Up Close and Personal

EClub interviews CTM's founder, Phillip Day, who returned recently with his wife from his tour of Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

ECLUB: Welcome home!
PD: Brrrr!
ECLUB: Did you and Samantha get to see any of the sites?
PD: We did as much as time allowed. It was a great experience.
ECLUB: Is the groundswell alive Down Under?
PD: Absolutely. I was overwhelmed by the extent to which people have got themselves organised. The anti-fluoridation lobby in Australia and New Zealand is especially articulate. I highly recommend the Australian Fluoridation Information Network (obviously in Oz) and the Fluoridation Action Network in New Zealand, both of which are extensions of the global organisation run by Prof. Paul Connett at www.fluoridealert.org.
ECLUB: They've had some successes, I hear.
PD: David McCrae's organisation in Victoria caused fluoridation to be rejected in Geelong. As we're seeing with the mobile mast situation in the UK, when people get organised, results can be seen.
ECLUB: Where can people go if they want more information on mobile masts and their dangers?
PD: www.radiationresearch.org is a great site.
ECLUB: What advice do you have for anyone in Britain or Ireland who have concerns about masts close to them?
PD: Don't let it lie. See if there are others in the neighbourhood who are worried. Do the research and then decide whether you want to join one of the national organisations devoted to bringing these unscrupulous organisations to boot.
ECLUB: It's unfair, isn't it?
PD: Mobile telephone masts are another example of a technology being foisted upon the public without the long-term effects being known. Instead of the precautionary approach, these telecom tyrants have taken advantage of the prevailing system to put these masts everywhere. I'm not saying we shouldn't have mobile phones, there just has to be more care taken in protecting the public. But this isn't happening. Folks who never thought they would become an activist have had no choice but to mobilise to fight off what they see as a very real and personal threat to their families.
ECLUB: What are your plans for next year?
PD: Sam and I are touring the UK until April and then Ireland in May. I am very excited about this new presentation, which will build on what we covered in 2003. We are planning an extension to the ABC's book to cover a range of further diseases. This will probably be out later next year. The underlying, vital changes we must make to stay healthy I believe are so important we must all stay as active as possible in spreading the word. Click here to review my tour schedule or pick up a ticket.
ECLUB: What new projects are you working on?
PD: I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
ECLUB: I see not even British Airways managed to destroy your sense of humour.
PD: We have almost finished the film 'The Real Face of the European Union'. This is a 45-minute documentary designed to put the contrary information about the EU to the public in video format. We have been helped immensely by various groups, and I hope the film will touch many people and spur them to action.
ECLUB: You're not running for parliament any time soon?
PD: Not if I wish to stay married.
ECLUB: Want to say something to CTM subscribers while the mic is on?
PD: Absolutely. I want to thank them for their incredible support, letters, faxes and e-mails. I want to thank all the hosts who worked with us in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore and also my staff. May all of you have a wonderful two weeks to unwind, relax with the family and give thanks. See you in the New Year!

Is the European Union Good at What it Does?
by Daniel Hannan MEP

Amid all the arguments about the Euro-constitution, we are forgetting to ask a very basic question: Is the EU good at what it does? Before handing over a new tranche of powers, it is surely sensible to look at what Brussels is doing with the powers it already has.

Last week, the Court of Auditors published a report into precisely this. For the ninth year in a row, the auditors found so many flaws in the EU budget that they refused to approve it. This ought to have been massive news in Britain: here, after all, is evidence that the institutions which Tony Blair wants to put in charge of our legal system, our energy reserves and our economy, cannot be trusted to administer themselves. Yet most newspapers failed to mention the report at all, and none gave it prominence.

Why are we not more concerned? Partly, I suspect, because we take Euro-sleaze so much for granted that it is no longer newsworthy. Partly, too, because the report was long and difficult. None the less, it ought to matter a great deal: how else can we judge the EU if not by its record? So, on your behalf, I jammed some matchsticks under my eyelids and spent last week doing some concentrated reading.

The most striking thing about the document is that it reveals systemic abuse. We are not dealing with isolated cases of human weakness, but with what Lord Macpherson would call institutional corruption. Despite what many British sceptics believe, there is no evidence that racketeering is more common in Southern Europe. Surveys of farms to corroborate the subsidies being claimed, for example, showed as many irregularities in Sweden as in Italy. Across Europe, whenever people know that a pot of money is waiting to be claimed, they organise their affairs around qualifying for it. And because the money comes from Brussels, national authorities have little interest in stopping them.

Britain is no different. In my own constituency, I have seen European policies turn good men into liars. I have known farmers and fishermen who, although hating themselves for it, have had to falsify documents to meet Brussels rules. For them, the system has been literally corrupting.

The Common Agricultural Policy is famously rotten, of course. But the EU's structural payments, research programmes and foreign aid budgets were also found to be riddled with what the auditors dryly call "errors". In fact, when I totted up all the funds which could not be properly accounted for, I found that they came to nearly 92 per cent of the total budget.

Imagine if we ran public companies, or even private societies, on this basis. Picture the treasurer of, say, your local golf club announcing to his AGM that, although he estimated that only eight per cent of the budget had been stolen, it might be anything up to 92 per cent. Would you vote to pass his accounts? Would you want to keep him on as treasurer?

You would if you were an MEP. Although there are some honourable exceptions, the European Parliament, as a whole, always baulks at withholding money from the Commission. It does so on two grounds. The first has to do with glasshouses and stones. Euro-MPs are extremely touchy about their own expenses. Indeed, several of them are still on non-speakers with me after my last article, in which I ran through some of the figures. One of my colleagues (I won't reveal his nationality) took particular exception to my remark about MEPs employing their wives and sleeping with their staff. He, it emerged during our altercation, did both, and was convinced that I had conceived the piece solely as an attack on him.

Even MEPs whose personal finances are immaculate are reluctant to kick up a fuss about fraud, for fear that it will put their constituents off the EU. For many of them, European integration is an end in itself: they would rather see a policy mismanaged by Brussels than competently administered by national governments. It is, of course, precisely this attitude which encourages much of the wrongdoing in the first place. Thus the cycle goes on.
The Sunday Telegraph, 30th November, 2003.

Further Resources
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day
Vigilance by Ashley Mote
Available through www.credence.org

PM Axes Plans to Join Euro
by Ian Kirby

Tony Blair will, this week, kill off any prospect of Britain joining the euro for SIX years. The Prime Minister has been forced to scrap plans to include a Bill for a referendum on the issue in the Queen's Speech.

He was compelled to back down after the Treasury warned him the British economy was nowhere near ready to scrap the pound in favour of the single currency. Mr Blair had hoped his euro Bill would have given the government the power to call a referendum on the currency at any time.

This is the last major Queen's Speech before the next general election due in 2005, so the government cannot now push ahead until 2006 at the earliest. The process will take more than three years - even if the public vote in favour of the euro. So the currency has no chance of taking over from the Pound until 2009.

The most recent assessment by the Treasury shows that Britain's economy is shifting apart from Europe. And Chancellor Gordon Brown has made it clear he would oppose any move to include powers for a euro referendum in the Queen's Speech.

In his Mansion House speech in June, he warned: "It is because stability is so fundamental to British economic success that I can assure you there will be no short-cuts and no fudge over the euro entry".

Mr Brown will deliver his next assessment on the currency when he gives his pre-Budget report in December.

Now the Queen's Speech will be dominated by a tough new Asylum Bill, which will halt payments to asylum seekers as soon as their applications to stay in Britain are rejected.

Asylum families will also have their children taken into care, if they refuse to leave the country - with Home Secretary, David Blunkett, arguing that they cannot support them without state aid.

Mr Blair has ignored his own back-benchers' demands to include legislation to ban fox-hunting in his speech. But he will include a tough new Bill to crack down on domestic violence.

This will include new laws to jail men who breach court orders to stay away from partners they have abused. There will also be a national register of wife-beaters.

Moves to reform the House of Lords, give more protection of children and introduce university tuition fees will also be in the Speech.
News of the World. 23rd November 2003

PPHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: It looks as if we have been granted a reprieve on the euro. Remember, we may have a few more years to see what the single currency will do to other nations, but the major danger to the UK still remains the EU Constitution which, if signed up to, will effectively gut the UK as an independent, self governing nation. Is this really what the British people want?

Further Resources:
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day
Vigilance by Ashley Mote
Available from www.credence.org

War Over EU Tax On Poppies

by Nigel Nelson

Chancellor Gordon Brown is to block a plan by EU tax meddlers to cash in on the Remembrance Day poppy and other charity emblems.

Charity flag appeals are currently exempt from VAT - but now European Commission officials want to slap up to 17.5p in the pound on the raw materials that go to make the symbols.

The money grabbing scheme would cost organisations like the Royal British Legion - which this month sold 33 million poppies worth £22 million - a fortune in lost revenue.

But Mr Brown hopes to persuade EU finance ministers to drop the plan. And he is privately making it clear if they don't, he will use the nation's veto to chuck them out.

British Legion spokesman, Jeremy Lillies, said: "We expect the Chancellor to use the veto if it comes to it. We are sure the Government won't allow Europe to threaten poppy sales."

EU officials are also keen to impose VAT on new buildings used by charities - costing a fortune to move. But a Treasury insider insisted: "The Government has made it clear we will not accept tax harmonisation on any matter."

The People 23rd November, 2003

An urgent Call To Action. Please call upon your political representatives to table these documents in Parliament before the right of the community to know what is going on in their government departments is DENIED.

"DoCS - Stealing Our Children for Medicine?"

I am an Australian medical analyst and writer who released a story about a 12 year old girl who was forced to undergo chemotherapy on the advice of a doctor who based his treatment on a study that some other doctors claimed could not have formed an adequate basis for his prognosis or his forced treatment.

The girl's parents were relentlessly pursued through the courts by the (Australian) Department of Community Services (DoCS) which is a child welfare government department. This department used any and every means to cause this child to become a ward of the Court in order for this treatment to be forcibly administered by the doctor and hospital against the wishes of the child and her parents and in the apparent absence of properly presented medical evidence.

The family's and child's specific identifying details were de-identified in accordance with Court requirements, and the story was widely circulated in the public interest (with permission).

Living Now Magazine published part one of the story and planned to print part two in the December issue. Two days after publication they were pressured by DoCS threatening legal action if the magazine did not agree to suppress the matter by pulling the story and all future references to it. For further details, Scroll down to read the author's correspondence to the Crown solicitor's office which acts for the department of community services (DoCS). It appears DoCS has taken over the lawful role of the Court by creating, interpreting, administering and enforcing their own "laws".

Attached are the original story, the update and the letter from the author to the Crown Solicitor's Office (the legal representative of DoCS).

Many in the community, including the family are disturbed by these developments which appear to be DoCS attempts to protect itself from public accountability and legal liability for its actions.

This author is usually focused on writing and does not normally call for community action, however it appears necessary if this family's rights are to be upheld along with and the right to freedom of speech and the right of the community to know what is going on in the area of health and in our government departments.

The minister for DoCS, Carmel Tebbutt, has not replied to any correspondence regarding this matter.

Feedback is welcome to
*Author: evehillary@smartchat.net.au
*Family: stillgrinnin@kooee.com.au
*Official Contacts: Ask Politicians to make enquiries and demand they table these documents in Parliament
*Julia Gillard Shadow Health MP Julia.Gillard.MP@aph.gov.au
*Jacinta Collins Shadow Sen. Children and Youth - senator.jacinta.collins@aph.gov.au
*Senator Bob Brown AG. Senator.Brown@aph.gov.au
*Lee Rhiannon MLC NSW Greens: Lee.Rhiannon@parliament.nsw.gov
*John Hunter Hospital Professor Graham Vimpani
*Letters to DoCS office contact: DoCS Taree, 102-112 Victoria St. Taree, NSW 2430
*Ombudsman: mail@csc.nsw.gov.au

...............................................................................

__________________________________________________________________

The letter below was written on November 17, 2003 and served on the Crown Solicitors office by registered mail no: RD 49422008 posted 17/11/03

Attention:
Miss Gretchen Shirm
Solicitor for the Department of Community Services- DoCS

RE: Giving Notice regarding your demand to suppress my Article
entitled DoCS - Stealing Our Children for Medicine?

Dear Miss Shirm,

On 14th November 2003, I received a faxed copy of your letter to Ms. Elizabeth Stephens, Editor of Living Now magazine referring to my article, "DoCS - Stealing Our Children for Medicine?" Ms. Stephens published part one in her recent November issue with part two set to run in the December issue which is now I understand being typeset. I am the author of that article. In accordance with court orders I have de-identified personal and family names and other details and used the pseudonym "Lisa" for the child. (DoCS have used another pseudonym "Heather" for the child.)

I understand you are acting for the interests of the Department of Community Services.

In your letter you allege my article reveals the child's identity and you claim it contains "various inaccuracies". Pursuant to these allegations you threaten the editor with court action if she does not give you a written assurance to suppress part two of this story in print and remove it from the magazine's website. I understand this would incur considerable cost to the magazine.

My article is an exposé of the Department of Community Services (DoCS) which took drastic action to force an 11-year-old girl, "Lisa", to undergo chemotherapy against her will and against the wishes of her parents. This was carried out on the medical advice of Doctor Alvaro who based his prognosis and chemotherapy treatment on a UK study he insisted supported his claims. The doctor told the parents and later told the Supreme Court of NSW that the child had an 85% probability of a "cure" with his recommended chemotherapy when the study he based this on showed this figure to represent only a five year survival rate. The doctor claimed the child had no chance of survival without his chemotherapy, but according to other expert opinions, the UK study had no control group to support this claim. The family asked doctor Alvaro to supply them with supporting medical evidence, which he refused. Your client, DoCS continued to pursue the parents through the Court until their daughter was made a ward of the Court and the chemo was forcibly administered. The family continued to request proof of the medical evidence to support this forced treatment. Their family doctor and two other doctors subsequently reviewed the UK study and disagreed with the forced treatment, finding no adequate basis for it in the study. One doctor asked the court to seek independent medical opinions. Despite being made aware of these reasonable doubts, your client, DoCS, continued to pursue the parents through the court in a concerted action to deprive them of their parental rights. As you are aware, the child and her family had a number of their rights reinstated by His Honour, Judge Campbell at their most recent court appearance.

I wrote the article using the available information at the time. I checked my sources for accuracy and found the information correct to the best of my knowledge at the time of writing. I was in full awareness of the court orders stating; "no publication that would identify or tend to identify the child the subject of these proceedings or her family occur except for the purpose of the proper conduct of the proceedings." Respectful of the court orders and the sensibilities of the child and her family, I de-identified the personal family's details in accordance with the US de-identification standard and the privacy standards set down by the Privacy Act and the APC Privacy standards. The details of the case were obtained by fair and honest means from the relevant legal and medical documents and interviews and transcripts. Other information sources included the Supreme Court's own website listing this case with considerable medical and legal detail including the actual names of most doctors involved and treatment locations. This information is in the public domain for the purpose of serving the public interest as are other court judgements available for the rightful purpose of public scrutiny.

The story of how an Australian government department did all things necessary to force a now 12-year-old girl to undergo a series of potentially fatal chemotherapy treatments, purportedly without adequate medical evidence, would appear to be a matter of significant public interest. Particularly since the forced treatment was contrary to other medical opinions and was administered in spite of the child's and the parents' opposition. The trauma caused to this family and others by the way in which "health care" has been forcibly applied without informed consent, through a government department, is a matter capable of affecting people at large so they might be legitimately interested in, or concerned about what is going on, or what may happen to them and others. It is in fact the duty of the media to inform the public of these matters of public interest, as the Privacy Act itself acknowledges. Indeed this story was reviewed by a solicitor prior to its release to ensure it complied with all necessary orders and requirements. In addition, the document; "DoCS-Stealing our children For Medicine" was tendered to the Supreme Court and to your client, DoCS, and to all other relevant parties as an attachment to an affidavit dated 1/9/03. DoCS has had ample time to dispute its veracity, accuracy or relevance. It has been in the public domain for several months. It is not clear why your client demands this story be suppressed by this particular publication. I have received no notice from DoCS with respect to the issues they raise, when they have had the means to contact me since September 1, 2003 by way of my email address clearly printed on my article.

It appears self evident that no reader would be able to know the name of the girl or her family unless the family chose to disclose this. Because your client purports to act in the child's interests, I require evidence that your demand for the suppression of this story would serve the child's interest, the family's or the community's interests. I note that no relevant family members have complained about the issues you raise purportedly on their behalf. They have checked my article for accuracy and found it correct to the best of their knowledge. Far from protecting the family's interests or the public interest, your actions would appear to ensure the department of community services is protected from legitimate and rightful public scrutiny.

Your demand to stop the press within a few days, without showing just cause, and without giving the magazine sufficient time for recourse, and without service, cannot be a lawfully binding restraint. To give in to DoCS demands would be certain to incur heavy expenses for the magazine. This would be liable to cause wrongful damage to my integrity and reputation as a writer who relies on publications to publish my works. This I suspect is intended by your client, DoCS.

I reserve the right to continue my occupation unimpeded, to report matters that are in the public interest without suffering intimidation, without those around me suffering intimidation or incurring expenses or damages arising from unfounded allegations.

Pursuant to the aforesaid facts, you are hereby required to produce proof of alleged inaccuracies and give just cause why this article should be excluded from the public interest, within 14 days. Failure to do this shall be taken that no inaccuracies or other impediments exist and the matter is at an end.

Should your client pursue further unfounded actions preventing me from pursuing lawful activities, I will seek orders to restrain the plaintiff from proceeding in a frivolous and vexatious manner.

Sincerely,

Eve Hillary (Signed)
PO Box 745
St. Ives, NSW 2075
evehillary@smartchat.net.au

Danger on Tap

The report that manufacturers of infant formula present their products as similar to breast milk is disturbing ('Half of all mothers turn to the bottle after six months', 23/11).

Commercial formulas cannot come close to replicating the complex mix of oils and immunity-promoting nutritional factors in breast milk.

And there is another serious problem with formula feeding. Neither manufacturers nor health authorities give sufficient warnings that formula must not be made with fluoridated tap water.

Tap water in big cities contains added fluoride chemicals, quite toxic to very young infants. Formula made with it contains 100 times more fluoride than nature intended (and than found in breast milk).

The human breast furiously filters out fluoride till almost none remains, for a very good reason: infants up to about six years have a poorly developed ability to excrete or detoxify the noxious fluoride.

Fluoride is a registered poison, listed as similar in toxicity to arsenic and lead. It is well documented scientifically that fluoride is harmful to bone development and the nervous system in adults. The risk is far greater to children.

Formula should display large warnings about using fluoridated tap water.
David McCrae, Geelong West
Letter to Australia's The Sunday Age, 30th November 2003

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: David McCrae is a tireless opponent of fluoridation and, along with his team, triumphed over the City of Geelong (an hour west of Melbourne) to have the practice thrown out. For those wishing to join the Australian Fluoridation Information Network (for free) and become active in ridding Australia of this destructive, toxic and unnecessary practice, please contact Ailsa Boyden on boydens@mrbean.net.au

Death by Medicine

Recently, more statistics published by the Nutrition Institute of America on the extent of doctor-induced death have labelled western healthcare the leading cause of death in the US. Here, a team of researchers provides the carefully researched data that illustrates the extent of the disaster.
http://mercola.com/2003/nov/26/death_by_medicine.htm

The New American Food System

Per www.mercola.com
We hear all the time about the wicked drug industry, but what about those supplying the public their food? Prepare to be shocked in two parts. Click here.
http://www.mercola.com/2003/dec/10/us_food_system.htm

Demolished: The Myth That Allows Drugs Giants to Sell More
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
08 December 2003

For years, the drugs industry has grown fat on a myth - the false belief that all drugs will work on just about everybody.

That has essentially been the rationale for a culture that has encouraged doctors to prescribe first and ask questions later - at a cost to the NHS of £7.2bn a year in medicines.

Yet it has been an open secret within the drugs industry that most drugs do not work for most patients, a secret that has now been publicly aired for the first time by Allen Roses, the head of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's biggest drugs company.

Dr Roses, an academic with a distinguished record in medical genetics, is used to speaking his mind, especially on the benefits of a revolutionary new approach to drug development called pharmacogenomics.

That is the science of applying the results of the human genome project to drug development. In essence, it means testing the DNA of patients in order to identify those for whom a particular drug will work - the "responders".

That would enable doctors to eliminate the "non responders" who, as a result, will at least not be given a drug that at best could be useless and at worst dangerous in terms of harmful side-effects.

In the past, drug companies have developed drugs aimed at the widest possible population. That was the most profitable strategy but one that ignored a basic fact in biology - people are different.

To emphasise the point, Dr Roses likes to quote Sir William Osler, a Canadian physician who in 1892 remarked: "If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science and not an art."

Bringing a new drug to market is an expensive business costing tens of millions of pounds. It takes place in a culture of maximum possible sales for maximum possible profit - a culture that does not like to broadcast the fact that most drugs don't work for most people.

Drug testing in patients involves three phases of increasingly complex clinical trials that must be successfully completed before the drug is approved by regulatory authorities such as the mighty US Food and Drug Administration.

But even when a drug has been approved in terms of safety and "efficacy" - whether it does what the label says it should do - few people realise just how poorly they perform in real life.

Dr Roses cited a study published three years ago by Brian Spear, a senior scientist at Abbott Laboratories, a medical diagnostics company in Chicago, on the efficacy rates of a range of different drugs.

It found that drugs vary enormously in terms of how well they work, with efficacy rates varying from as low as 25 per cent for cancer drugs to 80 per cent for painkillers.

For many drugs, however, the efficacy rates hover around 50 per cent or lower, meaning that, for most people, these drugs just don't work. As Dr Roses puts it: "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people."

Dr Roses is one of the pioneers in a field of genetics that promises to help to identify those people who could benefit from a drug. It is called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and it is a way of distinguishing the smallest possible genetic differences between individuals.

The use of SNPs has already led to the discovery, for instance, of a test to detect the 5 per cent of the population who inherit a predisposition to a potentially fatal side effect of an anti-HIV drug called abacavir.

Now it is possible to test HIV patients before the drug is given to them in order to weed out those patients who will suffer a severe adverse reaction - a violent rash on the body.

Scientists believe that SNPs can be used to test people not just for their vulnerability to a drug's side-effects, but also to whether it will work or not.

John Bell, the regius professor medicine at Oxford University, said that for pharmacogenomics to catch on, doctors will have to learn new ways of dealing with patients.

"One of the biggest obstacles is culture. We've all been taught to take the dose for a drug straight out of the British National Formulae and then if that doesn't work to add another drug to the prescription, and so on," Professor Bell said. "So we can end up with lots of patients on four or more drugs where only one would do. This is a big cultural issue to overcome," he said.

Apart from the ethics of prescribing useless drugs to people who could be poisoned by them, there is also the question of costs to the NHS, which has seen a record 50 per cent increase in its drugs bill over the past three years.

As Bill Clarke, the executive vice president of research at Amersham, a British diagnostics company, said: "It's just not right to spend that amount of money on drugs that don't work." For the sake of a relatively cheap genetics test that can be carried out on the wider population of patients, it would be possible to target drugs more effectively and more safely, Dr Clarke said.

It could also lead to a revolution in the way drugs are tested, he said. If "responders" to a new drug can be identified easily, it will be possible to simplify the expensive phase 3 clinical trials which can involve thousand of people being followed over many years.

Dr Roses agreed: "You can pick out people who respond a lot to the drug, can you pick out people who do not respond at all to the drug and can you pick out people who are sort of in the middle. By eliminating the people that we predict will be non-responders we'll be able to do smaller, faster and cheaper drug trials."

That could be the incentive that will lead to a change in the "one-drug-fits-all" culture of the drug industry, he said.

"I can't speak for other companies but I can tell you absolutely for sure that there is a change in the culture of GSK," Dr Roses said. And the advent of pharmacogenomics will not necessarily mean a fall in sales.

"If you can determine who is going to have a response [to a drug] and who is not going to have a response, you can take your next molecule and aim it specifically at the people who haven't had a response with the first one so that you can create a set of drugs that cover the population, and then you are back to selling to everybody," he said.

Trial approach

PHASE I: These first studies evaluate how a new drug or therapy should be given (by mouth, injection into the blood or injection into the muscle), how often, and what dose is safe. A phase I trial usually enrols a small number of patients, sometimes as few as a dozen.

PHASE II: A phase II trial usually focuses on one type of illness, continuing to test the safety of treatment and beginning to evaluate how well it works. This is the essential intermediate step that will determine whether the drug will go into bigger and more costly phase III trials.

