When government policy takes over, science flies out the window.
More than 70 people have turned out to anti-fluoridation forums in Merimbula, Bermagui and Eden in the last week.
A fourth forum will be held at 1pm tomorrow at the Bega Valley Shire Council’s civic centre.
The forum will be addressed Cambridge University graduate Professor Paul Connett whose books include The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up In Our Drinking Water.
Professor Connett, who is from the United States, has been the guest speaker at the forums alongside Dr Geoff Pain, from Melbourne, who argues among other things that fluoride is a bio-accumulative, endocrine disrupting, neurotoxic carcinogen.
Forum organiser, Merimbula dentist Dr Maria Claudianos, renewed her invitation to Bega councillors to attend tomorrow’s forum in Bega and said she was disappointed that not one had attended any of the previous three forums.
“Here we have two experts in the field, one who has flown half way around the world, and the other who is here from Melbourne, and not one councillor has bothered to attend,” Dr Claudianos said.
Professor Connett is scheduled to return to the US on June 13.
A council spokesman confirmed yesterday that Cr Bill Taylor would attend the Bega forum.
In addition, the panel has been invited to address councillors and senior staff prior to the June 29 council meeting, the spokesman said.
“That invitation has now been accepted,” he said.
The public is also invited to attend.
Council will start a community information program in late June working with NSW Health, he said.
Sixty people attended forums in Merimbula last Saturday and at Bermagui on Sunday; 11 people were at Wednesday’s forum in Eden.
Dr Pain said people had come away “angry and stunned” that they had not been told the truth about the toxicity of fluoride.
He said it was proven dental hygiene was sufficient without community water fluoridation, the dose of which was impossible to monitor.
Fluoride was known to cause cancer, heart and kidney disease, diabetes, infertility and arthritis, he said.