Monday, January 02, 2006
The Hastings Safe Water Assoc Australia
The Hastings Safe Water Association
6th October 2004
The Mayor, Councillors and - STATE WIDE MUTAL
Hastings Council JOHN ATTENBOROUGH
Burrawan Street PO BOX H25 AUSTRALIA SQUARE 1215
PORT MACQUARIE 2444 SYDNEY 125
Dear Sir/Madam,
Fluoridation of the drinking water supply contravenes the United Nations International Covenant on Human Rights
Australia has been a signatory to this since the early 1980’s.
The Hastings Safe Water Association spoke with an official, a Mr Hill, in his capacity as a specialist on the UN Covenant, from the Attorney General’s Office in Canberra recently on this issue. In particular discussion concerned Article 7.
Article 7 says in part, “…In particular, no one shall be subjected, without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation”. Mr Hill said that this article is an attempt to out law practices such as State sanctioned medical or scientific experimentation on people without their “Informed Consent.”
He went on to say “Consent must be given on a free and proper basis, knowing full well what the person is consenting to as distinct from consent that was given without the person having full knowledge of all the facts.”
The Health Department itself has stated they are still doing research on Fluoridation; therefore Fluoridation itself is still an experiment.
There are hundreds if not thousands of properly done scientific studies warning about the short and long term dangers of Fluoridation, to humans, animals and to the environment.
If the drinking water is fluoridated we are being medicated without choice as adding Sodium Silicio Fluoride or Hydro Silicic Fluoride to our water supply takes away our choice. It is virtually impossible to avoid Fluoridated water if you live in a Fluoridated community.
Reverse Osmosis Water filters are extremely wasteful of water due to their efficiency and to the difficulty of removing Fluorides. They are expensive. Also you need to filter water used in cooking, as well as drinking. Restaurants and coffee shops will not be able to properly filter all water used in cooking and making drinks, so unless you plan on staying home, you will have no choice, neither will your children have a choice at friends places or at school.
Our Health Department Bureaucrats, Doctors, Dentists and most Councillors may be comfortable with acting in contravention to UN covenants and see nothing wrong with forced medication, a medication, which is in every sense of the word an experiment, without informed choice, something one person cannot give for another, but it is unethical for them to do so.
Litigation
The evidence is gathering of its disastrous effects of Water Fluoridation on all living things. Litigation will follow, and is current in some places. I doubt that there are Insurers large enough in the Hastings to cover the costs, should there be accidental overdosing in the short term, or to cover the side effects that are known to all.
We reported on the city of Escondido in California, a short while back. Within the first 24hrs of Fluoridation they had an equipment failure in which there was a large spillage of flourosilicic acid into a containment system. The City of Escondido and the California Department of Health Services are now engaged in a Litigation Action against citizens of Escondido. It happens.
They cannot ever say in future that they did no know. They know and they have been told. What they do now is a matter for the public record.
The Hastings Safe Water Association is extremely concerned about the proposed introduction of fluoride into the water supply and our concern arises on two levels.
The first is that there is a serious question in relation to the safety of fluoride on a long term basis and questionable value for a large proportion of the population, and secondly it is our view that introduction of fluoride as proposed is a breach of basic human rights.
Health Issues
Those in favour of the introduction of fluoride for the protection of children’s teeth argue that this justifies the addition to the public water supply of chemicals that are known to be liable to cause severely damaging medical affects in all members of the public including those outside the specified target group.
However, the adverse affects of fluoride in the human body are now well documented and the claims of those who oppose fluoride are backed up with far more conclusive studies than those who propound fluoride. It is the fact that most, if not all of the claim to benefits of fluoride can actually be attributed to alternative factors in dental hygiene and diet and the medical damage liable to affect the general population, which includes fatal conditions, represents an unacceptable public health risk compared with the merely inconvenient or cosmetic problems associated with dental decay.
It is largely believed that the improvement in children’s tooth decay is attributed to fluoridation. However, the great improvement in children’s teeth in the Sydney area was 52% from 1961 – 1968 during which time Sydney was not fluoridated. Silicofluorides which are the chemicals used in water fluoridation are Schedule 5 poisons under the Australian Therapeutic Goods Act.
Silicofluorides have not been properly tested for safety in fluoridating drinking water and their use in water fluoridation has even been called an “ideal solution to a long standing problem” as a way to dispose of a highly toxic by-product that is otherwise an enormous health hazard to the local environment. Silicofluorides used in water fluoridation are waste products of the phosphate fertiliser industry.
Research has also shown that there is an association between silicofluoride treated water and elevated blood lead levels which in turn have disturbing implications in relation to neurological and sociological consequences. A search on the Internet under the search term “Silicofluorides” reveals a number of disturbing articles in relation to harmful affects of silicofluorides.
Studies have also shown that with constant ingestion silicofluorides are extremely cumulative, cannot be eliminated and have severely debilitating and disabling effects on those exposed to it for long periods of time, particularly as its victims approach old age. It can also precipitate a dramatic increase in an otherwise rare and fatal form of bone cancer in adolescent boys, even after relatively short periods of exposure.
The National Health and Medical research Council in 1991 published a report into the effectiveness of Fluoridation. The main concern in this report was the concern that we were all ingesting too mush Fluoride from the environment, from our foods, from toothpastes and from our water as well as other sources. Some of their recommendations were,
“There is an urgent need to upgrade substantially our monitoring of dental health to include older children and adults, and to monitor the levels of fluoride exposure and the occurrence of dental fluorosis in Australia.”
“Reduce the likelihood of excessive ingestion by young children of fluoride from infant formulas and from fluoridated toothpastes” The NHMRC recommended using only a pea sized amount of fluoridated toothpaste for children; to buy low fluoride toothpastes for children and to monitor i.e. stand with your children as they brushed their teeth so that they did not swallow any toothpaste. How many parents were made aware of this in the past 13 years since this report?
They mentioned infant formula and produced a table in their report, which shows the high levels of fluoride in unreconstituted infant formulas currently used in Australia. Nan formula has about 3.74 p.p.m and when reconstituted with fluoridated water has 4.74 p.p.m. Each bottle of milk for a baby is there for 400% higher than the recommended amount of fluoride ingestion for babies. How many parents were told this since 1991?
The NHMRC went on to recommend that authorities
“develop monitoring mechanisms to document total fluoride intakes by adults with a view to estimating levels of depositions in bone, bearing in mind that water fluoridation at around 1ppm appears, on present evidence to be the main single source of fluoride intake in adults.” We have not seen any evidence of any research being done on this nor aware of any monitoring.
Our concern is that with this body of medical research available, the addition of silicofluorides to the drinking water in the Hastings could potentially amount to negligence if the research is ignored and the potential effects disregarded.
The introduction of silicofluorides in a population which is already experiencing increased rates of cancer and auto immune in circumstances where its safety is uncertain is, in our view, not only negligent but also stupid. Litigation has already commenced in the United States following a failure of equipment in the city of Escondido which resulted in 20 or 30 gallons of the fluorosilicate acid spilling into a container system with potentially serious results had it gone undetected. There has also been reports from northern California in relation to a malfunction that delivered 250 parts per million fluoride slug in the water supply that sickened 23 workers in one commercial building with 12 suffering acute symptoms and four admitted for medical care.
Ethical Issues
The health issues are important but the arguments between those in favour of fluoride and those not in favour of fluoride in terms of the health benefits tend to divert critical attention away from the central issue which is - does any state have the ethical and legal right to impose compulsory and medical interventions on the population without consent regardless of the efficacy of the intervention in the protection of some aspect of public health?
The prophylactic administration of any substance to the entire population in a form not easily avoided is an infringement of medical ethics and of basic human rights. Several international conventions deal with fundamental freedoms and the ethical limitations of medical interventions by states in the private lives of their citizens. Our major concern is the lack of information provided to the public in relation to the medical risks of silicofluorides as Schedule 5 poisons, these substances are effectively public medication contrary to the provisions of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Act and because they are publicly distributed they cannot be supervised in either individual or general cases.
The introduction of silicofluorides also seem to breach the provisions of the Water Management Act which set out the water management principles which include, among others, the following principles:
The fluoridation of water in New South Wales is covered by the Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies Act 1957. Once fluoridation occurs a water supply authority to which an approval has been granted is not able to discontinue fluoridating the water supply unless the approval or direction is revoked by the Secretary of the Public Water Committee. There appear to be no controls on the Committee in relation to the question of fluoridation and this is a serious concern to our organisation, given the research that we referred to above, particularly as regards the question of human rights. It is our very firm view that the individual ought to be given the option to either accept or decline the ingestion of a substance which is as potentially toxic as silicofluorides. This is particularly so when other forms of fluoride treatment are readily available to the public in the forms of tablets, drops and fluoride toothpastes. By adding fluoride to the water you are essentially committing those people who do not wish to ingest fluoride to spending large amounts of money in fitting reverse osmosis water filters. There is also a question as to whether they are viable in areas of water restriction given that they are extremely wasteful of water.
