The joke here is that aviation medicals have NOTHING to do with aviation safety.
Our friends in the US look like getting them severely downgraded for private pilots. I looked into that a couple of years ago and since the early 1970s there have been at least 3 large scale studies of the efficacy of aviation medicals. There is a natural control group of private glider and hot air balloon pilots who self certify in the US (and in Australia for glider pilots - not sure about balloons, it has been a long time since I was peripherally involved with hot air balloons. The results were that there was ZERO evidence that medical causes were a serious cause of accidents(well under 1% of them) and the self certifying group had a slightly lower incidence of them.
Before some idiot goes on about how gliding is less stressful medically - it isn't. Try flying solo for up to 8 to 10 hours or more, no autopilot, in turbulence and pulling around 1.4 g for a significant part of the time, with the sun beating into the cockpit.
So we've run that experiment and the results are clear.
As for endangering others on the ground, can anyone here recall when a private pilot or glider pilot injured or killed an innocent third party on the ground in Australia due to any cause?
I know of two accidents, one a fatality (photographer standing on top of a car had his head knocked off - I'm sure you can all draw your own conclusions about flying so that your wingtip is within 2 meters of an obstacle on the ground), involving gliders overseas. Medical certification would not have helped in those.
That pretty much takes care of the "endangering others" bs.
So we are left with protection of other airspace users and a case can certainly be made out that being able to see properly is a good idea although the ATSB seems keen on telling everybody to forget that as it doesn't work. Well it definitely won't work if you don't look.
Now consider the case when you drive a car. The chance of killing or injuring an innocent pedestrian, another road user or someone just minding his own business in his house (cars and trucks seem to impact houses in Australia every week or two it seems) due to a medical problem such as sudden incapacitation for any reason must be much higher. Let alone fools who text or use the cellphone while driving.
Not much medical certification there. In Queensland they don't even do eye tests any more to my optometrist's disgust as he gets people in who he finds to be legally blind, who drove there. A few years ago there was a case where a female diabetic passed out at the wheel on the Sunshine Coast Motorway, crossed the median and went head on into a car coming the other way, killing a small child in the other car. Went free. She was a GP who should have known better and been held to it.
As for this drivel "As a medical student, I can see the benefits of this, if someone turns up in emergency alone, unconscious, you can look up their medical history with may assist with a quicker diagnosis of the problem, and therefore quicker treatment, and potentially save their life."
Unless they have ID in their wallet or purse, how do you know who they are? If they do they should have a little card in the wallet that describes any dangerous or bothersome medical condition. FFS given the propensity to cover your skin in ink that is in vogue they could even get a small discreet tattoo.