Daily Echo - Ian Murray - Editor - Give us a vote on fluoride
Give us a vote on fluoride
DENTAL HEALTH: We are told that fluoride in the water will help to save our children's teeth.
This is your chance to take your place to see England at The Rose Bowl...
WITH breathtaking audacity health bosses appear determined to plough on with plans to force through their project to add fluoride to local water supplies.
It is truly difficult to get the measure of what lies behind the thinking of such people.
As this paper reported this week, the legal hearings into whether the South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA) can add the chemical to some Southampton supplies and those affecting some surrounding areas will not take place now until next year.
This means that the plan, if finally given the go-ahead, will not take shape until the year 2012. By which time, it looks increasingly likely the SHA itself will have ceased to exist. The new Government have made it plain that they wish to see SHAs swept away. This is on top of the small detail that the Prime Minister David Cameron and the new Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley have made it plain they agree with calls for a referendum on the issue.
It is a referendum you may recall that lies at the heart of this issue with campaigners who are against the fluoride plan, claiming this proposal has never truly been put to the people and public objections have been ignored.
The result of all this is that we now have the, some might say, obscene situation of a doomed health body preparing to spend an estimated
£400,000 of precious public funds on fighting a battle to force through an issue that virtually everyone is against. Surely it would be far better to hold up their hands, agree to spend a fraction of that money on a straight forward referendum and if they lose, and I believe increasingly that they will, to channel the remainder of the cash into targeting the small group of youngsters in the city who are most at risk of dental decay
As someone who lived most of his young life with fluoride in the water I personally have no fears over its long-term effects. However, I do believe this is a matter for the public to have a veto if they wish, a veto they are being denied at present.
DENTAL HEALTH: We are told that fluoride in the water will help to save our children's teeth.
This is your chance to take your place to see England at The Rose Bowl...
WITH breathtaking audacity health bosses appear determined to plough on with plans to force through their project to add fluoride to local water supplies.
It is truly difficult to get the measure of what lies behind the thinking of such people.
As this paper reported this week, the legal hearings into whether the South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA) can add the chemical to some Southampton supplies and those affecting some surrounding areas will not take place now until next year.
This means that the plan, if finally given the go-ahead, will not take shape until the year 2012. By which time, it looks increasingly likely the SHA itself will have ceased to exist. The new Government have made it plain that they wish to see SHAs swept away. This is on top of the small detail that the Prime Minister David Cameron and the new Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley have made it plain they agree with calls for a referendum on the issue.
It is a referendum you may recall that lies at the heart of this issue with campaigners who are against the fluoride plan, claiming this proposal has never truly been put to the people and public objections have been ignored.
The result of all this is that we now have the, some might say, obscene situation of a doomed health body preparing to spend an estimated
£400,000 of precious public funds on fighting a battle to force through an issue that virtually everyone is against. Surely it would be far better to hold up their hands, agree to spend a fraction of that money on a straight forward referendum and if they lose, and I believe increasingly that they will, to channel the remainder of the cash into targeting the small group of youngsters in the city who are most at risk of dental decay
As someone who lived most of his young life with fluoride in the water I personally have no fears over its long-term effects. However, I do believe this is a matter for the public to have a veto if they wish, a veto they are being denied at present.
posted by Bill at
9:36 AM
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