The NHMRC in its 1991 report stated
“If a majority of the community does not wish to have fluoride added to its drinking water, irrespective of any health benefits, (or indeed adverse effects) that result from such addition, then that is a decision that the community and its elected representatives must make…. However, public health scientists should not take, nor be expected to take, a primary responsibility for the decision as to what is morally, ethically and politically acceptable to a community. They have no particular expertise or authority in this regard beyond that of other members of the community.”
Again the directions of the NHMRC have not been followed by the Hastings Council or the NSW Health Department
In conclusion the addition of unregistered medical substances to public water supply without medical supervision of informed consent of the subjects, is both seriously unethical medical intervention on a massive scale under violation of human rights.
There has been a remarkable lack of discussion of the legality of fluoridation in Parliament, the media and in public sector information to the general public.The designation of silicofluorides for adding to water does not constitute the issue of a licence for their use as pharmaceuticals. Without such a Product Licence, their use constitutes merely the administration of a registered poison to the public water supply, an act that implies substantial legal consequences for those promoting, authorising and implementing fluoridation.
Conclusion.
Adding a controlled drug and poison to a product (water) converts that product into a medicinal product, since the objective is to medicate. The concentration may be low, but it remains a medicinal product - many medicinal products are administered in extremely low quantities (e.g. vaccines) but that does not disqualify them as medicines. So here are some of the consequences.
1. Presenting the medication to the public as proposed is in contravention of their registered purpose as specified for Schedule 5 poisons - they are not provided to the public in appropriate packaging, nor is there an appropriate warning or safety directions on the product as delivered to the patients. We are all patients if we are being medicated. The medication is not 'child-resistant' - any child can open a tap and obtain an unlimited amount of the poison for its own unsupervised consumption.
2. The substances are not accessible to the public in discrete and quantitatively defined doses. A concentration is not a dose - it is not possible to control the amount of the medication as presented to the public taken in by any patient, and there is no relationship between the exposure, body mass, nor the supposed officially recommended daily dose. Note that for bottle-fed infants, the daily exposure per kilogram body mass can be as much as 2.5 times as much as would be absorbed by an adult. The common and increasing presence of fluoride in other drinks and in food provides an equally uncontrolled 'dose' - the combination of unregulated access and unknown additional daily exposure invalidates any attempt to establish and administer a regulated 'dose' of fluoride to every member of the public. The concept of providing fluoride in a lawful and controllable 'medication' is therefore an absurdity.
3. These registered poisons are not administered to individual patients under the supervision of pharmacologically or medically qualified specialists. Any local authority or water company, etc, adding these substances to the public water supply is guilty of administering a medicine (and/or a poison) without a relevant medical qualification, which is a very serious criminal assault on the public.
4. Any medical or other person authorizing the addition of these poisons to the water supply, regardless of their personal qualifications and status, is therefore personally responsible for promoting an act of medical malpractice. Equally, any Professional Indemnity Insurance held by them, or by their employers, is invalid - it is not possible to indemnify a criminal act. This also applies to technical workers in the water sector who may be involved in the process of water purification, and whose Professional Accrediting Body requires compliance with a Code of Practice or Code of Ethics forbidding unethical behaviour.
5. Professional medical and dental practitioners advocating any medical intervention to the public are required to ensure that prospective patients receive complete and balanced information regarding the potential effects of whatever medication they are recommending to their patients. In the case of fluoridation, no such balanced information appears in many cases to be being provided. Patients are therefore not capable of making an informed decision as to whether or not they will accept the treatment. Those professionals providing unsound advice are at best liable for professional negligence, and at worst for medical malpractice. In any case, the individual patient still retains the right to reject any medical recommendation. But they will be prevented from exercising this right if a medicinal or poisonous substance is present in the public water supply.
