Dear All,

Below is a letter I emailed to the Rutland Herald making a couple of corrections to my op-ed piece written in response to Chuck Gregory’s personal attack on me and others. To my amazement I have been informed that Chuck Gregory works for the Vermont Department of Health!

In my op-ed piece I had made a mistake with the URL for my “50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation.” This correction allowed me to give readers the URL to a pdf file containing a Jan 20, 2006 letter I sent to John Moloney, the chairman of the Irish Parliamentary committee investigating this matter, and my 82 page critique of the Irish Health Department’s response to the 50 Reasons (which took them four and half years to compile!) http://www.fluorideaction.net/50Reasons.ireland.pdf I suspect most of our readers won’t have time to plow through most of my critique of the Irish response, but you might find the letter to John Moloney of interest.

Australian readers, however, might want to spend a little time on the full critique since I have just been informed by David McRae that the Australian Dental Association has lifted the Irish commentary (without acknowledgement to source - is this plagiarism?) and is using it on their web site, see: http://www.ada.org.au/_Resources.asp  (and scroll down). This seems fairly typical of the Australian “authorities” on this matter - they don’t do their own work on health issues but just continually cite other people’s, and sometimes even their dirty work. For example, Armfield (a pro-fluoridation dental researcher) even cited arch-propagandist Michael Easley on safety! Others have cited Stephen Barrett’s rabid attack on those opposed to fluoridation, even calling us “poison mongers”! But the propensity of the Australian authorities to cite others has yet to extend to their citing the NRC (2006) report - I wonder why!

Meanwhile, Chris Neurath - as well as David Horwood from Australia - has pointed out the slight of hand used by Dr. Robert Hall (see FAN bulletin #580) in his dismissal of the relevance of Bassin’s work on osteosarcoma to Australia. Chris writes:

Imelda Hitchcock from New Zealand, adds:

Paul Connett

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Letter to the Editor,

Rutland Herald.

Aptil 20, 2006.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for printing my commentary in response to Chuck Gregory’s attack on my credibility and integrity (April 18). I would like to clear up one unfortunate ambiguity in my reply. When I referred to working with Martha Bevis for several years on this issue - the issue I was referring to was the dangers of water fluoridation not the bizarre notion of “brain implants.” I have since been told that the only reason that Martha Bevis’s name appeared on the dubious web site cited by Mr. Gregory was because she was listed as the representative for Texans for Safe Drinking Water, which needless to say has nothing to do with “brain implants”.

I also made a mistake in the URL for my “50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation” paper, this can be found at http://www.FluorideAction.net/50reasons.htm. Those who click on the printer friendly version will find a brief history of how this statement came into being. Here also is the link to the Jan 20, 2006 letter I sent to John Moloney, the chairman of the Irish Parliamentary committee investigating this matter, and my 82 page critique of the Irish Health Department’s response to the 50 Reasons http://www.fluorideaction.net/50Reasons.ireland.pdf

Finally, although he was writing as a private citizen, I was shocked to find that Mr. Gregory works for the Vermont Department of Health. As such I would have expected a more professional response to this controversial issue instead of attacking opponents (myself and several others) so personally. The National Research Council  panel has shown that there are serious scientific arguments surrounding fluoride’s health effects at low levels and they need to be handled seriously and scientifically. The time is long past when promoters can get away with dismissing these arguments based on ad hominem attacks.

Paul Connett, PhD
Professor of Chemistry
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY 13617
315-229-5853 (office)
315-379-9200 (home)
Executive director
Fluoride Action Network
http://www.FluorideAction.net