:08

Profession as a whole, yeah. Yeah. Brings a profession to disagree.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:11

So I defend my position within those three fraternities: the emergency department field, GP work, and the and the medicinal cannabis fraternity. Um And this is why you reckon every doctor should do a law degree. I at least a law degree. Before I did my law degree when I was still in in um in the UK and rushing to make it to drop the hire car back at the airport and and and come back to South Africa, I got pulled off and put into the back of a paddy wagon for speeding.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:42

So I think I was doing about uh I was doing maybe 95 miles in a 70s hole. There were 50 other cars doing the same speed. But I I'm the one I had the smallest, cheapest car, so I got pulled off by the cops. And then, so they were they were gonna give me a fine and that, but I said, listen, I'm leaving the country next week. I'm going back to South Africa. So that's what they threw me in the back of the van and said, Well, we can't, you're not gonna be able to pay this fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:08

So I got taken to to uh the Oxford police station. They didn't put me in a cell.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:12

Or I got put in some holding cell, but they kept the door open. Uh and I was, I think I was leaving on the Wednesday or so. This would have been on a on a on a Friday or something. So these guys organized an urgent court date for me to appear on the Monday in Oxford. So I needed to find a lawyer. I needed to do whatever to come and defend this, which was impossible. So I went and I battered it myself. I went and and and stood in front of the the magistrate and I said, Well, uh the the the charge was speeding and reckless driving. So I said, Well, I admit to the speeding, but I vehemently oppose the the restless driving charge. And then I and then I went a little bit further and I said, Well, look, I work as a locum doctor here. I have to have transport or else I can't get to these destinations that I go to. Um can any license sanction be commuted to a fine? So the magistrate smiled at me, hit me with a 300-pound fine, and it was over. And then I thought to myself, geez, this was gonna cost me a couple of thousand pounds to get a lawyer to do that. So that was probably what set the first seeds in place. And then my wife and I were going to the surgery. I think I mentioned this earlier, there was a cop that stopped us. And I'd I'd stopped at the stop sign. The cop stopped us and said, uh, you have you didn't stop. We need to give you a ticket. And that I I know I'd stopped. I stopped at the stop sign for for hundreds of times before. So the guy was just trying to extort a bribe. And I refused, I said, give me the ticket. I got the ticket, and this was in the military, uh, it's called Fort Reka Wuchter in the military base in pre in in um in Pretoria. Yeah, one more. It was a military cop that gave me the. He wanted a bribe. I was I was not gonna give him a bribe. So I then, with my wife in tow, with the ticket, I drove to the military cop's headquarters. And I went and and and asked for whoever was their commanding officer. I got the guy, I said, listen, this, your, your, your guy just gave me this and this is bullshit. I'm gonna take this to court. So he took it from me, said, Don't worry about it, scratched it, and it was over and done with. Such a lawyer. Such a lawyer. But the other thing, when we started the surgery, yeah, uh the the the GPs were getting free contraceptives from the health department to distribute free. But when we started our surgery in 98, the health department came up with some stupid rule that they were stopping doing that. So that was that was like my first uh uh uh uh endeavor into going and uh I wasn't a lawyer, but basically I went and fought for for rights for it. For fought and said, this is bullshit, you know what I mean. This this is first of all, there's no sense to it. And we got but we got it right. They basically gave us an enormous amount of of contraception that we distributed free within our our clinic, which was which was great, you know what I mean, as part of HIV education and all of that. Um I I know I've veered off somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:20

No, no, no. I mean I'm just thinking we have to do a part two.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:23

So so yeah, so so so those instrumental things actually said to me, you know what, this this law part and actually understanding these things is very much more useful than I thought before. And every aspect of medical practice, including as a as a as a dentist, everything, even applying for finance, your home loan, bankruptcy, uh uh debts, divorce. It's useful to know um uh succession planning, all of that kind of stuff. You know what I mean? It's it's it those are essential things that that everybody should know. But within the medical fraternity, it uh some of it is actually even more important that you do know.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:01

So wait, wait, are you off back off to Australia soon or? Yes, tomorrow. I leave leave back tomorrow. Yeah, we we must do a part two to the state.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:09

Yeah, no, sound sounds great, man. No, definitely. I mean, it's been so interesting from my side. I reiterate your statement that everyone should know some form of law because yeah, my opinion is we're all just winging it, we're all just living life, but no one really knows the rules up until you need it. Yes. So for me, tax and law should be taught in some form of exactly educational system. But Doc, thank you so much for your time. This was great. It's been fun. Excellent, man. See you down under. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:38

Take care, man.