FAN Bulletin 934
   
February 25, 2008
 
Dear All,

Thank you to the over 50 of you who have sent a message to the MPs and Ministers in Queensland. People have written from Australia, Canada, Ireland, the Isle of Man, New Zealand and from many states in the United States. If you haven’t sent a letter yet (calling upon MPs there not vote for mandatory fluoridation of the whole of Queensland on Feb 26) please do so. We have made it easier to send the letter, by creating an online letter which will automatically — with one click of the button — be sent to every minister in Queensland. You can access this letter. Please feel free to modify the letter as you deem fit, or send it as is.

You will need to sign this letter, however, by 7 pm Eastern Standard Time (US) TODAY to get your message there in time.

Thank You,
Paul Connett

p.s. Here is my Open letter to Premier Anna Bligh:

An Open Letter to Premier Bligh
Sunday Feb 24, 2008

Dear Premier Bligh,

You have probably never heard of me but I have spent the last 11 years of my scientific career reviewing the debate over fluoride’s toxicity and the fluoridation debate. I have presented my views on this matter in many fluoridating countries. I have visited Brisbane twice, once in 2004 and again in October 2007. On both occasions citizens on my behalf challenged fluoridation promoters in Queensland (including people in government, medicine or dentistry) to openly debate me on the practice. There were no takers. Worse, last October promoters tried to squash the use of the auditorium in the Princess Elizabeth Hospital where I was supposed to speak. Fortunately, this undemocratic effort was unsuccessful.

Shortly after I left Brisbane the elaborately orchestrated effort to force fluoridation on Queensland began. It had all the features of “manufactured consent” which would have done the former Soviet regime proud.

It is actions like yours which have led me to tell young people who are considering a Scientific career not to do so if they wanted to use science to inform public health policy. Such a goal will break their hearts. Am I exaggerating? Let’s look at what you and your advisors are ignoring:

1. The findings of the UK York Review in 2000 which found very little good research on this issue even after over 50 years of the practice. They found no grade A studies demonstrating a benefit and the grade B and C studies only found a minimal benefit which was swamped by the damage to the tooth enamel called dental fluorosis.

2. The findings of the US National Research Council  (”Fluoride in Drinking Water”) which after three and half year study published a 507 page report  ”Fluoride in Drinking Water” (with over 1000 references) which recommended that the EPA lower its drinking water standard from 4 ppm because it was unprotective of health. Any unbiased reader of this report must conclude that there is a totally inadequate margin of safety to protect all members of the population when considering that there is no control over the amount of water being drunk at 1ppm or the amount of fluoride people get from other sources.
 
3. Commentators in Australia (including the NHMRC) have dismissed this important body of research as having little relevance to the Australian situation. However, this is what the chairman of the report, Dr. John Doull, had to say about their findings:

“What the committee found is that we’ve gone with the status quo regarding fluoride for many years-for too long, really-and now we need to take a fresh look,” Doull says. “In the scientific community, people tend to think this is settled. I mean, when the U.S. surgeon general comes out and says this is one of the 10 greatest achievements of the 20th century, that’s a hard hurdle to get over.  But when we looked at the studies that have been done, we found that many of these questions are unsettled and we have much less information than we should, considering how long this [fluoridation] has been going on. I think that’s why fluoridation is still being challenged so many years after it began. In the face of ignorance, controversy is rampant.”

4. The NRC (2006) devoted a whole chapter on fluoride’s impact on the brain. There have now been over 40 animal studies which indicate that fluoride damages the brain and over a dozen studies which shows that fluoride lowers IQ in children. Most of these studies have come from China but in the last year there have been studies published from India, Iran and Mexico.

5. The fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2005 reported that one third of American kids had dental fluorosis an indicator of overexposure to fluoride.

6. The fact that the American Dental Association in November, 2006 recommended that parents not use fluoridated water to make up baby formula for infants less than one year of age.

7. The fact that the CDC has conceded in both 1999 and 2001 that the predominant benefit of fluoride as far as fighting tooth decay is TOPICAL and not SYSTEMIC. Thus it does not make sense to expose every tissue in the body to a known toxic substance when fluoridated toothpaste is universally available to deliver the relevant topical effect.

8. The fact that the level added to water ? 1 ppm ? while some claim is so small it couldn’t hurt you ? but in actual fact 1 ppm is 250 times larger the level in mothers’ milk. Does your Health department really know more about what the baby needs than mother nature?

9. The fact that even though Australia has been fluoridating its water for over 50 years there have been no primary health studies of the populations fluoridated, excerpt one small study on cancer in NSW. If you don’t look, you don’t find!

10. Meanwhile, data from WHO shows that tooth decay in non-fluoridated countries is coming down as fast ? if not faster ? than fluoridated countries.

11. It was for these and other reasons that 1500 professionals have signed a professionals’ Statement calling for an end to fluoridation worldwide.

Thus premier Bligh, before you ram this bill through parliament, I hope that you have the integrity to ask your health department to provide a carefully documented response to the issues listed above. Please no ducking, no obfuscations and no excuses, just straight scientifically based answers. Queensland citizens deserve nothing less.

Dr. Paul Connett
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology,
St. Lawrence University,
Canton, NY
And
Director,
Fluoride Action Network,
http://www.FluorideAlert.org
(US) 315-379-9200