A West Australian doctor has been suspended for being critical of the Covid-19 vaccines and mask mandates, and ordered to undergo an education and mentoring program on medical ethics and infection control.
Dr Mitch Sambell, who previously worked for Albany Health Campus as a junior doctor but has not practiced medicine since April 2023, was on March 1 found to have engaged in professional misconduct by the State Administrative Tribunal.
The Medical Board of Australia applied for disciplinary action against Dr Sambell for comments he made at a Special Electors’ Meeting called to oppose the WA Government’s Covid-19 mandates in the Shire of Denmark in March 2022, and an interview with Scorpion Media Group in 2022.
In his speech Dr Sambell said he saw “countless cases of vaccine injury” while working as a doctor, referred to the Covid-19 vaccines as “experimental medical therapy”, and said colleagues with similar views had been censored, gagged and threatened by the government.
“I witnessed a flood of medical conditions we see every day — cognitive decline, stroke, heart attacks, blood clots — within days of patient vaccination,” he said.
“Our governing body, AHPRA, threatened to strip doctors’ medical registration if we questioned or voiced concern for the vaccine or the pandemic response.
“I’m disgusted that the career I love has been used to destroy people’s lives, and honestly I’m ashamed to be called a doctor.”
In the Scorpion interview he criticised vaccine trials and effectiveness, questioned the risks of Covid-19, said masks did not prevent infection, and called PCR tests “absolute garbage”.
Dr Sambell told the interviewer he’d seen “many people” die in the hospital, and that after the vaccine rollout his emergency department was “flooded” with patients, describing the effects as “another Holocaust”.
He also described WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as a “communist”, and said “all the same people” own the pharmaceutical companies, the mainstream media, and the tech companies.
When asked if the vaccine mandates were criminal, he said: “Yeah, it’s at best manslaughter, and at worst, like, outright murder.”
“The truth will come out … you will be tried for murder,” he said when asked if he had a message for the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA).
The Medical Board of Australia said Dr Sambell’s comments fit the definition of professional misconduct, and were “disparaging or demeaning” to AHPRA officials and global public health officers.
Reasons given included claims that his statements on the Covid vaccines “legitimised anti-vaccination sentiments, and/or were contrary to accepted medical practice, and/or were untrue or misleading”.
The tribunal, which did not give an assessment of the accuracy of Dr Sambell’s Covid-related claims, suspended him for three months and ordered him to pay the Medical Board of Australia $2,500 for application costs.
It considered Dr Sambell’s lack of prior disciplinary history, his silence on the matter since the Scorpion interview, and his showing of “insight and remorse” to be mitigating factors.
He was ordered to complete a program of education approved by the Medical Board of Australia on ethical practice as a doctor, and on Covid-19 infection control, vaccination, and/or public health responses.
Dr Sambell must also be mentored by a Medical Board of Australia-approved health practitioner on the subjects of the education program, at least once a month for 12 months.
