Anti-vax doctor John Piesse banned for faking Brett Sutton documents

An anti-vax doctor has been stripped of his title and banned from practising for years after faking documents from Brett Sutton.

Dodgy doctor John Piesse has been slapped with a six year ban for enabling 149 unjabbed kids to attend Victorian childcare and faking documents from Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.

The anti-vaxx GP, who doctored a warning letter from Prof Sutton to convince others he had the power to grant medical exemptions, has also been prohibited from using the title ‘Dr’.

Piesse will be banned from providing any healthcare — directly or indirectly — as an employee or even a volunteer until at least 2028 after a tribunal ruling this week.

A panel of members at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found Piesse committed professional misconduct over five allegations brought against him under Victoria’s Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act.

It came after he admitted to breaching “no jab, no play” laws by signing false immunisation exemptions for 149 unvaccinated children to enrol in kindergarten and childcare, and to completing 177 Medicare forms so Commonwealth payments were handed to parents of unvaccinated kids.

John Piesse arrives at an earlier VCAT hearing. Picture: David Crosling

The tribunal heard the doctor — sought out by parents across Victoria and even interstate in a bid to breach the rules — was served a warning letter by then-Deputy Chief Health Officer Dr Brett Sutton in July 2017.

But instead of being deterred by it, he chopped up the letter to make it appear that Dr Sutton was confirming Piesse had the power to grant exemptions, and retained Dr Sutton’s letterhead and signature.

Piesse then handed this doctored letter to patients, kindergartens and even AHPRA, the health practitioner’s watchdog.

Despite him apologising to Dr Sutton and the tribunal in July last year, the tribunal panel described Piesse’s dodgy letter redrafting as “shocking” and said it constituted “a flagrant and dishonest breach of the standards of honesty and integrity that bind registered practitioners of medicine”.

The tribunal heard Piesse spoke at a screening of anti-jab film Vaxxed at Hawthorn Arts Centre, where he told the crowd he was happy to sign medical exemptions for patients.

There was also evidence that he’d been telling other doctors how to breach the rules and hindered investigations into his misconduct.

A probe was launched into the dodgy doc after he wrote a letter to then-Health Minister Jill Hennessy in August 2016, which suggested he was advising patients that vaccines were not proven safe.

Victorian Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton. Picture: Ian Currie

The Commonwealth found he’d been signing off on a high rate of child exemptions, with papers altered to include a check box that kids were exempt “until vaccines (were) proven safe by controlled clinical studies”.

His doctors’ offices in Melbourne’s south east were raided in 2017, and he was forced into retirement the following year.

Despite no longer holding a licence, the Medical Board of Australia went after him in a disciplinary hearing.

The Board argued he should be banned from reapplying to practice medicine until 2031 while Piesse begged for just a four year reprimand from the date he was suspended, meaning he could have worked again from September 2021.

But three tribunal members settled on a six-year ban from the date of their decision, disqualifying him until at least January 24, 2028.

Jonathan Smithers, Dr Robyn Mason and Dr Laurie Warfe found Piesse had accepted the accusations against him, but this acceptance was “grudging” and “heavily influenced by personal health considerations”.

He’d shown “little insight into the nature and implications of his conduct”, where his failure to separate his views about childhood immunisation from his professional obligations had led to serious failures in doing his job honestly and lawfully.

“Dr Piesse’s conduct, in respect of each allegation, was not a minor deviation from professional standards, but planned and sustained violation and a deliberate flouting of those standards,” the tribunal found.