International Fluoride Information Network
IFIN BULLETIN: IFIN 837:
News from the UK.
September 7, 2003
by Prof. Paul Connett
Dear All,
The debate on the Water Bill in the House of Commons is shaping up to be a big show down between the well-healed British Fluoridation Society (which by a peculiar British circumstance is actually funded by the UK taxpayers to the tune of nearly $200,000 a year) and well-informed citizens who have kept the threat of fluoridation at bay for many years (despite perennial government pressures, the percentage drinking fluoridated water in the UK remains at about 10%).
Below we print the letters which appeared in the Sunday Observer (September 7) and this is followed by an urgent appeal from Rudolf Zeigelbecker, whose analysis has played such a prominent role in keeping fluoridation out of many European countries. Jane Jones has already forwarded this appeal to all the MPs, but if any of our readers have personal contacts with one or more MPs please send it to them again with your own personal note.
If the House of Commons votes to fluoridate the rest of the UK, this will not be the end of the story there, because the Green Party and others are all set to fight this in every locale where the issue is raised, however it will be a huge set back for the rest of us, who will have the "vote" added to the list of (PR) evidence that fluoridation is "safe and effective". Such evidence doesn't have much of an impact on those willing to read the literature, but it works wonders on those who aren't. Fingers crossed for Monday.
You can read more UK media coverage at http://www.fluoridealert.org
Paul Connett.
PS Please send a note to Jane Jones of the National Pure Water Association wishing her all the best for tomorrow. Her address is: jane@npwa.freeserve.co.uk
The Observer, Sunday 07 September 2003
Right to be angry about poison
in the water
The big issue: Fluoridation
Letters
People are right to be angry about plans to fluoridate water supplies (News, last week). Under the European Convention on Human Rights and Medicine, a patient must give consent to medication, and be free to withdraw consent at any time. Fluoridation destroys that right.
Evidence around the world suggests fluoridation does not reduce tooth decay, and many European countries abandoned the policy years ago. Yet the Government seems determined to fluoridate our water supplies without telling us.
Martyn Shrewsbury
Health spokesman, Green Party, Swansea
***
The fluoride used in water fluoridation is not pharmaceutical grade but
toxic waste from phosphate fertiliser factory chimneys which is registered
as a poison under the 1972 Poisons Act. It is more poisonous than lead
and only slightly less poisonous than arsenic.
Health Minister Hazel Blears said those who objected could use filters or buy bottled water. To remove fluoride needs a plumbed-in reverse osmosis unit costing hundreds of pounds. Bottled water is expensive, heavy to carry and creates plastic waste. Bottled water would have to be used for cooking, too, since fluoride in water gets more concentrated when boiled.
A. Wills
Ruislip, Middlesex
***
We expected the data pointing to the dangers of fluoride to lead to the practice being stopped after a 30-year trial. It is with disbelief that we learn the Government is trying to fluoridate the whole country.
Cynthia Bagchi
Bedford Allergy Support Group
***
Sheila Jones claims 'fluoride is completely safe'. Yet the issue at stake is a change in legislation permitting the Government - or rather the taxpayer - to indemnify water companies against liability for illnesses caused when the Government forces them into administering this unpopular and undemocratic mass medication.
Shanti Mahan
London N19
***
Basel in Switzerland stopped water fluoridation because it found absolutely no improvement. Many studies show no difference in decay rates. Even if it made a difference it would still be fraudulent, disposing of highly toxic waste from the fertiliser industry by trickling it into the water supply.
Matthew Parkes
Dublin, Ireland
_______________________________________________________________
Very urgent
Last Minute Open Letter to All Members of the British Parliament and to the British Government
Re: Water Fluoridation: Warning!
I am an independent scientist, working for more than 30 years in the field of fluoridation. Science has no frontier and does not stop at frontiers.
In many European states and cities the results of my research have helped to stop water fluoridation and other fluoridation methods. In the following years the dental caries decreased and did not increase as dentists prophesied.
Before a political decision about water fluoridation is made, a comprehensive and open substantial discussion of the problem by the scientific community is needed (outside of dentists' circles). I know the "Working group report "Water fluoridation and health" of the Medical Research Council (MRC)". The conclusion of the MRC about "benefits" of water fluoridation is false. There is no valid scientific evidence for "benefits". Dentists' "evidence" of "benefits" and "no risks" of water fluoridation is often "political evidence", not scientific evidence.
In trials in the US and other countries, the "Benefits" of water fluoridation were constructed by dentists.
The "benefits" were the result of other factors such as insufficient and inadmissible comparisons, different trends in the development of dental caries, differences in nutrition, permanent tooth eruption delayed by fluoride, changing experimental conditions during the experiments, inadequate models, bad design of experiments and statistical artefacts, false premises and false conclusions in the experiments, as well as other reasons. The results were influenced by confounding factors (see my letters: US Congress Records 99-316 O 1977, 275).
Dental and medical organisations such as the British Fluoridation Society (BFS), the British Dental Association (BDA), the American Dental Association (ADA), the International Dental Federation (FDI) and many public health officials have ignored the scientific critique and have censured publications which criticised water fluoridation and other methods of fluoridation especially since 1971. The FDI falsely informed the Director-General of WHO in his report "Fluoridation and Dental Health" (A22/P&B/7, 29 Nay 1969)about "benefits" prepared by the FDI.
Public Health Delegates (instructed by dentists' "fluoride experts") of several countries (ie A, BR, CDN, NL, NZ, Puerto Rico, CH, CSR, SF (FIN), J, IRL, UK, USA, USSR) reported "benefits" of fluoridation which do not exist. Thus the dissemination of the critique on water fluoridation was impeded, public and political opinion was manipulated.
Rudolf Ziegelbecker, eng
Peterstalstrasse 29, A-8042 Graz
Tel/Fax: +43 316 471128
e-mail: ziegelbecker.sen@utanet.at
Graz, 7. September 2003