PHASE III: These studies test a new drug, a new combination of drugs or a new therapy in comparison to the current standard treatment. A participant will usually be assigned to the standard group or the new group at random (called randomisation). Often it involves "double blind" trials, where neither the patient nor doctor knows who is being given the new drug. Phase III trials often enrol large numbers of people and may be conducted at many doctors' offices, clinics and cancer centres nationwide.
The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=471131

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: Consider what a disaster drug medicine has been for most health complaints to which it is applied. Then consider the level of death attributable to the toxic/harmful effects of drugs, which kill hundreds of thousands every year around the world, even though they have supposedly been put through official drug regulation. And lastly consider that these same drug regulators are to pronounce their verdicts on hundreds of safe food supplements the public has used for decades with no ill-effects.
Hello? Anybody out there?

Further Resources:
Health Wars by Phillip Day
Wake up to Health in the 21st Century by Steven Ransom
Health Wars, the film (PAL format only - not US or Canada)
Available through www.credence.org

'Fart Tax' Causes a Stink

A tax on farting, belching livestock to be introduced by New Zealand to help combat global warming is creating a stink among the country's farmers.

Methane emissions created by grass-munching cows, sheep, deer and goats are believed to account for about half of New Zealand's emissions of greenhouse gases.

Now the country is attempting to clear the air by introducing a levy on pungent emissions by mid-2004.

The tax will fund a new Agriculture Emissions Research body to meet commitments to the Kyoto Protocol global environment agreement.

Farmers are outraged

But farmers are outraged, saying the agricultural sector is already paying for its own research.

The new tax, which will bring in around eight million NZ dollars a year (US$4.5-million) amounted to "overkill", said Jeff Grant, chairman of Meat New Zealand, a livestock industry support organisation.

Tom Lambie, president of agricultural body Federated Farmers, said the levy disadvantaged farmers struggling to compete against less gas-anxious nations. "As far as I'm aware, we're the only country in the world to impose a levy like this," he said.

NZ farmers facing hard times

Jim Eagles, business editor of the New Zealand Herald daily called the levy "unnecessary, unfair and potentially damaging to the economy." New Zealand's farmers are already facing hard times due to a sharp downturn in returns for their produce.

Eagle said factories from industrialised nations, not herds of cattle and sheep, were the main cause behind the increase in global warming, he said.

New Zealand is home to around 45 million sheep and 9.6 million cattle, according to Statistics New Zealand.
New Zealand Herald, 20th June 2003

Fart Tax Gone, Farmers Celebrate

Farmers are welcoming the government's decision to abandon its plan to levy farmers for emissions research.

Government ministers said they had agreed to a research programme sufficient to remove the need for a statutory levy on individual sheep, cattle and deer.

Federated Farmers of New Zealand vice-president Charlie Pedersen says the farming community has fought hard in recent months - staging FART-tax rallies and assembling a petition with 65,000 signatures - to show government that the emissions charge was a ridiculous burden.

"Farmers will be relieved that the government looks to have finally got the FART tax out of its system," Pedersen says.

He says farmers pay $77 million a year in voluntary levies, much of which funds a wide range of research benefiting not only farmers but all New Zealanders. Research delivers productivity gains, which in turn benefit the environment.

Farmers said they would not pay the tax and only support research that made sense. As such abandoning the FART tax is a fantastic victory for farmers.

However, Pedersen warns that although farmers have won a battle against ridiculous taxes, it had not won the regulatory war over greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon tax and other "way-out" ideas still loom as threats to the farming community, he says.
New Zealand Herald, 16th October 2003

Fluoride - Take Action Now
In Australia and New Zealand
by Phillip Day

Following my recent tour of these two spectacular countries, I have been saddened at the extent to which the public still remains ignorant of the dangers of water fluoridation. No-one wants dental cavities, and these can easily be avoided by cutting out sugar consumption and modifying diet to cut down or avoid those foods that break down into sugars, e.g. bread, pasta, sweets, bakery delights, etc.

In the meantime, we have a war with fluoridation to fight. If you are unaware of the fluoridation issue, or have so far believed that fluoridation in toothpaste, tablets or the public water supply is beneficial to your health, please read my 'Water Under the Bridge' article, extracted from my book, Health Wars, in this EClub edition.

Want to become involved? Below are two excellent organisations which I suggest all Australian/New Zealand citizens contact and support to bring the truth of this revolting practice to the prominence it deserves.

AUSTRALIA:
The Australian Fluoridation Information Network (AFIN).
National Co-ordinator - Ailsa Boyden boydens@mrbean.net.au

NEW ZEALAND:
The Fluoridation Action Network (NZ) - (FAN)
National Co-ordinator - Mark Atkins
Web-site: www.fannz.org.nz

GLOBAL:
The International Fluoridation Information Network (IFIN)
Co-ordinator - Professor Paul Connett
Web-site: www.fluoridealert.org

Fluoride - Help Needed in Queensland Now!

AFIN BULLETIN # 36
December 7, 2003

Dear All,

AMA QUEENSLAND'S UNSCIENTIFIC STAND IN SUPPORTING FLUORIDATION EMBARRASSES ONE OF ITS OWN MEMBERS.

AMA [Q'ld] has thrown its weight behind a drive to see all of Queensland's municipal water supplies fluoridated, helped by Kirsten MacGregor of ABC Radio 612 who gave brief coverage on her program two days ago which was seemingly supportive of fluoridation.

One AMA [Q'ld] member was embarrassed by his own medical organization's unscientific stand in supporting a renewed drive to fluoridate; especially in view of the previously-conducted Brisbane Task Force which found fluoridation was not in the people's best interests.

This AMA member is persuaded by the research that fluoridation is mass medication, ethically unacceptable [hence essentially unnecessary] and endangers the cosmetic and long-term health of all who consume it.

To help counter this fluoridation initiative and the anecdotal approach so often used [and used then] by talkback radio, this AMA member used a more scholarly approach when he contacted Kirsten: he emailed a copy of Paul Connett's "50 Reasons to oppose fluoridation".

Please consider writing to Kirsten MacGregor care of radio.612@abc.nt.au to acquaint her with some of the realities about fluoridation. Carbon-copying to her station manager might also prove fruitful in the long term.

Don't forget FAN's www.fluoridealert.org web site for masses of valuable resource information as well as www.slweb.org/bibliography.html for abstracts from peer-reviewed and published fluoride studies.

Ailsa Boyden
Australian Fluoridation Information Network (AFIN)

From: A Free Supper and the Surgeons Are Anyone's
Trust me …I'm a junior doctor
by Max Pemberton

At this week's surgical meeting, we were subjected to a 15-minute barrage of cleverly altered statistics by an obsequious drug rep, all white teeth, fake tan and hair gel. The new drug he was peddling was twice as expensive as the current one and, when you look closely at the evidence, can't even be proved to be as effective. The research is funded by the drug company. Hardly objective. It is somewhat suspicious, too, that this new drug has arrived just as the patent's run out on the company's current big earner. But no one seemed to feel this worthy of note. The company is also paying for my consultant and some of the other surgeons to have dinner at a swanky restaurant where minor celebrities hang out. If we had wanted to work in an area where we got free stuff, we should have got a job in PR. Ultimately, it's taxpayers' money we're spending and if the drug companies have so much cash to flash, why not subsidise medicines for the poorer companies? I decided to skip the free sandwiches.

We admitted Miss Miller a few days ago with recurrent stomach pains, but decided to wait and see if the pains receded on their own, which they did.

"I think it's down to my new homoeopath," says Miss Miller during the ward round, just before we discharge her. Several of the assembled doctors suppress chuckles, but Mr Butterworth guffaws in her face. "He says it's because of all the wheat we eat these days," she says, anxious to explain. "Our bodies aren't designed for it. But he's given me a new supplement, which I've been taking since I've been in here, and it's worked wonders."

As far as Miss Miller is concerned she came in with stomach pains, we didn't do anything for her, but she started taking her homeopathic medicine and she got better. Who am I to say it wasn't down to homoeopathy? Mr Butterworth isn't convinced: "New-age rubbish. No, these things just get better on their own, given time. Homoeopathy. Huh! No reliable evidence that it works at all." The other surgeons smile in agreement and walk off, shaking their heads.

"I think it works," whispers Miss Miller to me.

"Well if it makes you feel better, there's no harm in it," I reply, and run to catch them up.

I'm just in time to catch the instructions for the next patient and Mr Butterworth, apparently no longer concerned about reliable evidence, prescribes the new drug we learnt about at lunch time.

The ward round ends and, as I fill out the blood forms for the next day, Miss Miller appears. "I bought you and the nurses these," she says, producing a box of biscuits. I thank her, and having refused the drug rep's sandwiches, I polish off the Jammy Dodgers before you can say "Holland and Barrett".

I'd like to think I prescribe medicines sensibly and not because someone has paid for my lunch. I'd like to think I wouldn't allow myself to be bought by a transnational company on the promise of supper at Dale Winton's favourite restaurant. But I'm still only a junior doctor, so we'll have to wait and see.
The Daily Telegraph, 21st November, 2003

Protesters Topple Mobile Phone
Masts As Health Scare Spreads
by Daniel Foggo

Activists have begun tearing down mobile-phone masts around the country, as public concern over the health impact of the radiation they emit continues to grow.

The destruction of the masts - as many as four in a single week - signals a dramatic stepping up of the campaign to stop them being placed on top of, or close to, people's houses.

Earlier this month, masts were brought down at Wishaw and Dudley in the West Midlands, Crosby in Merseyside and Tiverton in Devon. At least four have also been brought down in Northern Ireland in recent months.

Although government advisors say there is no evidence that the masts threaten people's health, those living near them have complained of illnesses ranging from cancer to motor neurone disease. Some scientific studies have suggested that the radiation produced by the aerials has an impact on sleeping patterns and could have health implications.

Lisa Oldham, the director of Mast Sanity, a group that campaigns against the masts being sited close to communities, said, "We don't condone the use of criminal acts to bring down the masts, but this does suggest the level of protest against them. We are swamped with people protesting about them. There are thousands of groups trying to get masts moved or trying to prevent new ones being placed near their homes."

At Wishaw, a village near Sutton Coldfield, a 74 ft mobile mast was pulled down in the early hours of November 6th by a protester using a rope and haulage equipment. The mast, which was put up 10 years ago on a narrow patch of land between a field and a livery yard, has been blamed for causing a cluster of cancers in the area.

Among those living in the 18 houses within a 500-yard radius of the mast there are 20 cases of serious illness, including cancers of the breast, prostate, bladder and lung. One man is dying of motor neurone disease. Many of the people affected are in their thirties or forties.

Since the mast was toppled, residents have refused to let the network provider, T-Mobile, replace it and the situation has now developed into an uneasy standoff.

Eileen O'Connor, who lives within 300 yards of where the mast used to stand, had breast cancer two years ago at the age of 38. She noticed that many of her neighbours were attending her hospital with similar problems and set up Sutton Coldfield Residents Against Masts (SCRAM).

"We have absolutely no idea who took the mast down, and obviously it was a dangerous and inadvisable thing to do," said Mrs O'Connor, who runs an Internet advertising business. She and her children, who also suffered ill-effects, sleep under copper-mesh "mosquito nets" in an effort to deflect any mobile phone radiation.

"The first I knew about it was when I looked out of my window in the morning and couldn't see the mast. Apparently the company said they lost the signal at 12.30 am. Someone had unbolted the mast and pulled it over using a rope."

Clare Villanueva, a solicitor and SCRAM campaigner in Wishaw, has written to Crown Castle, the company that owns the land on which the mast stood, saying that it cannot legally gain access to the site to replace the mast because its path crosses someone else's land.

Residents are now carrying out a 24-hour vigil to ensure that a new mast is not set up, and both sides are paying for security guards to patrol the borders of the land. The locals have suggested an alternative location away from habitation for T-Mobile to use, but this has been rejected by the company.

A spokesman for T-Mobile said that the police had been called to investigate. "It defies belief that nobody in Wishaw noticed when the mast was coming down," he said.

A spokesman for the Mobile Operators' Association, which represents the five network providers on health and planning issues, said that all its members operated within accepted World Health Organisation guidelines for radiation emissions and there was no proof that masts caused health problems.