6. The most authoritative meta-study of the literature on the medical effects of fluoridation (The York Review, 2000) found that none of the research papers published on fluoridation reached an adequate standard for any valid scientific conclusion to be reached that the practice is either safe or efficacious. No valid clinical recommendation for water fluoridation as general medication is therefore possible, and the application of these poisons to the treatment of bad teeth by adding them to the public water supply therefore remains purely a research activity. Medical research is subject to extremely stringent ethical and procedural controls, and requires the informed, and preferably written, consent of every individual involved. Individual medical conditions must be taken into account, and every individual has the right to withdraw from the research process at any time. There must be no cumulative or irreversible effects, so that anyone withdrawing from the program remains exposed to the substances after withdrawing.
Fluoridation as proposed is therefore merely the extension of an already illegal medical research program on a very large and inadequately informed (and in many cases unconsenting) population of subjects, and is medical malpractice. Since fluoride is cumulative, no effective withdrawal is possible and the effects of exposure constitute an irreversible and increasing risk throughout life. Any public sector individual involved in the authorization or implementation of medicating the public in this fashion is guilty of participating in illegal medical research.
7. Human Rights application. There are many provisions of human rights legislation that prohibit medical intervention without consent and unlawful medical research upon human populations. The principles enshrined in the cited legislation apply equally in Australia. Also take note of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which also restricts the authority of the state to interfere with the right of a child and his/her legal guardians to determine what medical interventions may carried out on children.
Legal challenges to the practice will inevitably be instigated by individuals and groups objecting on ethical, medical and religious grounds with the potential for the substantial loss of revenue through these claims and also claims for recovery of the costs of installing domestic water filtration units to remove the unlawful substances.
The decision to introduce fluoride into the water system in the Hastings should be very seriously considered bearing in mind the information presented above. Should you wish to discuss any of the issues or review any of the data that we have collected, please contact me on 6583 9622 at any time.
Yours faithfully
Therese Mackay
President of the Hastings Safe Water Association
References:
National health and Medical research Council
Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies Act 1957/ amend 1989
York Review 2000
Glen S.R. Walker F.I.M.F., E.M.E.C.S., M.A.E.S. Chairman Freedom from Fluoridation Federation of Australia and of the Anti Fluoridation Association of Victoria.
Dr Phillip R N Sutton D.D.Sc (Melb.), L.D.S. F.R.A.C.D.S.
Douglas Cross, Forensic Ecologist.
6th October 2004
The Mayor, Councillors and - STATE WIDE MUTAL
Hastings Council JOHN ATTENBOROUGH
Burrawan Street PO BOX H25 AUSTRALIA SQUARE 1215
PORT MACQUARIE 2444 SYDNEY 125
Dear Sir/Madam,
Fluoridation of the drinking water supply contravenes the United Nations International Covenant on Human Rights
Australia has been a signatory to this since the early 1980’s.
The Hastings Safe Water Association spoke with an official, a Mr Hill, in his capacity as a specialist on the UN Covenant, from the Attorney General’s Office in Canberra recently on this issue. In particular discussion concerned Article 7.
Article 7 says in part, “…In particular, no one shall be subjected, without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation”. Mr Hill said that this article is an attempt to out law practices such as State sanctioned medical or scientific experimentation on people without their “Informed Consent.”
He went on to say “Consent must be given on a free and proper basis, knowing full well what the person is consenting to as distinct from consent that was given without the person having full knowledge of all the facts.”
The Health Department itself has stated they are still doing research on Fluoridation; therefore Fluoridation itself is still an experiment.
There are hundreds if not thousands of properly done scientific studies warning about the short and long term dangers of Fluoridation, to humans, animals and to the environment.
If the drinking water is fluoridated we are being medicated without choice as adding Sodium Silicio Fluoride or Hydro Silicic Fluoride to our water supply takes away our choice. It is virtually impossible to avoid Fluoridated water if you live in a Fluoridated community.
Reverse Osmosis Water filters are extremely wasteful of water due to their efficiency and to the difficulty of removing Fluorides. They are expensive. Also you need to filter water used in cooking, as well as drinking. Restaurants and coffee shops will not be able to properly filter all water used in cooking and making drinks, so unless you plan on staying home, you will have no choice, neither will your children have a choice at friends places or at school.
Our Health Department Bureaucrats, Doctors, Dentists and most Councillors may be comfortable with acting in contravention to UN covenants and see nothing wrong with forced medication, a medication, which is in every sense of the word an experiment, without informed choice, something one person cannot give for another, but it is unethical for them to do so.
Litigation
The evidence is gathering of its disastrous effects of Water Fluoridation on all living things. Litigation will follow, and is current in some places. I doubt that there are Insurers large enough in the Hastings to cover the costs, should there be accidental overdosing in the short term, or to cover the side effects that are known to all.
