Dear All,
According to the article in today’s Sun-Sentinel which comes out of Palm Beach County, ‘Fluorida’ (the poison state), the “Officials plan for fluoride debate”. However there is one little snagg, we know that the officials have already made up their mind, and no matter what transpires in this “debate” they are going to vote in fluoriation on August 26.
In this short article, the Chairwoman of the Palm Beach County Commissioners, says she wants “a vote that day, however long the meeting takes.”
No matter how complex or contradictory the material might be, these valiant Commisioners are going to be able to make up their minds over an issue, that a 12-membered NRC panel will probably take between one and two years to decide! Of course, it is easy to decide quickly if you believe that no government has the right to enforce this form of medication (medical intervention) on citizens without each individual’s right to informed consent – as most of the rest of the civilized world has done. Yes you can do that quickly. But if the task is to resolve all the claims about health safety, including all the scientific papers that have appeared since 2000 alone, one needs a lot more time.
And much more time is needed, if you are going to say “yes” to this. To say “no” hurts no one, because there are readily available alternatives to this course of action: alternatives which are practiced all over the world. To say “yes” however means that you are forcing something on a sizeable number of people who say that they don’t want it, a number of whom have done more homework on this issue than the Commissioners will ever do.
I have used this analogy several times before. Putting fluoride into the drinking water of every man, woman and child in your society is like building a dam above a village. Those building the dam have to be certain that they have addressed every potential problem in immense detail, because if they are wrong and the dam breaks it will be too late to straighten the matter out afterwords. The dam builder has to be certain, has to be highly qualified and cautious. On the other hand, if someone should come along and look at their plans and say, ” I think I see a crack there, or a possible fault there, the builders have to listen. It is not good enough to simply say, what do you know about dams? Or, you are just a schoolteacher, or a farmer or a homemaker. When building a dam or putting a known poison into the well you have to be certain, not just sure. When someone reassures you by saying that all things are poisons given a high enough dose (Paracelsus), you have to ask the question what is the margin of safety? Normally toxicologists and pharmacologists want a margin of safety of 100 between the dose that might do some good and the dose that migth do some harm. Using even the most liberal assumptions the highest margin of safety is 4 (acknowledged by the EPA with its current maximum contaminant level for drinking water. Its MCL is 4 ppm). Other studies I presented to the NRC on August 12 (http//www.fluoridealert.org/nrc-final.pdf), indicate that 1 ppm offers NO margin of safety, and especially so for those who drink far more water than others and for those particuarly vulnerable subsets of the population, who have poor kidney function. One of the reasons we have governments is to protect the most vulnerable members of society.
How can the Commissioners digest all this information in several hours and be certain? At the very least they would have to take the information from both sides and from the public and read it and study it and come back with questions of their own.
It is simply not enough to point to other authorities who say it is OK. Most of these authorities have not even acknowdged the existence of much of the recent scientific evidence on this issue, let alone studied it. If they cite the CDC(1999) statement that fluoridation is “one of the top ten public health achievements of the twentieth century” they shoud be told that this report was 6-7 years out of date on the literature they cite for safety (see http://www.fluoridealert.org/CDC.htm).
They must not hide behind the skirts of other “auhtorities”. If they vote yes they should take responsibility for knowing what they are doing and for being certain that what they are doing will do no harm. That is their responsibility and if they don’t want that responsibility they should not have become commissioners.
How can they be certain?
How can they be certain that God or the forces of evolution were not wrong to keep the levels of fluoride very low in mothers milk (0.01 ppm)? How can they be certain that mothers who bottle-feed with formula made with fluoridated tap water will not harm their babies? Dr. Arvid Carlsson was worried about this in 1978, helped to halt fluoridation plans in Sweden , AND won the Noble Prize for Medicine in 2000? How can they be certain that this Nobel Prize winner had nothing to worry about?
How can they be certain?
How can they be certain that a lifelong accumulation of fluoride in the bone will not lead to arthritic symptoms and increased hip fracture (Li et al, 2001)? How can they be certain that increased fluoride consumption will not lead to lower IQs in their children (Xiang, 2003)? Or greater uptake of lead into children’s blood and increased violent behavior (Masters and Coplan, 1999, 2000)? How can they be certain that lifelong accumulation of fluoride in the pineal gland (Luke, 2001) will not lead to lower melatonin levels and interference with various regulatory processes (Luke, 1997)? How can they be certain that fluoride will not increase uptake of aluminum into the brain and lead to amyloid deposits identical to those observed in Alzheimers patients? This is to mention just a few uncertainties. There are many more cracks in this dam.
Science does not offer certainty in this issue. Only philosophy and poliics offer certainty.
The philospohy that says you shouldn’t violate an individual’s right to “informed consent” to medication is an inviolate principle.
The politics which says we must do this because it is “Government Policy” and we must obey our governemnt also offers certainty, but that is a different political system and if the Commissioners wish to follow this system then they should seek a different name for the United States.
Paul Connett.
Print 
PDF