Health and Care Bill

 Good letter from John to local MP in Southampton

From:	Spottiswoodej <spottiswoodej@gmail.com>
To:	whiteheada@parliament.uk

Dear Alan,

I ask for your help regarding the Health and Care Bill which is currently being considered by the Public Health Committee of the House of Commons. Will you seek, please, to have Clauses 128 and 129 (concerning fluoridation) removed from the Bill by tabling an amendment? 

Hampshire's water is not currently fluoridated and a large majority of us do not want it to become fluoridated.  If you remember we had a massive local battle to stop water fluoridation happening a few years ago. We had massive popular support to keep this major toxin out of our water once people realised how badly fluoride damages the body and the brain.  Thankfully the fluoridation of Southampton's water did not happen so it is still safe to drink water from the tap here.

Below, very briefly, are some of the reasons to consider regarding the new Health and Care Bill.

1. Decisions for or against fluoridation are currently made locally. This is not ideal but better than the Bill's proposal for central control to override local democracy and to deny personal choice over what goes into our bodies.  

2. There is no mention of Water Fluoridation in current nor in past Conservative Party manifestos.  Therefore, the current government does not have a mandate.

3. Fluoridated water is a medicine, as acknowledged by Lord Jauncey in Scotland in 1983, and by the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 2018.  As a medicine it MUST be proven to be safe and effective.  It fails badly on both counts although the MHRA refuses to act to protect people's health.  Plus a medicine must not be forced on people for human rights reasons.

4. Health Canada in 2014 and Public Health England in 2018 were unable to produce evidence that fluoride is safe to consume. On the contrary, much recent research has found that fluoride is a neurotoxin that adversely affects the fetal and infant brain.

5. Tooth decay is not infectious, so there is no justification at all for compulsory treatment. It is wholly unethical to force people to ingest fluoride (as is already the case for some 6 million people in fluoridated areas of England). Such treatment is a denial of informed consent for medical treatment and contrary to the principles of NHS Personalised Care and Social Prescribing.

6. Most countries in Europe reject fluoridation, and Israel has also stopped it due to health concerns and because tooth decay is no less in fluoridated countries than in non-fluoridated ones.

7. Powerful interests have long sought to suppress evidence against fluoridation. In a review of The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson, Chemical & Engineering News wrote: "We are left with compelling evidence that powerful interests with high financial stakes have colluded to prematurely close honest discussion and investigation into fluoride toxicity."

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

John Spottiswoode