We reported on the city of Escondido in California, a short while back. Within the first 24hrs of Fluoridation they had an equipment failure in which there was a large spillage of flourosilicic acid into a containment system. The City of Escondido and the California Department of Health Services are now engaged in a Litigation Action against citizens of Escondido. It happens.
They cannot ever say in future that they did no know. They know and they have been told. What they do now is a matter for the public record.
The Hastings Safe Water Association is extremely concerned about the proposed introduction of fluoride into the water supply and our concern arises on two levels.
The first is that there is a serious question in relation to the safety of fluoride on a long term basis and questionable value for a large proportion of the population, and secondly it is our view that introduction of fluoride as proposed is a breach of basic human rights.
Health Issues
Those in favour of the introduction of fluoride for the protection of children’s teeth argue that this justifies the addition to the public water supply of chemicals that are known to be liable to cause severely damaging medical affects in all members of the public including those outside the specified target group.
However, the adverse affects of fluoride in the human body are now well documented and the claims of those who oppose fluoride are backed up with far more conclusive studies than those who propound fluoride. It is the fact that most, if not all of the claim to benefits of fluoride can actually be attributed to alternative factors in dental hygiene and diet and the medical damage liable to affect the general population, which includes fatal conditions, represents an unacceptable public health risk compared with the merely inconvenient or cosmetic problems associated with dental decay.
It is largely believed that the improvement in children’s tooth decay is attributed to fluoridation. However, the great improvement in children’s teeth in the Sydney area was 52% from 1961 – 1968 during which time Sydney was not fluoridated. Silicofluorides which are the chemicals used in water fluoridation are Schedule 5 poisons under the Australian Therapeutic Goods Act.
Silicofluorides have not been properly tested for safety in fluoridating drinking water and their use in water fluoridation has even been called an “ideal solution to a long standing problem” as a way to dispose of a highly toxic by-product that is otherwise an enormous health hazard to the local environment. Silicofluorides used in water fluoridation are waste products of the phosphate fertiliser industry.
Research has also shown that there is an association between silicofluoride treated water and elevated blood lead levels which in turn have disturbing implications in relation to neurological and sociological consequences. A search on the Internet under the search term “Silicofluorides” reveals a number of disturbing articles in relation to harmful affects of silicofluorides.
Studies have also shown that with constant ingestion silicofluorides are extremely cumulative, cannot be eliminated and have severely debilitating and disabling effects on those exposed to it for long periods of time, particularly as its victims approach old age. It can also precipitate a dramatic increase in an otherwise rare and fatal form of bone cancer in adolescent boys, even after relatively short periods of exposure.
The National Health and Medical research Council in 1991 published a report into the effectiveness of Fluoridation. The main concern in this report was the concern that we were all ingesting too mush Fluoride from the environment, from our foods, from toothpastes and from our water as well as other sources. Some of their recommendations were,
“There is an urgent need to upgrade substantially our monitoring of dental health to include older children and adults, and to monitor the levels of fluoride exposure and the occurrence of dental fluorosis in Australia.”
“Reduce the likelihood of excessive ingestion by young children of fluoride from infant formulas and from fluoridated toothpastes” The NHMRC recommended using only a pea sized amount of fluoridated toothpaste for children; to buy low fluoride toothpastes for children and to monitor i.e. stand with your children as they brushed their teeth so that they did not swallow any toothpaste. How many parents were made aware of this in the past 13 years since this report?
They mentioned infant formula and produced a table in their report, which shows the high levels of fluoride in unreconstituted infant formulas currently used in Australia. Nan formula has about 3.74 p.p.m and when reconstituted with fluoridated water has 4.74 p.p.m. Each bottle of milk for a baby is there for 400% higher than the recommended amount of fluoride ingestion for babies. How many parents were told this since 1991?
The NHMRC went on to recommend that authorities
“develop monitoring mechanisms to document total fluoride intakes by adults with a view to estimating levels of depositions in bone, bearing in mind that water fluoridation at around 1ppm appears, on present evidence to be the main single source of fluoride intake in adults.” We have not seen any evidence of any research being done on this nor aware of any monitoring.
Our concern is that with this body of medical research available, the addition of silicofluorides to the drinking water in the Hastings could potentially amount to negligence if the research is ignored and the potential effects disregarded.
