Ross Fitzgerald: Trading tooth decay for cancer
May 26, 2005
THOSE health bureaucrats who want to force fluoride on the water supplies of rural NSW should learn from their cousins north of the border. This year, well-meaning people have again tried, unsuccessfully, to force mandatory water fluoridation on Queensland.
Now I am not a scientist but there seem to be five prongs to their offensive: everyone else is doing it; the "authorities" say it is safe; the "experts" say it is effective; the opponents are nutcases; the issue of fluoridation is beyond debate.
Let me look at these one at a time. First, everyone else is doing it. This approach might be good for selling shoes, but it is hardly the way to sell medicine. Not so long ago, tens of thousands of patients in Australia were taking Vioxx. Yet if we are really interested in what everyone else is doing, the vast majority of human beings on this planet are not being forced to drink artificially fluoridated water. Most of Europe has rejected it.
Second, the "authorities" say it is safe. Let's look at one of those authorities. In 1991, the National Health and Medical Research Council recommended that Australian health authorities track the level of fluoride in our bones to see how much is accumulating and to see if it is making them more brittle. This has not been done. We are flying blind.
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THOSE health bureaucrats who want to force fluoride on the water supplies of rural NSW should learn from their cousins north of the border. This year, well-meaning people have again tried, unsuccessfully, to force mandatory water fluoridation on Queensland.
Now I am not a scientist but there seem to be five prongs to their offensive: everyone else is doing it; the "authorities" say it is safe; the "experts" say it is effective; the opponents are nutcases; the issue of fluoridation is beyond debate.
Let me look at these one at a time. First, everyone else is doing it. This approach might be good for selling shoes, but it is hardly the way to sell medicine. Not so long ago, tens of thousands of patients in Australia were taking Vioxx. Yet if we are really interested in what everyone else is doing, the vast majority of human beings on this planet are not being forced to drink artificially fluoridated water. Most of Europe has rejected it.
Second, the "authorities" say it is safe. Let's look at one of those authorities. In 1991, the National Health and Medical Research Council recommended that Australian health authorities track the level of fluoride in our bones to see how much is accumulating and to see if it is making them more brittle. This has not been done. We are flying blind.
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posted by Bill at
9:23 PM
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