She added, "The number of masts being brought down is very small in the overall scheme of things. However, it is certainly worrying that people are taking direct action, because they could seriously hurt or even kill themselves."
Sunday Telegraph, 30th November 2003

Mast Down in Worcestershire

Vandals have pulled down a mobile phone mast in Worcestershire - the second in the Midlands in recent months.

The mast's owners, mobile phone company 02, say the vandals have caused thousands of pounds of damage and mobile users have suffered a reduction in the service as a result.

They believe the attackers broke through an unsecured fence before pushing over the structure. The 45ft high tower at Hampton near Evesham was toppled over after supporting bolts were unscrewed.

REVIEWING SECURITY
The company is installing a temporary tower to get mobile phone service in the area back to its normal level and will be reviewing the level of security at the site.

Last month a controversial mobile phone mast in the West Midlands, which was blamed by locals for a cluster of health scares, was pulled down.

The mast at Wishaw, near Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, fell down on Bonfire Night, again after bolts were removed from the base.

Residents have now bought the mast from a scrap yard and plan to sell parts of it off as souvenirs.
BBC News, 3rd December 2003

Mast Felled, New Forest
Press release from Byron Avenue phone-mast protesters. 9 December 2003

TETRA MAST DOWN
At approximately midnight last night,a 70-foot TETRA phone mast, near the New Forest and overlooking Southampton Water, was felled by persons unknown. TETRA (TErrestrial Trunk RAdio) is a new system being imposed on police forces by the Home Office. There is a lot of evidence to show that TETRA technology puts users and residents close to base stations at risk from all kinds of life-threatening illnesses - including cancer, epilepsy, and damage to the body's immune system.

The TETRA mast at Home Farm, Dibden near Hythe, unwanted by residents and New Forest District Council, was erected by Airwave O2 in September this year as a 'temporary' mast to bypass planning restrictions. Local residents were in no doubt as to when the mast went live as TV reception was seriously affected over a wide area. The Government's own Radio Communications Agency later confirmed the mast as the source of interference.

Airwave have appealed against the council's decision not to allow a permanent mast on the site because of siting and appearance and lack of evidence to show alternative sites. A public enquiry is scheduled for next year.

Campaigners do not condone illegal action but point out that the Dibden mast is just one of many that have been installed without planning permission. Airwave's behaviour came in for strong criticism when East Hants District Council recently refused to let the company erect TETRA masts without making formal applications. This decision has delayed the testing of the system throughout Hampshire to the great relief of people living near Airwave masts already in place. Police officers are also concerned, pointing to the 177 members of Lancashire Police who reported sick after trialing the system.

Winchester campaigners who have been fighting for three years to prevent an Orange mast in Byron Avenue, close to Western Primary School, say that TETRA is just the latest example of potentially dangerous mobile phone technology being inflicted on an unsuspecting public. "We knew TETRA was coming some while ago," says campaigner Karen Barratt, "that is why we were very concerned when the Airwave mast on the Police HQ in Winchester was given the go-ahead last January without any publicity at all."
Contacts:
Karen Barratt: 01962 864388
Mast Sanity Helpline: 08704 322 377

Annette King's Brown-Shirt Conference
The 3rd NZ Fluoridation Forum

Your right to pure water is under serious threat from covert work by the Minister of Health and District Health Boards.

Annette King's speech can be accessed in full at Fluoride Action Network (NZ)'s website www.fannz.org.nz.

As part of the ongoing attack on our water supply and civil rights, NZ's leading fluoridation zealot, the Minister of Health, Annette King, has been co-ordinating efforts, unseen by the average New Zealander, to push fluoridation down our throats. This is in spite of mounting evidence of harmful effects, and the damning York Report which found no reliable evidence of benefit, no evidence of social equity promotion, and no proof of safety.

King addressed the third NZ "Fluoridation Forum" recently, a secretive conference aimed at "developing tactics to overcome opponents." King lamented that "some things never change". How true. This strategy, of appointing a fluoridation task force, and holding secret meetings, is a repetition of the Ministry's subversive acts of the 1950's. Their 1958 "Fluoridation Symposium" likewise addressed tactics for politically overcoming opponents, with as little regard for the truth as this conference appears to have had. Like the current forum sequence (2001, 2002, 2003), the proceedings were not made public.

The 1958 symposium recommended that promoters "avoid fluoridation becoming a public issue", and to "avoid fuss in the community - work quietly in the small community groups" and generate a demand by convincing small groups, then promote these to the council as representing mass public opinion. Promoters of fluoridation were advised not to allow the issue to be discussed in the Press, and above all, to avoid open public debate (a position maintained today).

One tactic was to arrange a closed seminar to promote fluoridation to a Council without opportunity for opposing facts or views to be put and to persuade councillors to refer any issues subsequently raised back to the promotional team rather than seeking independent information.

King states "[the forum] has developed strategies to counter anti-fluoridation claims". Surely the public has a right to reliable research and facts in making health decisions, not "strategies" to counter claims based on internationally published peer-reviewed research, and a position supported by respected scientists, as acknowledged by the Ministry (OIA response, Dr Colin Tukuitonga, acting Director-General of Health.)

King also states "the Ministry continues to fund research into effective strategies for promoting fluoridation" - taxpayers money used against taxpayers for propaganda to promote a misguided, unscientific, unsafe, and unethical practice.

King further states that fluoridation is "pivotal" to New Zealand's health strategy. By contrast, the Health Minister of Luxembourg described fluoridation as "a naïve utopia without practical effect" at the time Europe was rejecting fluoridation after 10 year trials had proven no benefit.

It is being suggested that, since the public reject fluoridation when given the choice, the decision on fluoridation should be transferred to District Health Boards, who do the Ministry's bidding, rather than local authorities as at present, and as recommended by the Commission of Inquiry in 1957. This is compulsory fluoridation by the back door: government appointees to the DHBs are required to promote fluoridation as part of their employment contract. This same the strategy has recently been adopted in the USA and UK.

Another proposed policy is that water authorities who do not fluoridate should be charged for "additional oral healthcare", for which no evidence exists. This would be an unlawful fetter on councils as the statutory decisionmakers. It would also be an interesting court case if a DHB tried to prove the cost, in light of the York Review's finding on the unreliability of any epidemiological study claiming to show benefit. It is also suggested that fluoridation be part of the drinking water standards (again).

It was to meet such an organised attack on the truth about fluoridation, and democratic rights, that a national anti-fluoridation movement arose in 1956, and that, in the same situation, Fluoride Action Network (NZ) was formed in early 2003. The amount of research since 1995 proving adverse health effects is considerable, and has been conducted by independent scientists, not beholden to commercial or political interests for grant money. That research includes proof of central nervous system (Mullinex 1995), increased lead uptake due to silicofluorides specifically (Masters & Coplan 1999), accumulation in the pineal gland and resultant inhibition of melatonin production (Luke 1997 & 2001), and evidence of the creation of alzheimer-like amyloids in the brain (Varner 1998) and disruption of the G-protein cell communication mechanism (Strunecka, 2002). The US EPA, a pro-fluoridation body, acknowledged on 25 April 2002 that silicofluorides used for water fluoridation do not have the same effect on the body as "natural" fluoride and that their human health safety has never been tested.

What is most important is that we, the people of New Zealand, work together now to safeguard our water, health, and rights from a minority of zealots who think they have a right to force their misguided opinions on the rest of us. FAN(NZ) is here to facilitate and co-ordinate such an effort, and will continue to work until NZ is free from the unconscionable practice of water fluoridation.

Reliable information on this subject is available on FAN(NZ)'s and linked websites: www.fannz.org.nz.

Mark Atkin BSc(Chem); LLB(Hons)
National Co-ordinator
Fluoride Action Network (NZ)

Annette King's speech in full

I am delighted to have been invited to speak to this forum yet again, and let me start by saying "some things never change".

All round the country there are still communities going over the same old ground, or same old water, as they debate whether to fluoridate their water supplies. (Ed - This is what the Health Department argued for in 1963/64, and the Privy Council gave them what they wanted.)

Just in the last few weeks the stories have focused on Winton and the West Coast, while the Christchurch newspapers have been publishing dozens of letters to the editor following the push by the Canterbury District Health Board to have that region's water supply fluoridated.

Something else never changes either from one Water Fluoridation Forum to another. As Health Minister I continue to regard fluoridation of water supplies as the most effective means we have at our disposal to improve the dental health of our children, and to prevent our children having to suffer unnecessary pain and health problems.

I want to thank you for the enormous amount of work that has been and still is being undertaken around the country to promote and protect water fluoridation. Much of what you do can sometimes occur in quite a difficult and confrontational environment, and that makes your contribution all the more valued.

You seem to be bearing up well. I am heartened to see so many familiar faces here, as well as some not so familiar.

You embrace a wide range of participants, from New Zealand Dental Association members, dental health therapists and managers, members of the Maori dental organisation, public health services, medical officers of health, communications experts, and other oral health experts from both public and personal health sectors.

Thank you all, whatever capacity you are here in. Without your help, my job and the jobs of the Health Ministry and District Health Boards in promoting oral health would be immeasurably more difficult.

This forum has progressed remarkably it began in 2001, with that first meeting helping raise awareness particularly about water fluoridation.

The second forum expanded awareness by building and fostering a support base, establishing and maintaining networks to support water fluoridation; and providing participants with tools, information and skills to promote and protect fluoridation within their own communities.

And now this third forum has expanded again, rather successfully, I'm told. It has developed strategies to counter anti-fluoridation claims; has provided updates on important research and proposed research; and has focused more on the relationship between Maori oral health and water fluoridation, and on the role the promotion of fluoridation plays in reducing oral health inequalities.

This forum has also continued the pattern of strengthening networks to support all those involved in promoting water fluoridation.

The work being undertaken here and back in your own professional environments is of great importance. Improving the oral health of all New Zealanders is one of the 13 population health objectives in the New Zealand Health Strategy. Controversial though it can be, water fluoridation is pivotal in achieving this objective.

Access to accurate and credible information is vitally important given the debate over supposed adverse effects of water fluoridation. Anti-fluoridationists are vociferous, and, understandably, communities and local authorities find themselves in a difficult situation when the information gulf between pro- and anti-fluoridationists is so wide.

This forum captures public attention and interest, and provides professional groups, practitioners and communities with factual information about the value of water fluoridation.

I do not need to remind this meeting of the enormous wealth of evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of fluoridating water as an equitable and cost-effective public health measure that can reduce dental decay in children by as much as 50 percent. (Ed - yet the York Review found no reliable evidence of any benefit, and even unreliable studies showed only 15% (1/2 a filling) improvement which the board appropriately described as "hardly massive". Yet promoters continue to repeat the 50 year lie of 50% improvement, which began with the now discredited studies at Grand Rapids and Newburgh (USA) and Hastings (NZ))

As I said earlier, I am confident that promoting fluoridation is based on sound reasoning and overwhelming evidence, and I am also confident that fluoridation is a safe and effective way to improve the oral health of New Zealanders of all ages.

I also wish to encourage and support the collaborative, consultative approach to the issue of fluoridation where relationships are developed with key stakeholders such as local authorities, DHBs and community health providers. Such relationships help facilitate a more rational basis for debating fluoridation as a community-wide issue.

I know such relationships are difficult to maintain and can even be downright frustrating, but it is an approach that works in a number of places around New Zealand and I encourage you all to embrace it.

Much still needs to be done to improve oral health. Substantial inequalities are evident in the oral health of our children, with Maori and Pacific children, adolescents and children from low socio-economic status families having a higher prevalence and severity of dental caries than other children. Under-utilisation of dental care by some groups of adolescents is also a concern.

These children and adolescents may go on to experience substantial dental problems in adulthood, at personal cost to themselves, the community and the oral health services.

Earlier this year, the Public Health Advisory Committee released its report, Improving Child Oral Health and Reducing Child Oral Health Inequalities, on the status of oral health of our children, and provided me with several constructive recommendations. While the report indicated that clear inequalities exist, there is enormous scope to reduce them. For example, school dental service data show that ethnic inequalities in child oral health status are more pronounced in areas that do not receive optimally fluoridated water.

(Ed - note that the PHAC is part of the National Health Committee which in turn is part of the Ministry of Health. The report referred to is critiqued on the FAN site.)

Water fluoridation has clear benefits for different ethnic groups, and contributes to reducing ethnic inequalities in oral health status. Increased fluoridation of drinking-water supplies, particularly in low socio-economic areas, is crucial to combat oral health deficiencies.