The introduction of silicofluorides in a population which is already experiencing increased rates of cancer and auto immune in circumstances where its safety is uncertain is, in our view, not only negligent but also stupid. Litigation has already commenced in the United States following a failure of equipment in the city of Escondido which resulted in 20 or 30 gallons of the fluorosilicate acid spilling into a container system with potentially serious results had it gone undetected. There has also been reports from northern California in relation to a malfunction that delivered 250 parts per million fluoride slug in the water supply that sickened 23 workers in one commercial building with 12 suffering acute symptoms and four admitted for medical care.
Ethical Issues
The health issues are important but the arguments between those in favour of fluoride and those not in favour of fluoride in terms of the health benefits tend to divert critical attention away from the central issue which is - does any state have the ethical and legal right to impose compulsory and medical interventions on the population without consent regardless of the efficacy of the intervention in the protection of some aspect of public health?
The prophylactic administration of any substance to the entire population in a form not easily avoided is an infringement of medical ethics and of basic human rights. Several international conventions deal with fundamental freedoms and the ethical limitations of medical interventions by states in the private lives of their citizens. Our major concern is the lack of information provided to the public in relation to the medical risks of silicofluorides as Schedule 5 poisons, these substances are effectively public medication contrary to the provisions of the Australian Therapeutic Goods Act and because they are publicly distributed they cannot be supervised in either individual or general cases.
The introduction of silicofluorides also seem to breach the provisions of the Water Management Act which set out the water management principles which include, among others, the following principles:
- the water quality of all water sources should be protected and, wherever possible, enhanced;
- the cumulative impact of water management licenses and approvals other activities on water sources and their dependent eco systems, should be considered and minimised.
The fluoridation of water in New South Wales is covered by the Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies Act 1957. Once fluoridation occurs a water supply authority to which an approval has been granted is not able to discontinue fluoridating the water supply unless the approval or direction is revoked by the Secretary of the Public Water Committee. There appear to be no controls on the Committee in relation to the question of fluoridation and this is a serious concern to our organisation, given the research that we referred to above, particularly as regards the question of human rights. It is our very firm view that the individual ought to be given the option to either accept or decline the ingestion of a substance which is as potentially toxic as silicofluorides. This is particularly so when other forms of fluoride treatment are readily available to the public in the forms of tablets, drops and fluoride toothpastes. By adding fluoride to the water you are essentially committing those people who do not wish to ingest fluoride to spending large amounts of money in fitting reverse osmosis water filters. There is also a question as to whether they are viable in areas of water restriction given that they are extremely wasteful of water.
The NHMRC in its 1991 report stated
“If a majority of the community does not wish to have fluoride added to its drinking water, irrespective of any health benefits, (or indeed adverse effects) that result from such addition, then that is a decision that the community and its elected representatives must make…. However, public health scientists should not take, nor be expected to take, a primary responsibility for the decision as to what is morally, ethically and politically acceptable to a community. They have no particular expertise or authority in this regard beyond that of other members of the community.”
Again the directions of the NHMRC have not been followed by the Hastings Council or the NSW Health Department
In conclusion the addition of unregistered medical substances to public water supply without medical supervision of informed consent of the subjects, is both seriously unethical medical intervention on a massive scale under violation of human rights.
There has been a remarkable lack of discussion of the legality of fluoridation in Parliament, the media and in public sector information to the general public.The designation of silicofluorides for adding to water does not constitute the issue of a licence for their use as pharmaceuticals. Without such a Product Licence, their use constitutes merely the administration of a registered poison to the public water supply, an act that implies substantial legal consequences for those promoting, authorising and implementing fluoridation.
Conclusion.
Adding a controlled drug and poison to a product (water) converts that product into a medicinal product, since the objective is to medicate. The concentration may be low, but it remains a medicinal product - many medicinal products are administered in extremely low quantities (e.g. vaccines) but that does not disqualify them as medicines. So here are some of the consequences.
1. Presenting the medication to the public as proposed is in contravention of their registered purpose as specified for Schedule 5 poisons - they are not provided to the public in appropriate packaging, nor is there an appropriate warning or safety directions on the product as delivered to the patients. We are all patients if we are being medicated. The medication is not 'child-resistant' - any child can open a tap and obtain an unlimited amount of the poison for its own unsupervised consumption.
