GP sued for defamation by naturopath faces millions in legal fees

The internet is awash with medical misinformation.
 
But when Dr Adam Smith, a GP educated in the UK and now practising in Melbourne, came across misleading advice being peddled by a medical doctor turned naturopath, he couldn’t turn a blind eye.
 
Instead, he sought to address and debunk the claims through a series of YouTube videos.
 
‘In some of the misleading advice I originally came across, she was advising you to take a bird’s eye chilli if you are having a heart attack and that that will save your life,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘Advising her food supplements as treatments for various chronic illnesses, including cancer – and doing this whilst claiming to be a Harvard-trained medical doctor and the world’s most experienced.’
 
But what Dr Smith saw as a ‘community service’ has seen him embroiled in a now two-and-a-half year long defamation case brought against him by US-based Filipino medical doctor turned naturopath Dr Farrah Agustin-Bunch.
 
The process has already left him $600,000 out of pocket – legal fees that he has been advised could amount to $2 million if the case goes to trial.
 
It was in 2020, after creating his first video addressing Dr Agustin-Bunch’s claims, that Dr Smith and his partner, with whom he was creating the content, received a ‘cease and desist’ letter in the Philippines. A few weeks later, they received a Concerns Notice in Australia. Then on Christmas Eve that year, a case was officially filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
 
At that stage, Dr Smith got lawyers involved, before an injunction was filed against him in February 2021 with the aim of having the GP remove his videos and stop him from posting. Dr Smith won that case, but says it has been an ongoing battle since.
 
In March, more than two years since the case was first filed, it finally went to a pre-trial. A three-day sitting, the judge was shown 10 of Dr Smith’s YouTube videos to assess their meaning and intention.
 
But complicating matters, Dr Smith says, is that his videos are in Filipino for a Philippines-based and educated audience.  
 
‘So not only do they have to translate them into English, they also have to take into account how the average viewer would interpret it – and my average viewer is obviously Filipino, with a totally different perspective on life to the average Australian,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘So, the judge was grappling with that a lot.’
 
Now more than five weeks on, Dr Smith is still awaiting to hear the judge’s verdict on the 90 imputations he has been accused of.
 
One reason for the exorbitant costs has been changes made to Dr Agustin-Bunch’s original Statement of Claim, which led to the GP’s lawyers having to draft a new defence, resulting in a year-and-a-half of going back and forth between lawyers.
 
‘It’s actually a relief to get the pre-trial and get it moving,’ he said.
 
‘I’m at the stage where I’m two-and-a-half years into this thing; I’ve got a database of evidence against her, including many past patients who either went to her cancer hospital or received advice from her online, many examples of past misleading advice and her past FDA warning letters.
 
‘I have spent months researching and documenting and just want to present it to the court.’


Dr Adam Smith at the Supreme Court of Victoria in March. (Image: Supplied)
 
While the GP says he has come to a place of acceptance – a difficult road that has seen him experience symptoms akin to PTSD – he remains in disbelief that the making of a few ‘amateur YouTube videos’ has had such an impact on his life. He notes that Dr Agustin-Bunch’s decision to take legal action is what has led to the video gaining significant traction.
 
‘Coming at me and then me essentially just putting the videos back up basically blew this thing up,’ Dr Smith said.
 
‘Then a couple of months after my videos the Philippines put a warning out on her products and then the US FDA five months later put a warning out on her products – her reaction to it has snowballed it.’
 
But to start with, he says he was only making a few thousand dollars a month from the channel, $1000 of which was going straight to the editor.
 
‘We weren’t making much money out of this thing, it was a small little side hobby,’ Dr Smith said. ‘I never imagined that it would land me in a couple of million dollars in legal fees.’
 
The Melbourne GP says more needs to be done to ensure people spreading medical misinformation are held accountable. While there are clear steps to take when it pertains to Australia – such as reporting lines to AHPRA or the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) – when it is medical doctors outside of its borders, the waters are muddied.
 
‘The problem is that she’s in Texas, she’s selling to people in the Philippines,’ Dr Smith said.
 
‘[And] you’ve got a lot of this misinformation online, there’s obviously gallons of it, and some people are making a lot of money from it.
 
‘According to court documents, Dr Agustin-Bunch was making over US$100,000 a month … so she was making good bank on it. They obviously can become rich from it and then as soon as you call them out, they can then come after you with the law.
 
‘There needs to be some kind of protection for calling people out.’
 
While Dr Smith believes that people should be able to sue for defamation, he says the process needs to be streamlined, and that medical insurance should cover defamation costs, which his insurer does not.
 
‘No one deserves to spend $2 million in court; I’m innocent until proven guilty, why am I having to spend $2 million?’ he said.
 
But beyond the financial toll, the emotional impact has been immense for Dr Smith, who says the process has been ‘soul destroying’.
 
‘I was avoiding everything to do with the case … it took me a year or two to process it. The way I view it is a bit like stages of bereavement and I feel like I’ve gotten to the stage of acceptance now,’ he said.
 
‘[But] I don’t think we’ll ever fully recover from it – not financially, but emotionally.
 
‘The fact that I’ve been dragged through the courts for two-and-a-half years over this thing, I just can’t fully get my head round it still.’
 
But despite the personal toll, Dr Smith does not regret calling out what he saw as blatant medical misinformation being peddled to vulnerable people.
 
‘I hope that in the long run it will shed some light on what she did in the Philippines and that these past patients, multiple past patients, can actually get some justice from what she did,’ Dr Smith said.
 
‘Many of these stories are heartbreaking [and] I hope they can tell their stories in court. I’m hopeful that the Australian courts will let us do that because obviously the Philippines is the Philippines, and nothing seems to happen.
 
‘I can’t regret anything to be honest.’
 
A go-fund me page, set up to help Dr Smith pay for his legal fees, has raised more than $24,000 of its $50,000 goal.
 
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defamation medical misinformation medico-legal naturopathy