As I said, the Committee has provided several recommendations for improving Maori oral health:

· To fund evaluation of current Maori oral health initiatives;
· To continue to evaluate and monitor mainstream oral health
· services for their impact on Maori oral health; and
· To encourage District Health Boards to make further funding available to improve Maori oral health status.

These recommendations provide important benchmarks against which to measure the impact of variable water fluoridation coverage on Maori.

For example, fluoridated public water supplies are likely only in larger communities and higher proportion of Maori live in non-fluoridated rural areas.

The Committee report also noted that the prevalence and severity of child dental caries varied considerably between District Health Board regions, and highlighted the influence of maternal oral health and maternal education levels on child oral health.

The prevalence of adult oral health inequalities are strongly correlated to childhood experiences, such as knowledge of dental hygiene and access to dental health services. That is another incentive to ensure that children have the opportunity to learn skills and access services that can improve their oral health for the rest of their lives.

At your inaugural forum I said that if fluoridated water was extended to reach 75 percent of New Zealanders, the estimated savings could be as high as $23.5 million per annum, not to mention the prevention of pain and personal costs to individuals.

We are still some way off this target, and you, as oral health experts, and central and local government need to work together to ensure our communities are well-informed.

At that first forum I also discussed the Institute of Environmental Science and Research Limited report showing that fluoridating water can be cost effective for a community of 1000 or even lower, and said that the Ministry of Health was investigating the feasibility of subsidies for small communities.

As a result of that investigation, the Sanitary Works Subsidy Scheme was launched in May last year as a way to help meet the costs of setting up fluoridation schemes.

In its current form, the Scheme covers 50 percent of the cost of the eligible capital works (on average, approximately $30-40,000), with spending on water fluoridation not exceeding more than 10 percent of the total annual appropriation for the Scheme of $15 million. The scheme will continue to provide an opportunity to increase the number of communities with fluoridated water supplies.

The Ministry continues to fund research into effective strategies for promoting fluoridation and monitoring oral health, and I recently received a scoping report that investigated several policy options that stemmed from recommendations made at your previous two forums. These policy options related to:

· transferring responsibility for decision-making from local government to the DHBs;
· considering whether DHBs may recover the costs for additional oral healthcare from territorial local authorities who chose not to
· fluoridate water supplies; and
· considering whether fluoridation could be incorporated as part of the drinking-water standards.

I understand a presentation was made to the forum today on this report, so you will be well aware of the complexities and difficulties of implementing such policies that require goodwill and sustained support from local authorities, DHBs and communities. I will continue to follow up on all these issues with the Ministry of Health.

We all know that promoting fluoridation often seems to be an uphill and continual battle, but each year I am reinforced and encouraged by the dedication and determination of oral health experts such as the members of this forum.

You should all be proud of your contributions. I thank you again for all you are doing to improve the oral health of our nation, and I remain convinced that many tens of thousands of New Zealanders will have reason to thank you in the future too.

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: Annette King, I believe, has become the Kiwi's public health enemy number one. Notice at no point in her speech has the issue of diet and sugar been mentioned at all in relation to preventing dental cavities and improving oral health! All Ms King seems zealous about is assisting the chemical industry in disposing of its raw industrial waste fluorosilicates into the public water supplies of her country, and thus save millions of dollars disposing of this gunk in a responsible manner.

New Zealand's love affair with sugary foods is not condemned here, neither is the irresponsible food industry's unrestricted advertising of foods that are known to cause cancer, heart disease and death.

Annette King, the poodle of the chemical and drug industries, is by the way the same Ms King also spearheading the merging of Australia and New Zealand's regulatory agencies to enforce severe restrictions on the licensing and availability of food supplements.

Isn't it time you contacted the Fluoridation Action Network and, through them, put Annette King into the picture in no uncertain terms about how you feel about mass-medicating and dumbing down the public without their consent?

Soy Supplements Can Decrease Sexual Behaviour

Commercial soy supplements, which are taken by increasing numbers of U.S. women, can decrease the normal sexual behaviour of female rats by up to 70 percent. The rats were given a commercially available supplement in doses similar to those taken by women.

Many women take soy supplements for menopause as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy, as the active components in the supplements are oestrogen-like molecules called isoflavones.

Previous studies in rats have shown that soy isoflavones interfere with oestrogen function in rats, which then disrupts some social and sexual behaviours. Researchers are uncertain whether similar side effects have been reported among women taking soy supplements, however they note that it could be difficult to attribute changes in sex drive to the supplements since the hormonal changes that come during menopause may also cause such symptoms.
New Scientist, 14th November 2003

DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT: Many people are still convinced that soy is a health food, but it is important to recognize that soy clearly has a downside. So what are some of the other downsides of soy beyond what was mentioned in the article?

Soybeans are high in natural toxins, also known as antinutrients. This includes a large quantity of inhibitors that deter the enzymes needed for protein digestion. Further, these enzyme inhibitors are not entirely disabled during ordinary cooking. The result is extensive gastric distress and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake, which can result in dangerous pancreatic impairments and cancer.

Soybeans contain hemaglutinins, which cause red blood cells to clump together. Soybeans also have growth-depressant substances, and while these substances are reduced in processing, they are not completely eliminated.

Soy contains goitrogens, which can frequently lead to depressed thyroid function.

Most soybeans are genetically modified, and they contain one of the highest levels of pesticide contamination of all foods.

Soybeans are very high in phytates, which prevent the absorption of minerals including calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc, all of which are co-factors for optimal biochemistry in the body.

Finally, in an effort to remove antinutrients from soy out of the final product, soybeans are taken through a series of chemical processes including acid washing the soy in aluminium tanks. This leaches high levels of aluminium, a toxic heavy metal, into the final soy products. Many soy foods also have toxic levels of manganese. Soy formula has up to 80 times higher manganese than is found in human breast milk.

Fermented soy products like tempeh, natto and miso and soybean sprouts don't have these problems and can actually be quite healthy. I recommend that you avoid all non-fermented soy such as tofu, soy protein products, soymilk and especially soy baby formula, which should never be used for infants, and only eat fermented soy if you choose to eat it.
www.mercola.com

Further Resources:
Food for Thought by Phillip Day
Available through www.credence.org

Toxic Cocktail 'Inside All of Us'

A cocktail of highly toxic, man-made chemicals has been found inside every person tested in a nation-wide survey of 155 volunteers, according to a Worldwide Fund for nature report.

PCBs, which are found in electrical equipment, and a breakdown product of the carcinogenic pesticide DDT were found in 99 per cent of those tested. The survey also identified widespread contamination of people by a chemical - deca-brominated dipheyl ether - used to prevent fire in everyday products, such as cars and televisions.

"The chemical industry is contaminating the nation and the Government is rolling over and allowing it to continue," said Justin Woolford, a WWF campaigner.
The Daily Telegraph, 25th November 2003

FURTHER RESOURCES
For more information on our toxic environment and what you can do to stay safe:

Health Wars - Phillip Day
Cancer Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth - Phillip Day
Available through www.credence.org

Water Under the Bridge
The Damning Case Against Fluoridation
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth
becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

by Phillip Day

The most pressing three battles we fight as citizens for our good health today are for the right to drink clean, uncontaminated water, to eat clean, uncontaminated food and to breathe clean, uncontaminated air. In our sophisticated Western world today, which allegedly focuses so much on the rights of its citizens, why are these three fundamental, 'unalienable' rights being wilfully trampled? Why, in a society which can do so much technologically for its citizens, can't we address these three fundamentals of life and progress towards good health and longevity, rather than racing away from them?

This article deals with the subject of water and fluoridation, and these two deserve their own chapter, simply because of the importance of the subject. Author Harvey Diamond puts it this way:

"As an absolute prerequisite to life, water is right up there with food and air. From the moment you are born until you leave this planet, your body instinctively craves food, air and water for your survival. You know what happens to a plant when it is deprived of water. It wilts and dies. The same would happen to your body if it were deprived of water. Its importance is clear."

Bringing water to the public is a complicated and responsible business. If you get it wrong, and bacteria afflict the masses, you can definitely lose your pension. Some of the worst scourges mankind has faced have come about as a result of contaminated water supplies, infested with microbes that bring on the feared cholera, typhoid, dysentery and other fatal syndromes that still afflict many Third World nations today. In the past, the bubonic yersinia pestis decimated over a quarter of Europe during the medieval ages with rat-borne contaminants that could easily be passed to others through touching, kissing and other close-quarters contact. Mankind though has largely forgotten the major health disasters it has suffered in the past. Much water, if you'll forgive the pun, has gone under the bridge, and we like to think that problems linked to matters so basic as those concerning water supply are simply gremlins suffered by the less developed nations - not us. This false sense of security we enjoy in the First World though has not prevented governments and water authorities from rising to the challenge of delivering clean, fresh, bug-free water to the public as safely and as cheaply as possible, using some… well, shall we say, quite unique methods.

The halogen element chlorine is often added to the public drinking water to kill germs. When I am in the United States, waiters and waitresses will bring me a glass of iced water with my meal, which in many areas is quite undrinkable due to its high chlorine content. Most of the American public has become used to this type of water, and most are prepared to drink it, cook with it, shower with it and wallow around for half an hour in a bath with it. Prolonged chlorine exposure over the years though has been found to desiccate the skin, causing premature wrinkling, dandruff and baldness, and dysbiosis - bacterial/fungal overgrowths in the bowel.

Concerns over the long-term effects of bad-tasting chlorinated water fuelled a water filter boom in the early 1990s, which has never ended. For a few dollars, you can obtain a carbon filter that will screw onto the faucet and strip off the chlorine, delivering what the public believes is clean, uncontaminated H2O.

But there's another halogen element, which some governments sanction to be put into water supplies, that has caused increasing fear over the past fifty years. Indeed very few public outcries have been as consistent and vigorous as the public's reaction to the fluoridation of water and toothpastes:

"Controversy surrounding the fluoridation experiment has persisted for half a century. Japan and all of continental Europe have rejected the idea for reasons of safety and medical ethics. Experiments in poor countries produced such harmful results that they were quickly halted. Why does fluoridation continue to receive vigorous government and professional backing in the English-speaking nations?" - Health Action Network

Janet Nagel has authored several studies on the subject and explains how the idea of adding fluoride compounds to the public drinking water supply gained public support through the promotion of this controversial measure by industry and government over sixty years ago:

"In the 1940s and 50s, a vigorous corporate and government promotional campaign convinced large numbers of people that fluorides reduced susceptibility to tooth decay. In 1985, over 90% of all toothpastes sold in the US contained high concentrations of intentionally added fluorine compounds. Close to 60% of the US population consumed water containing 1.0 to 4.0 parts per million of fluoride compounds. Nearly all major US cities, and many smaller ones, intentionally add fluorine compounds to their water supplies."

So what is 'fluoride' and why exactly is this chemical added to food, water and other products we consume on a daily basis?

The term 'fluoride' is often used to describe fluorine-based chemical additives that have been put into the public water supply or into toothpastes and foods. 'Fluoride' tablets are also prescribed to youngsters apparently to assist in the protection and development of their teeth. In repeatedly hearing the one term, 'fluoride', the public has been cleverly coerced into thinking that there is just one substance that has been made available to us by caring government and industry to maintain and promote healthy teeth and gums. The reality is, as we will see, the term 'fluoride' has been found to encompass everything from sodium, calcium and potassium fluorides through to the highly dangerous liquid toxic waste product hexa- (in the US - hydro) -fluorisilicic acid and the toxic powder sodium silicofluoride, both of which are dumped into the public water supply by industry with no detoxification procedures and refinement carried out beforehand.

Fluorine is an extremely reactive, electronegative element that is never found alone in nature. Thus there are many kinds of fluorides, such as calcium fluoride, which is found naturally in water, lead fluoride, aluminium fluoride, and so on. The solitary term 'fluoride', so often used, even by activists, is meaningless and misleading as it fails to describe other elements with which the promiscuous fluorine has combined. These other elements often make the difference in toxicity of the resulting compound.

Pure fluorine is gaseous and is described as "a non-metallic halogen element that is isolated as a pale yellowish flammable irritating toxic diatomic gas" (Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1991). Fluorine was used to great effect as a battlefield gas by the militaries during World War 1. Fluoride compounds today are used in pesticides, aluminium smelting, etching metals and glass, aerosol propellants and refrigerants. Sodium fluoride, the same compound that is added to toothpastes under the admiring eye of the world's dental associations, is a chief component of Sarin nerve gas. It's also the main ingredient in rat poison, as any pest control expert will tell you.

