Personal Blog

The TGA, or Therapeutic Goods Administration, is essentially, the Australian version of the FDA. According to their website “The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is part of the Australian Government Department of Health and is responsible for regulating therapeutic goods …”. The TGA was established under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and is, purportedly, “to provide for the establishment and maintenance of a national system of controls relating to the quality, safety, timely availability and, where necessary, efficacy, of therapeutic goods”. tga.gov.auIf you ask me what TGA is I will tell you it’s the spokesperson and decision-making body for the pharmaceutical...

By mid to late 2019, I was having persistent thoughts of suicide. I had even started researching the best way to do it.One day I realised I didn’t want to die but didn’t trust myself not to do it so I went and sought help. This was possibly one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I have always been an intensely private person and a “quiet achiever” even though I was fairly outgoing. Not only did help mean I had to speak to a complete stranger but I had to share my story and finally...

Many of the drug trial guinea pigs, myself included, are now suffering a myriad of permanent health issues, that is of course, if they haven’t already committed suicide. According to the drug companies, and the ADF, the ever-increasing number of veteran suicides amongst those who participated in the drug trails are definitely not a direct result of either Tafenoquine or Mefloquine. Not only do they deny these figures, which can be traced back to the drug trials, but they refuse point blank to talk to veterans or their families about their suffering. They are not interested in reviewing their data,...

What started out as a post or two about my personal experiences has now become bigger than Ben Hur. Thank you for continuing to show interest and I am humbled by the positive comments, the empathy and also to see other veterans sharing their experiences. So, let's head off to East Timor, shall we?Before I deployed in the October I took three days loading dose (a loading dose is an initial higher dose of a drug that may be given at the beginning of a course of treatment with the aim of achieving the target concentration rapidly) of either Tafenoquine or...

( Read Part one here https://www.facebook.com/ToniIMOPTownsville/posts/127010445827973 ) Welcome back. Thank you for the overwhelming support for part one of my story which I posted yesterday. It is hard and emotionally draining to not only relive this time in my life but to know that I am laying myself bare and sharing with you what has always been a very private story. Whilst I have never shied away from admitting I was part of these trials, and more recently, for standing up to support veterans and their families’ calls for a Royal Commission, I have not talked about the process, the...