It has been nearly six months since your paper was kind enough to print a letter from 19 professionals, including myself, responding to claims made for the safety and effectiveness of water fluoridation by Dr John Carnie (chief health officer, Department of Human Services, Victoria) and other pro-fluoridation spokespersons.

In our letter we pointed out several misrepresentations made by Dr Carnie and his colleagues and asked them to answer eight basic questions about this outmoded practice.

It is an anathema in the 21st century to be putting a known toxic substance into the drinking water of the population without either the “informed consent” of every individual involved (as required by any doctor giving medicine to a patient) or even the possibility of the community voting on the matter.

On any other issue we would be amazed that after six months no answers have been forthcoming from Dr Carnie, however on this issue it is totally in keeping with the arrogant posture adopted by Australian Health Authorities on this issue.

They do not feel obliged to debate the matter in public; answer serious questions in writing; keep up with the scientific literature; or even stick to the truth.

Instead they pour thousands of dollars into public relations outfits to massage the information in an effort to dupe the public.

Some time in the future historians will have a field day trying to explain why civil servants, paid by the taxpayers to protect their health, should have behaved in this way.

What we find equally appalling is how little concerned most Australian politicians appear to be about this abuse of science, let alone human and democratic rights.

As far as the mainstream media is concerned the Sunraysia Daily seems to be one of the few papers to treat the matter seriously.

In lieu of the inability of Dr Carnie to answer our questions, I have printed them out again, in the hope that, before your community is dragged to the trough to drink this water, any doctor, dentist or public health official in Victoria – or beyond – who genuinely believes in the practice, will make a good faith effort to answer them. Here they are:

1) Why is the level of fluoride so low in mothers milk (0.004 ppm)? Is Dr Carnie not concerned that a bottle-fed baby in a fluoridated community will get 250 times more fluoride than nature intended?

2) Why does Dr Carnie ignore the World Health Organization’s (WHO) advice that before fluoridation is begun an estimate be made of the total fluoride dose children are already receiving?

3) How can Dr Carnie maintain that fluoridation is “safe” when no randomized clinical trials have ever been performed to demonstrate the safety (or effectiveness) of ingesting fluoride?

4) How can Dr Carnie claim that no one has been harmed by fluoridation when virtually no health studies have been conducted in fluoridated communities in Australia?

5) Why has there been no response in 18 years to two recommendations made in 1991 by the NHMRC: a) that fluoride bone levels be monitored and b) that the numerous reports of people claiming to be sensitive to fluoride be investigated in a scientific manner?

6) How can Dr Carnie explain that, according to WHO data, there is practically no difference in tooth decay in 12-year olds, between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries (see http://www.FluorideAlert.org/who-dmft.htm)?

7) Why does Dr Carnie continue to perpetuate the elementary confusion between concentration and dose of fluoride? While engineers can control the concentration of the fluoride added to the water supply no one can control the dose people get each day. This will depend on how much water they drink and how much fluoride they get from other sources.

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