The debate surrounding the pros and cons of fluoride additives has raged for half a century. The main areas of contention, which we will examine, are as follows:

1) Do fluoride compounds prevent dental caries (cavities) and assist in the development and health maintenance of teeth?
2) Are fluoride compounds dangerous to public health?
3) Are governments and industry mass-medicating their populations without consent?

DO FLUORIDE COMPOUNDS
REDUCE DENTAL CARIES (CAVITIES)?
The belief that fluoride compounds reduce the incidence of tooth decay is dental religion today, in spite of the fact that fluoride's original champion, H Trendley Dean, DDS, admitted under oath 40 years ago that his data purporting to prove the efficacy of fluoridation for dental health were not valid.

In June 1993, New Jersey State Assemblyman John V Kelly publicised the disturbing fact that fluoride compounds used in toothpastes and the water supply have never received approval by the American Food & Drug Administration and are officially classified as 'an unapproved new drug'. Kelly's research also uncovered that neither the FDA nor the Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) nor the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry could furnish any proof of fluoride compound safety or effectiveness, as required by law as part of the FDA drug approval process. Which means of course that in the US, almost every American is receiving treatment every day from a drug which is unapproved by the FDA. This in turn means that doctors and dentists prescribing fluoride compounds to patients are committing an illegal act and that the fluoridation of public water supplies is medical experimentation without the target population's consent. If fluoride compounds are, as their proponents exhort, the greatest things to hit the teeth of humanity since fresh water, then why hasn't the FDA approved these 'valuable' compounds? We'll find out as we proceed.

THE GRAND RAPIDS/MUSKEGON FLUORIDE TRIALS
One of the first trials carried out in an attempt to prove fluoridation's effectiveness in reducing dental decay occurred in America in 1945 and involved the cities of Grand Rapids and Muskegon, Michigan. Grand Rapids' public water supply was fluoridated and Muskegon's was left alone to serve as the control. Within a couple of years, pro-fluoride advocates were clamouring that fluoridation was producing a 60% drop in dental caries in Grand Rapids when compared with those occurring in the city of Muskegon. The results were apparently so conclusive that this ten-year trial was halted after just five years when the authorities fluoridated Muskegon's water supplies.

Later however, the results of the trials were to reveal disturbing inconsistencies in the collection and reporting of the data. One graph shows that within one year, dental decay had declined 70.5% among six-year-olds in Grand Rapids, when studies were made of all 79 schools in the trial area. The reality is that the data used to start the trial included dental decay rates for all 79 schools, but from 1946 onwards, only the children from 25 hand-selected schools in the trial area were examined, giving rise to an apparent drop in decay rates. During the next three years, the dental decay rates actually rose by 65.2% among the 25 schools, indicating that fluoridation was having no effect in spite of the children (selectively chosen) having the apparent benefit of more years of fluoridation. The only 'reduction' in decay rates had occurred during the year of the selection process.

THE KINGSTON/NEWBURGH TRIAL
A similar US study was conducted with the cities of Kingston and Newburgh, located in New York State along the Hudson River. Newburgh was to be the fluoridated township and Kingston the unfluoridated control. Within ten years of the study inception in 1945, Public Health fluoridation supporters were claiming a 60% decline in dental decay occurring in Newburgh. Not revealed however was the fact that Newburgh parents and their children received free consultations on dental hygiene, advice on the boycotting of sweets and dental visits to remove dental plaque. Someone somewhere wanted Newburgh to succeed. Kingston however was completely ignored and received no such advantages. Later it became apparent that not all the Newburgh children had been selected. Another bout of selective reporting had occurred.

After announcing their victory with fluoridation however, the Public Health Service proponents of fluoridation received a major slap in the face. For, during the tenth year of Newburgh's fluoridation, an independent study of the two townships had been underway, carried out by Dr John A Forst, Professor at the University of the State of New York and chief of the State Bureau of Health Services. He too studied both sets of school children and his results painted a disturbingly different picture:

Kingston Newburgh
Enrolled 5403 5119
Pupils Inspected 5303 (98%) 4959 (97%)
Pupils with Dental Defects 2209 (41.6%) 3139 (63.2%)
Pupils under Dental Treatment 1551 (29.2%) 2072 (41.7%)

These shocking results were too clear to be ignored. After ten years of fluoridation and when nearly all the children of both townships were examined, it was evident that Newburgh contained more children with dental defects and more children undergoing dental treatment than in Kingston, a township left to its own water devices. To this day, Kingston remains unfluoridated, having vigorously rejected fluoridation at the conclusion of the trials. Later, a follow-up study in 1989 would show that after almost four decades of fluoridation, schoolchildren in Newburgh had no less dental decay than in unfluoridated Kingston.

Research by the UK's Safe Water Society yielded similar research results:

1. A US trial studying 50,000 inhabitants across 68 US cities in 1986-7 showed that fluoride increased tooth decay.
2. 400,000 children were studied in India and calcium and fluoride levels were measured. The study found that fluoride increases tooth decay while calcium reduces caries.
3. 21,000 Japanese children were studied in 1972. Fluoride was found to increase tooth decay.
4. After 20 years of water fluoridation in Seattle, Washington State, authorities reported an unprecedented dental crisis in the north-western American city.
5. 22,000 children were studied in Tucson, Arizona. Fluoride was found to increase tooth decay.
6. In 1987, Alan S Gray, DDS, FRCD(C), Director of the Division of Dental Health Services or the British Columbia Ministry of Health, called for a re-examination of the relevance of fluoride compounds in the Canadian public water supply when it was learned that tooth decay rates in British Columbia (where only 11% of the population use fluoridated water) were lower than those of other Canadian provinces with fluoridation rates of 40%-70%.
7. In December 1993, a Canadian Dental Association committee, known as the Canadian Workshop on the Evaluation of Current Recommendations Concerning Fluorides, concluded that consuming fluoride does not prevent tooth decay or reduce its incidence. The panel also found that children exposed to fluoride compounds risked dental fluorosis.

Leading fluoridation opponent John R Lee MD states that the trial results the dental and chemical industries invariably use are always misreported and techniques employed to give the public false impressions of fluoridation's supposed efficacy and harmlessness. These tactics include the 'percent reduction' method instead of 'rate of change of decay'. This data-manipulation strategy was exposed in the Rand Corporation report of 1981, in which author Craig B Foch states that fluoride studies "suffer from poor experimental design and from analysis plans that largely ignore the possible effects of other factors in tooth decay."

Lee reports that doctors and researchers are often in for a bumpy ride if they question fluoride's efficacy and challenge its alleged safety and cost-effectiveness:

"When one looks in the dental literature for evidence that fluoridation reduces dental costs, the results are equally dismal. In all studies in which selection bias is not evident [i.e. where the data hasn't been fudged], no reduction in dental costs is found. When Dr Gray, a dental health officer in Vancouver, BC, Canada, examined [the records of] all schoolchildren in British Columbia, he found no dental benefit from fluoridation. Upon reporting this, he was demoted and obliged to desist in making any comment about it."

Delivering the target dose of 1.0mg fluoride compounds to each citizen every day costs money - and for what benefit, against what risk? Even supposing one believes in the efficacy of fluorides for dental health, against all reason and scientific evidence, why fluoridate the water supply? Why not just pass out the tablets? In other words, why deliberately spend more? According to one public water supply co-ordinator, the annual projected budget for fluoridating the water supply of Tacoma, Washington State was estimated to be $125,000 in 1991. The cost of supplying fluoride tablets to the under 12s would be a mere $1.20 per thousand 1.0mg tablets in comparison. So why the fixation on medicating the water supplies? We will examine the reasons in the conclusion of this report.

In May 1992, Dr William Marcus, the senior science advisor and chief toxicologist with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, was fired from his post after publicly disclosing his frank comments concerning mass medicating the public without its consent and the appalling hazards of fluoridation. Marcus was concerned that the results of US Government studies on fluoridation, completed in 1984 and a second in 1987, were kept from the American public. After a long fight, Dr Marcus was reinstated on 28th February 1995. "If this were any other chemical but fluoride," Marcus commented, "there would be a call for the immediate cessation of its use. It shows potential for great harm."

ARE FLUORIDE COMPOUNDS
DANGEROUS TO PUBLIC HEALTH?
The evidence shows that fluoride compounds, especially those examined in this chapter, are harmful to humanity over the long-term. Undeniably fluorides used in the drinking water supplies are a toxic, non-biodegradable, environmental pollutant, officially classified as a contaminant by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The two main culprits, as mentioned, are hexa(hydro)fluorosilicic acid and sodium silicofluoride. Shocking though it may be to contemplate, the reality is, these chemicals are simply hazardous industrial waste - a by-product from the manufacture of phosphate fertilisers, gleaned from this industry's pollution scrubbers - which is largely disposed of in our public water supply. Hexafluorosilicic acid, the most commonly used fluoridation additive, contains other toxic substances including lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium and arsenic. Sodium fluoride, beloved of toothpaste manufacturers, is a hazardous waste compound from the aluminium smelting process, and is also used in water fluoridation schemes, although less frequently than the previously mentioned two compounds. Sodium fluoride is often given to children in tablet or liquid form and is almost always added to toothpastes in concentrations of between 500-1500 ppm.

Interestingly, Proctor and Gamble, the manufacturers of Crest toothpaste and an ardent supporter of sodium fluoride, were reported to have admitted that a family size tube of their world famous toothpaste contained enough sodium fluoride to kill a 20-30lb child if ingested. Warning labels appear on American toothpaste packaging advising that in the event of ingestion, the victim should seek a poisons control centre immediately. This ridiculous notice is made more of a sham by the fact that you don't have to swallow poisons like this for them to become absorbed, IF THEY'RE EVEN UNDER THE TONGUE, THEY'RE IN THE BLOODSTREAM.

This author has met several elderly gentlemen in the UK who recalled one way conscripts used to attempt to dodge the National Service draft in the 1950s. They would consume half a tube of toothpaste, which subsequently made the recruit extremely ill and unfit to serve.

Government and industry have long denied that fluoride additives are toxic waste from industry, preferring to paint a picture of sanitised, benevolent chemicals guarding our teeth day and night administered through the 'safe' water we drink. The reality is, even those within government ranks have broken cover and confirmed the source of these chemicals. Tom Reeves, for example, a water engineer with America's Centers for Disease Control (CDC), controversially admitted in January 2001 that these fluoride additives were waste emissions from heavy industry:

"All of the fluoride chemicals used in the U.S. for water fluoridation - sodium fluoride, sodium fluorosilicate, and fluorosilicic acid - are by-products of the phosphate fertilizer industry. The manufacturing process produces two by-products: (1) a solid, calcium sulphate (sheetrock, CaSo4); and (2) the gases, hydrofluoric acid (HF) and silicon tetrafluoride (SiF4). A simplified explanation of this manufacturing process follows: Apatite rock, a calcium mineral found in central Florida, is ground up and treated with sulfuric acid, producing phosphoric acid and the two by-products, calcium sulphate and the two gas emissions. Those gases are captured by product recovery units (scrubbers) and condensed into 23% fluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6). Sodium fluoride and sodium fluorosilicate are made from this acid."

Research highlighting the adverse effects of fluoride compounds on human beings is troublingly abundant. Fluoride's beastliness was summed up in a terse statement issued by Dr Dean Burk of the National Cancer Institute: "Fluoride causes more human cancer death, and causes it faster than any other chemical." As far back as October of 1944, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an editorial stating: "… that the use of drinking water containing as little as 1.2 to 3 parts per million of fluoride will cause such developmental disturbances in bones as osteosclerosis, spondylosis, and osteoporosis, as well as goitre." The Safe Water Foundation filed Freedom on Information Act requests to obtain the results of government studies. Dr John Yiamouyiannis (president of the Safe Water Foundation) said "All tests came out positive." (establishing a fluoride-cancer link)

Dr John Lee, who was chairman of the Environmental Health Committee of his local medical association in Marin County, California, went head-to-head with authorities on the fluoride issue. According to Lee, the county had continually pushed water fluoridation on the local ballot until it passed by a slim margin of one per cent. Lee states: "[Fluoride] is a toxic waste product of many types of industry; for instance, glass production, phosphate fertilizer production and many others. They would have no way to dispose of the tons of fluoride waste they produce unless they could find some use for it, so they made up this story about it being good for dental health. Then they can pass it through everyone's bodies and into the sewer."

