Page 1208 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
disfiguration. People have come to me as a naturopath and reported the psychological effect of not being able to smile. A patient has come to me with 19-year-old twins, neither of whom are prepared to smile. They are a poor family. They cannot afford expensive recapping of teeth. But this is what the Dental Association tells us is all we have to do. We are told, "It is just mottled teeth, but come along to us and we will fix it" - not free of charge, by the way. That is something this Government might be responsible for - capping of teeth damaged by fluoride.
These people have to go to the expense of having their teeth capped, and the dentists blandly say to us, "Come along to us. We will recap all your teeth and make you look like film stars". That is outlandish. These people are promoting fluoride, I suggest, because it brings them business. That is the situation.
The other day Dr Mark Diesendorf, a research scientist who investigated the so-called good effects of fluoride as a visiting fellow at the ANU, made an observation and presented a learned report. I have sent a tape of it around. He presented facts, statistical evidence, that the children in Brisbane have the same decay rate as those in Melbourne and Sydney. Brisbane water is not fluoridated, Brisbane water has never been fluoridated, and here we see the decay rate is the same and, in one case, lower than Adelaide. All these other cities are fluoridated and Brisbane is not. Where is the lie? That was produced in the local press recently.
What do we get? We get a story coming back from our public health people to tell us, "Well, Canberra is better than anywhere else because we have had fluoride in the water supply since 1964 and because we have got more dentists per capita than anywhere else in Australia". How foolish! They argued my case. We have had fluoride and we have got more dentists. If fluoride is working, we should have fewer dentists. They proudly produced that as a media release last week. I ask: Are there vested interests at work? There certainly are. We have a responsibility to our community to stop this mindless act of pollution.
Why is it being allowed to happen? Look at the money that is presented to the research into fluoridation in Australia. We have got the National Health and Medical Research Council. It sounds very important. It advises the Government. It has advised the Federal Government on a number of occasions. We have a group of six people who have hung their academic hats on fluoride. They are not game to go back on it now, so they are trying to find reasons why fluoride might work.
Who funds this research? Who funds the research at the New South Wales University? Scanlan Sweets, Coca Cola, Cadbury Schweppes. That is where the money is coming from. These people want the panacea. They want children to be able to eat lollies all day long and not to have their teeth decay,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .