What the hell?!, page-7

This article is putting a sensationalised spin on this to paint Katelaris as a criminal. I have met him personally and his work is truly commendable. He has made some tremendous sacrifices for his patients.

This is an unfortunate circumstance where he should have tested the potency of the injection prior to administering it. He obviously went ahead with it prior to testing as these women were terminally ill with not much time left to live. While this is arguably negligent on his behalf, having waited to go through the testing process would have meant holding off on treatment that these women needed ASAP.

'Ms K had advanced ovarian cancer and would probably have died anyway, but the experiment had improved her markers.'

'Ms M stayed in hospital for several days but refused treatment and stands by Dr Katelaris. She told the HCCC he should be allowed to continue the trial.'

Dr Katelaris has gone ahead to treat his patients without waiting for the arduously slow legal process, as peoples' lives are at stake, without the time to wait. He has a tendency to be overly provocative in part due to his personality, but mostly because of the amount of resistance he has had to face in treating his patients.

I trust what Dr Katelaris' patients have to say of him, rather than the Sydney Morning Herald...

This short doco provides far better insight into his work and what he stands for:


"Cure occassionally, relieve often, but comfort always - so even if the therapeutic event ends with fatality, it doesn't mean it is without value"
If a patient suffers from a chronic illness, even temporary relief is of tremendous value to improving their quality of life and relieving suffering.

Father of a child with severe epilepsy treated by Katelaris:
"It did more than keep him comfortable. It gave him a quality of life he would have otherwise never had"
"You can't really put into words what he's done for us and thousands of others"
"It's just an incredible life to have compared to what we did have, and its all thanks to Andrew"

"I was basically given a choice: give up medical cannabis research and stay registered, or, leave the profession if I was to continue my research. It wasn't a very hard decision. Seeing the therapeutic effects of what we were doing, and the clear superiority of cannabis therapeutics ... once you've seen that, you can't turn your back on people or say 'yeah, there's something that would help you a great deal but you can't have it' - that's simply not acceptable for me"

Why doesn't the SMH criticise the current legal framework for forcing Katelaris to break the law and operate in the black market in order to save peoples' lives? Because it is far easier to write a sensationalised article where he is the scapegoat.