Lee's comments on their own would be shocking and dismissive. The problem is, hundreds of specialists, doctors and biochemists have been saying the same thing for years. And sure enough, when the curtains were finally pulled back and the veil of secrecy lifted, federal research indeed discovered that fluoride caused cancer in humans and animals. NCI's Dr Burk stated: "It is concluded that artificial fluoridation appears to cause or induce about 20-30 excess cancer deaths for every 100,000 persons exposed per year after about 15-20 years." Incredibly to this day, not only is fluoridation of the water supply and toothpaste still permitted, US federal goals require mandatory fluoridation of the water supply in 75% of all US cities by the close of the year 2000! Yet….

• Fluoride accumulates in the body like lead, inflicting its damage over long periods of time. Fluoride is more toxic than lead, and just slightly less toxic than arsenic. Lead is given a toxicity rating of 3, whereas fluoride's level is 4. Under US law, administered and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, the maximum allowable lead in drinking water is 0.015mg/litre. With fluoride however it is 4.0mg/litre, OVER 350 TIMES THE PERMITTED LEAD LEVEL.
• Fluoride compounds initially cause dental fluorosis, a chalky mottling of the tooth enamel, leading to brittle and vulnerable teeth. Fluorosis is a permanent malformation of tooth enamel indicating an alteration in bone growth. Further symptoms of chronic fluoride poisoning may include constipation, excess gas and other gastrointestinal disturbances, chronic boils or rashes, peeling, shrivelled skin between your toes or brittle, easy-to-break nails. Symptoms of extreme fluoride poisoning may include chronic fatigue syndrome, skin problems, bleeding gums, excess saliva, hair loss, edema swelling in the lower extremities, mental problems, kidney disease, cancer and death.
• "The fluoride dose prescribed by doctors and the dose administered without prescription to everyone in community drinking water is EXPECTED to cause dental fluorosis in 10% of children. Actual Public Health Service figures show that 30% of children in fluoridated localities have dental fluorosis, and 10% of children in non-fluoridated areas now have fluorosis." Even citizens living in non-fluoridated areas are expected to ingest amounts in excess of 1.0mg fluoride compounds per day through toothpaste use and consumption of food products manufactured with fluoridated water. Citizens living in fluoridated communities may expect to be exposed to 5.0mg a day or more.
• Medical research shows that hip fractures are 20-40% higher in fluoridated communities.
• Fluorides are used in laboratory work to inhibit enzyme activity. Fluoride compounds have the same effect in the human body, accumulating in the skeleton structure over long periods of time. Fluoride poisoning is long-term and progressive.
• The chemicals injected into public water supplies to elevate fluoride levels are raw industrial waste. The two most commonly used additives are hexafluorosilicic acid and sodium silicofluoride, toxic by-products of aluminium smelting and phosphate fertiliser production.
• Fluoridated water increases corrosion and leaching of lead from water mains and plumbing.
• About 1% of the fluoridated water used from public supplies is actually ingested by the public. The remainder is used for sewage, washing, industry and agriculture. This had led to the belief by industry that fluoridated industrial waste may be safely disposed of in this manner with little or no harm to the public. However, fluoride levels in the sewer effluent of fluoridated water systems are not monitored or controlled. Fish have been found to be poisoned by fluoride emissions at and below the 'acceptable' levels emitted by sewer effluent.

The American Medical Association (AMA) issued a news release entitled "Study Links Fluoride to Rare Bone Cancer" on 8th December 1993. This study also showed that hip fractures were 27% higher in women, and 41% higher in men in the fluoridated city featured in the tests. Hip fractures (potentially fatal to the elderly) are linked to fluoridated water.

In 1984, Japanese researchers began to close in on fluoride's ability to cause cellular damage, thus compelling the body to commence a healing process, possibly resulting in non-terminating stem-cell trophoblast, or cancer. Dr Takeki Tsutsui of the Nippon Dental College stated that "fluoride caused not only genetic damage but was also capable of transforming normal cells into cancer cells." Research journalist Val Valerian sums up the disturbing conclusions of Tsutsui's studies:

"In Dr Tsutsui's study, the level of fluoride used was the same level that the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) suggested should be used in a study to determine whether fluoridation of public water supplies causes cancer. The level of fluoride deemed 'safe' in the United States, 1 part per million (ppm), was found by Tsutsui to produce cancer in cells."

Research completed in 1989 by the National Toxicology Program (NTP), an agency of the US Public Health Service, found a statistically significant dose-related increase of osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in male rats. Thyroid and liver cancers were also found.

Amazingly, while the evidence of fluoride's ability to harm continued to mount, so too did the American Dental Association and the National Research Council's continued endorsement of fluoride's overwhelming 'benefits' to society, the latter even denying that fluoride was carcinogenic to laboratory animals. Four years later in 1992 however, the New Jersey State Department of Health published the results of a trial in which six times the incidence of bone cancers were being found in fluoridated communities.

TROUBLE AT THE WELL
Notwithstanding the shiny, happy faces at the ADA and NIDR over fluoride's 'incalculable' contribution to humanity's health, malfunctions in the mechanics of city water fluoridation routinely cause predictable mayhem and tragedy. In 1992, fluoride feed machinery operating on one of two community wells failed in the township of Hooper Bay, Alaska, resulting in the death of one man and the poisoning of 296 other citizens. On 16th July 1993, a water filter failed to remove the fluoride compounds in Chicago's drinking water before it was used in the treatment of three kidney dialysis patients at the University of Chicago Hospital. All three patients died. Six others suffered acute toxicity reactions after undergoing dialysis with fluoridated water. On November 16th 1993, lethal levels of fluoride compounds up to 70 ppm were found in the public water system of Middletown, Maryland.

FLUORIDATION
MASS-MEDICATION WITHOUT CONSENT?
Water fluoridation has been described as the widest mass-medication program in the history of humanity. That this procedure is occurring without the informed consent of the citizenry is the chief ethical issue that has driven opposition to fluoridation since World War 2. Researcher Janet Nagel summarises:

"That nearly all physicians, dentists and other members of the dominant health professions have come to hold such uncritical faith in fluoride as a tooth decay remedy raises serious questions about the content and quality of their training as scientists and practitioners. That so many professional leaders and government officials have been willing to falsify or obscure scientific data in their zeal to maintain the fluoridation pretense raises concerns that are even more far-reaching."

During the first four decades of the 1900s, global industrial output rose dramatically. During two world wars, industry raised its production profile many orders of magnitude in order to satisfy the unique demand for munitions, armaments, tanks and aircraft with heavy industrial production. Agriculture too was honed to a knife-edge. All available hands were put to the land in order to ensure the continuance of food output to beleaguered nations.

Both heavy manufacturing and the agro-chemical industries produce large quantities of fluoride compounds as toxic waste products. During the course of these activities, as early as the 1930s, fluoride in industrial emissions was increasingly regarded as a major pollutant. After the war, the major industrial nations began exporting fertilisers and heavy industrial goods to lesser-developed countries resulting in their gross national output expanding exponentially. By 1965, President Lyndon Johnson's Science Advisory Committee was naming fluoride compounds as one of America's four leading pollutants.

Ironically, since water fluoridation was proposed in the 1940s, very little has been heard from the establishment regarding fluoride as an environmental pollutant. Clearly, the chemical and heavy manufacturing industries had a growing problem on their hands with raw toxic fluoride wastes, which also contained many metals harmful to human and animal health, such as cadmium, beryllium, lead, mercury and aluminium. Industry, faced with millions of dollars in operating costs to dispose of raw toxic waste in an acceptable manner, found themselves considering ways in which the problem could be dissolved, a little at a time, with little or no cost to their margins. Janet Nagel remarks:

"Laws controlling the disposal of toxic wastes do not permit the industries creating these fluorides to release them into the environment. However, the 'laundering' process of fluoridation allows these same toxins to be spread indiscriminately on lawns and gardens, incorporated into processed foods, and released by the ton into water and air, in sewer effluent and sludge.

The original promotion of fluoridation as a remedy for tooth decay was funded by the aluminum industry. Andrew Mellon, former Chairman of the Aluminum Corporation of America (ALCOA), was Secretary of the Treasury when the US Public Health Service was an agency of the Treasury Department. The research purporting to demonstrate fluoride effectiveness and safety was funded by ALCOA, Reynolds Metals, and other heavy fluoride emitters."

The 1970s produced other quandaries for the fluoridation problem. Research was now clearly stating a long-term harmful link which few could deny. Water suppliers were becoming concerned at the high costs they would incur in having to remove fluorides from the water they supplied to the citizenry. Fluorides are not easily removed from water. Charcoal/carbon filters remove chlorine but not fluorides. Reverse osmosis or distillation procedures are required effectively to strip the water of fluoride contaminants. To overcome this problem of cost facing suppliers, the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1988 actually made the decision to increase the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for fluorides from 2.0ppm to 4.0ppm.

The charge of mass medication of the population can justifiably be made since fluoride is, by the admission of its proponents, pharmacologically active in supposedly preventing dental caries. Many of the trials quoted in this chapter demonstrate quite inarguably that fluoride compounds are also pharmacologically active in doing human and animal systems harm. Even the Food & Drug Administration wishes the whole fluoride embarrassment would quietly go away, having classified water fluoride compounds as 'unapproved new drugs' and obstinately left it at that. On the 16th March 1979, a surreptitious changing of the Federal Register occurred on page 16006. All paragraphs stating that fluoride compounds were 'essential or probably essential' were deleted by the FDA.

There are not many who will dispute the fact that fluoride compounds in amounts of 1.0 ppm (as advocated by fluoride proponents) do not produce changes in tooth enamel structure and bone formation. The point being made by fluoride opponents is that the citizens themselves should have the right to decide whether or not to take fluoride supplementation. At the present time, there is no regulation as to how much fluoride any given individual is taking in, due to varied water consumption, age, occupation, diet and lifestyle. This has led to obvious concerns over health risks which have failed to disperse over the last fifty years, which only serve to underline more forcibly the unassailable conclusion that there are no known essential uses for fluoride compounds in medicine or dentistry.

As one last example of how even experts in the field of chemistry and medicine have become divided on this issue over the years, the following Nobel Prize winners have either expressed reservations about fluoridation, or have outright opposed it. They are:

Adolf Butenandt (Chemistry, 1939)
Arvid Carlsson (Chemistry, 2000)
Hans von Euler-Chelpin (Chemistry, 1929)
Walter Rudolf Hess (Medicine, 1949)
Corneille Jean-François Heymans (Medicine, 1938)
Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (Chemistry, 1956)
Joshua Lederberg (Medicine, 1958)
William P. Murphy (Medicine, 1934)
Giulio Natta (Chemistry 1963)
Sir Robert Robinson (Chemistry, 1947)
Nikolai Semenov (Chemistry, 1956)
James B. Sumner (Chemistry, 1946)
Hugo Theorell (Medicine, 1955)
Artturi Virtanen (Chemistry, 1945)

NOTEPAD
Let us finish this chapter by listing the conclusions of one of fluoride's long-time antagonists, Dr John Lee:

FACT 1
Fluoridation is cancer-causing, cancer-promoting, and is linked to increased cancer rates in humans.
FACT 2
Hip fracture rates are substantially higher in people residing in fluoridated communities.
FACT 3
Dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of fluoride poisoning, affects from 8% to 51% of the children drinking fluoridated water.
FACT 4
All of the recent large-scale studies on fluoridation and tooth decay show that fluoridation does not reduce tooth decay.
FACT 5
Fluoride drops and tablets are not approved by the US Food & Drug Administration as safe and effective. On the contrary, fluoride tablets and drops have been shown to be ineffective in reducing tooth decay and to cause skin eruptions, gastric distress, headache and weakness, which disappear when fluoride use is discontinued. Dental fluorosis on the other hand, is a permanent disfigurement.

Under Your Skin

A Florida company has announced plans to develop a service that would allow consumers to pay for merchandise using microchips implanted under their skin.

Applied Digital Solutions CEO Scott Silverman said he believes the company's VeriChip -- a subdermal microchip that uses radio frequency signals to broadcast an identification number to a scanner -- could someday replace credit cards.
Under Silverman's plan, rather than swiping a bank card to make purchases, micro-chipped customers would scan themselves using special readers. http://ln.doubleclick.net/jump/wn.ln/technology;h=net;!category=adult;sz=300x250;
ptile=2;pos=1ord=950998005target=
Although the biochip payment plan may strike some people as a bit X Files-ish, financial transactions using radio frequency identification, or RFID, are already commonplace in some areas.