2. The substances are not accessible to the public in discrete and quantitatively defined doses. A concentration is not a dose - it is not possible to control the amount of the medication as presented to the public taken in by any patient, and there is no relationship between the exposure, body mass, nor the supposed officially recommended daily dose. Note that for bottle-fed infants, the daily exposure per kilogram body mass can be as much as 2.5 times as much as would be absorbed by an adult. The common and increasing presence of fluoride in other drinks and in food provides an equally uncontrolled 'dose' - the combination of unregulated access and unknown additional daily exposure invalidates any attempt to establish and administer a regulated 'dose' of fluoride to every member of the public. The concept of providing fluoride in a lawful and controllable 'medication' is therefore an absurdity.
3. These registered poisons are not administered to individual patients under the supervision of pharmacologically or medically qualified specialists. Any local authority or water company, etc, adding these substances to the public water supply is guilty of administering a medicine (and/or a poison) without a relevant medical qualification, which is a very serious criminal assault on the public.
4. Any medical or other person authorizing the addition of these poisons to the water supply, regardless of their personal qualifications and status, is therefore personally responsible for promoting an act of medical malpractice. Equally, any Professional Indemnity Insurance held by them, or by their employers, is invalid - it is not possible to indemnify a criminal act. This also applies to technical workers in the water sector who may be involved in the process of water purification, and whose Professional Accrediting Body requires compliance with a Code of Practice or Code of Ethics forbidding unethical behaviour.
5. Professional medical and dental practitioners advocating any medical intervention to the public are required to ensure that prospective patients receive complete and balanced information regarding the potential effects of whatever medication they are recommending to their patients. In the case of fluoridation, no such balanced information appears in many cases to be being provided. Patients are therefore not capable of making an informed decision as to whether or not they will accept the treatment. Those professionals providing unsound advice are at best liable for professional negligence, and at worst for medical malpractice. In any case, the individual patient still retains the right to reject any medical recommendation. But they will be prevented from exercising this right if a medicinal or poisonous substance is present in the public water supply.
6. The most authoritative meta-study of the literature on the medical effects of fluoridation (The York Review, 2000) found that none of the research papers published on fluoridation reached an adequate standard for any valid scientific conclusion to be reached that the practice is either safe or efficacious. No valid clinical recommendation for water fluoridation as general medication is therefore possible, and the application of these poisons to the treatment of bad teeth by adding them to the public water supply therefore remains purely a research activity. Medical research is subject to extremely stringent ethical and procedural controls, and requires the informed, and preferably written, consent of every individual involved. Individual medical conditions must be taken into account, and every individual has the right to withdraw from the research process at any time. There must be no cumulative or irreversible effects, so that anyone withdrawing from the program remains exposed to the substances after withdrawing.
Fluoridation as proposed is therefore merely the extension of an already illegal medical research program on a very large and inadequately informed (and in many cases unconsenting) population of subjects, and is medical malpractice. Since fluoride is cumulative, no effective withdrawal is possible and the effects of exposure constitute an irreversible and increasing risk throughout life. Any public sector individual involved in the authorization or implementation of medicating the public in this fashion is guilty of participating in illegal medical research.
7. Human Rights application. There are many provisions of human rights legislation that prohibit medical intervention without consent and unlawful medical research upon human populations. The principles enshrined in the cited legislation apply equally in Australia. Also take note of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which also restricts the authority of the state to interfere with the right of a child and his/her legal guardians to determine what medical interventions may carried out on children.
Legal challenges to the practice will inevitably be instigated by individuals and groups objecting on ethical, medical and religious grounds with the potential for the substantial loss of revenue through these claims and also claims for recovery of the costs of installing domestic water filtration units to remove the unlawful substances.
The decision to introduce fluoride into the water system in the Hastings should be very seriously considered bearing in mind the information presented above. Should you wish to discuss any of the issues or review any of the data that we have collected, please contact me on 6583 9622 at any time.
Yours faithfully
Therese Mackay
President of the Hastings Safe Water Association
References:
National health and Medical research Council
Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies Act 1957/ amend 1989
York Review 2000
Glen S.R. Walker F.I.M.F., E.M.E.C.S., M.A.E.S. Chairman Freedom from Fluoridation Federation of Australia and of the Anti Fluoridation Association of Victoria.
Dr Phillip R N Sutton D.D.Sc (Melb.), L.D.S. F.R.A.C.D.S.
Douglas Cross, Forensic Ecologist.
# posted by Middle Child @ Monday, January 02, 2006 