ExxonMobil's Speedpass, for example, is a key-chain fob containing an RFID tag that is linked to the holder's credit card; users wave the fob in front of a scanner integrated into a gas pump, and their fuel purchase is charged to their credit card account within seconds. Recently more than 400 McDonald's restaurants in the greater Chicago area started using the Speedpass system to allow customers to more conveniently buy their burgers and fries.

Meanwhile, MasterCard is testing an RFID-enabled credit card called PayPass. Like the Speedpass, the revamped card uses RFID to access the user's financial information and obviates the need for signatures or interactions with store clerks. In an interview with USA Today last week, a senior MasterCard executive said the company is considering integrating its RFID technology into other items, such as pens or earrings.

"Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything -- someday, maybe even under the skin," the executive said.

Which is where the VeriChip folks come in. RFID-enabled pens or jewelry could be easily lost or stolen, but RFID-enabled humans are bit harder to tamper with.

"We are the only ones out there offering implantable ID technology," said Silverman, who announced the "VeriPay" service during a speech Friday at ID World 2003 in Paris. "We believe the market will evolve to use our product."

Although he acknowledged that a final product may be a few years away, Silverman invited banks and credit card companies to collaborate in developing commercial applications using VeriPay. In the near future, Silverman said, the chip could be used as an added antifraud device in financial transactions -- ATM users could enter their PIN and get scanned, for example.

Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant, said one of the biggest hurdles facing the VeriPay system might be the squeamishness of potential users.

"VeriPay will offer some conveniences over RFID credit cards, but I think most people will be creeped out with the idea of putting little radio transmitters in their bodies," Smith said.

Meanwhile, Applied Digital has attracted scorn from some fundamentalist Christians, who believe that VeriChip is the fabled "mark of the beast" of biblical lore. According to the book of Revelation, Satan will someday force people to "receive a mark" on their hands or foreheads in order to buy or sell.

"This is a gigantic step toward the mark of the beast," said Gary Wohlscheid, whose website, These Last Days Ministries, keeps tabs on what many Christians believe are the signs of a coming religious Armageddon. His site is one of dozens that link VeriChip to the apocalyptic prophecy.

Applied Digital officials say such concern is unfounded because people are chipped voluntarily.

The VeriPay service is one of several the company has launched to promote its product. Applied Digital has positioned its microchip as an anti-kidnapping device (VeriKid), emergency ID system (VeriMed) and as a way to control access to secure buildings (VeriGuard). www.mercola.com

Books
The ABC's of Disease
Cancer, Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth
Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century
B17 Metabolic Therapy - a Technical Manual
Health Wars
Food for Thought
Plague, Pestilence and the Pursuit of Power
Wake up to Health in the 21st Century
Ten Minutes to Midnight
Vigilance
The Mind Game
Toxic Bite
World Without AIDS
The Essiac Handbook

Video Tapes (PAL format only)
Health Wars
Healthy at 100!

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Maibag
Some feedback from our customers

"Phillip Day's recent tour of Australia covered the capital cities and a few more in-between. Talk about a walk-up call…" - John, S., Geelong, Victoria, Australia

"All worldwide health freedom organisations need combining." - Hof, Victoria, Australia

"Love the controversy: keep supplying the proof please! Keep me uncomfortable." - Tim J., Queensland, Australia

"I recently attended a Phillip Day seminar and I'm currently reading, Cancer - Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth". I have to say I'm very shaken at this stage as I believe every word of it. I'd be keen to assist in spreading the word." - Michael A., Victoria, Australia

"I hate upside-down thinking and want to be part of a group that thinks the same way as I do. I'm glad to have discovered the CTM websites." - Ms J. D., Herts, UK

"Very excited to find out about this site and the information it contains. It seems we have been lied to for too long so the truth is so refreshing. Thank you for doing this so that we can make informed choices about things that really matter." - Ms Cathryn H., Victoria, Australia

"I recently attended a seminar by Phillip Day in Brisbane. I am writing this email to lend my support to his beliefs. I had a life scare about three years ago when I was diagnosed HIV positive, then one month later I was diagnosed HIV negative. I found it hard to understand how this could happen, so I went searching for answers, and on a holiday to Perth, came across a little stall in the market advertising Phillip's book, World Without AIDS. I have since been inspired to write my own story, which is so much more than the scare. I believe if I had accepted the first diagnosis as accurate I would not be here today. Please pass on my support to Phillip. If he would like a copy of my book I can be contacted at this email address." - Carmel T., Australia

"I don't know who receives these emails, whether they go on to Phillip Day or not, however I wish to say that members of our Travel Club (we are charter bus operators) went to the talk at the Carlton in Auckland last Friday evening. Firstly, what an accomplished speaker Phillip Day is! Our group comprised ages from 22yrs to 80 yrs. 19 of us in all…. The group we took were blown away.

I purchased some books and have started with the B17 book. I get so upset and excited with what I read I often can't sleep at night when I put the book down! And to top it off I read in the Herald yesterday and today how Annette King is going to vote to have the same regulations on supplements as the Aussies!

Someone phoned Leighton Smith on Newstalk ZB yesterday re the benefits of particular supplements he has been taking and how criminal it was that he may not be able to purchase them any more, and was smartly shut down by Leighton in case he said anything derogatory about the drug industry! I stood there shaking my head when Leighton kept saying that these things could not be proven." - Jan D., Paparoa, New Zealand

"I attended the Phillip Day seminar on the Gold Coast, I also attended his previous one there. Both times I found them informative and eye-opening. I can be a bit of a sceptic myself, so I do understand how so many people just can't believe the Government would allow all this to happen but I now believe it to be true. I do my best to inform people of the truth even though some still wish to stay ignorant." -Mrs Jill D., Queensland, Australia

"Thanks for the great information and keep up the good work" - Ms Vivi W., Queensland, Australia

"After having three different cancers and chemotherapy and 10 cancer-related operations, I am no longer the person I used to be. When I think that this could all have been avoided and knowing what I now know, I develop a rage within me and tell anyone who listens in the hope that they will not be put through what I have been through, particularly when it is contradictive and unnecessary." - Ms Susan S., Queensland, Australia

"My husband has had radiation for mouth cancer and I have since found out that it could have been avoided and I'm MAD !!" - Mrs Julie B., Queensland, Australia

"I am particularly keen to support the campaign to prevent the EU and the pharmaceutical conglomerates removing people's rights to use nutritional supplements. As someone who has been consistently let down by the mainstream medical practitioners, I rely on supplements to keep me well. The prospect of having mainstream 'wisdom' as my only option is truly frightening." - Ms Linda L., West Glamorgan, UK.

"Only just beginning to look into this subject. Need to be convinced of the truth behind the theories. Am quite sceptical at present, but open-minded and keen to read the facts." - Ms Maggie M., Hampshire, UK

"Eager to make a difference in the medical world. Will be entering a medical career from next year. Excited about the information. Very passionate and will be starting a website on health. Looking to support the truth." - Mr Hoe B., Victoria, Australia

"I'm joining! Say no more." - Mr Charles R., Western Australia, Australia

"Completely support the Campaign for Truth in Medicine and the exposure of the pharmaceutical companies' control of the medical system. There is no more morality in the pharmaceutical system than morality in a paid hit-man." - John L., Western Australia, Australia

"Thank you for being so honest, open and informative in plain, simple English. A fellow student friend from where I study, MCNM, Melbourne, recommended your work and seminar last year. I couldn't attend this year due to studies but I am looking forward to your video tour and reading your books. I have already forwarded on your details to many friends." -Mrs Christina S., Victoria, Australia

"I think what you're doing is fantastic. Congratulations to everyone involved!" - Ms Melissa B., Western Australia, Australia

"The information I have read about has already changed my life. I look forward to any further information I can use to help change the life of others for the better. Thank you for your dedication." - Mrs D. H., South Australia, Australia

"I strongly believe there should be more truth in medicine. We don't need the rubbish that the drug companies push." - Mr Brian V., South Australia, Australia

"I'm the president of Rhode Island Association of Health Underwriters. I've been aware of the problem in this country that helping sick people get well is secondary to gouging their health insurance to make money from their illnesses for over 10 years - almost as long as I've been in the health business. I've learned through some of my clients and through my own experiences that for chronic and degenerative health problems, drugs and surgery only worsen these problems. I fail to see why insurance companies continue to authorize these horrendously expensive treatments for cancer for example, that are scientifically proven NOT TO WORK, when less expensive, more effective therapies are available.

There would be NO healthcare crisis in our country if people knew the truth. Instead of the mantra in Washington being, "Pay for prescription drugs for seniors" it should be, "Get seniors healthy enough so they can get off their prescriptions".

I'd be happy to help in any way I can to help Americans become better informed. One thing they'll need to do is to stop putting so much faith in the conventional medical establishment which they've been so brainwashed into thinking is the be-all and end-all of healthcare." - Ms Emily H., Rhode Island, USA.

"I am a taxpayer supported to help Illinois companies to export. I am working on a PhD in Natural Health and Holistic Nutrition. Your material is great. Many thanks." - Ms Tess M., Illinois, USA

"Amazing talk, I was never very happy about putting chemicals into myself or children's bodies and now, having seen my daughter-in-law's fight (three times) against cancer and finding out by pure chance about apricot kernels, knowing that she is still with us today because she was wise enough to take the kernels with a proper diet and has now been given the all clear, I would like other people to be given the chance to dictate their own destiny by being told the truth about the medicines they are forced to take without being given the choice of alternatives." - Mrs Eleanor R., Western Australia, Australia

"Just a fantastic organisation, thank you; keep up the good work. Also I cannot believe that so much mis-information and lies exist in the conventional medical world, which they can get away with. It's totally wrong." - Mrs Margie D., Christchurch, New Zealand

"I feel that the world changes in health and well being are happening and from the information that has come to my attention thus far about CTM, I envisage that many like minded people and organizations in support of the changes will assist the current and future changes to take effect faster and more efficiently. I thank you as an individual and as a business person for the awe inspiring effort you put into the CTM mission." - Didi B., Western Australia, Australia

"Keep up the good work Phillip AND you guys working behind the scenes." - Jeff C., Western Australia, Australia

"Make your facts known to medical journals, magazines and help people to recognise that there are companies who are doing the correct products to help us and together combat the wrong things which are destroying mankind. Please keep up the good work." - Edmund K., Western Australia, Australia

"I have attended two Phillip Day lectures so far to which I have brought a number of friends. We have all enjoyed these very much and have taken on board much information for a more informed and healthier life style. I am looking forward to the Brisbane presentation." - Eva M., Queensland, Australia

"I was very impressed with Phillip Day's book. I read 'World Without Cancer' years ago and have been telling my family and friends about apricot kernels ever since. I've also written a few letters to the newspaper. I want to get the word out and stop people suffering from cancer." - Margaret Hall. Hastings, New Zealand

"Right on target - keep up the good work." - Doug E., North Carolina, USA

"Fantastic! I want to become an active member now!!" - Maddie F. Western Australia, Australia

"I was at your Revesby club talk... thank you for the great and down to earth, easy to understand information. I brought along my mother-in-law, Margaret, with several life threatening health issues. She not only did NOT leave her seat during part one but asked which books we could buy to further our knowledge. When we got home she talked into the wee small hours of the changes she wished to make with my help (I am a classically trained herbalist). So we are now embarking on a new journey of health and hope… many thanks."- Liz S. Western Australia, Australia

"Excellent speaker to communicate concerns."- Donna C., Western Australia, Australia

"There should be more of you! Breed! Start a political party!" - Stephanie C., Western Australia, Australia

"Great research, great presenter. Great! Great! Great!" - Joy L., Western Australia, Australia

"Very interesting and thought provoking." - Emma Y., Western Australia, Australia

"Phillip Day changed my life and the life of my children. His book opened my eyes. Thank you." - Karen S., Western Australia, Australia

"Excellent seminar. Loved it." - Ciel J., Western Australia, Australia

"Finally, this has made me believe in human integrity again!" - Sharor A., Western Australia, Australia

"You're a champ!" - Felicity P., Western Australia, Australia

"We need to make health choices a natural part of the world's collective consciousness." - Joanne D., Western Australia, Australia