Page 1497 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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but most scientific bodies in Australia, and indeed the world, will say that they are satisfied, on the basis of statistical correlation between cigarette smoking on the one hand and these diseases on the other, that there is a nexus between those two things, that the incidence is so high that there is - - -
Mr Duby: Balderdash!
MR HUMPHRIES: One of the three smokers in this Assembly says, "Balderdash". I will remind you of this at your funeral, Mr Duby. Mr Deputy Speaker, I think that that connection is very clearly there in the case of cigarette smoking, and I think it is equally clearly there in the case of fluoride.
Let us for one moment put to one side the studies that have been argued and bandied about in this chamber purporting to show or not show that fluoride is good. I have spoken to some dentists and doctors about this. I have asked them for their view, and their view is almost inevitably that fluoride has actually produced, to their own knowledge and their own observation, benefits to the ACT community.
Mr Berry referred, I think, to the words of Carmelo Bonanno on the radio the other day. I found these very convincing and I find them very hard to go past. I want to refer to the National Health and Medical Research Council report to which the Minister also referred and to quote from the council's 1985 report. After having conducted a study, it said, and I quote:
Fluoride is widely distributed in the environment and the body. Unsubstantiated claims of adverse effects of fluoride in the control of dental caries have been made for almost 50 years. These claims have been based largely on speculation and supposition, and also on unwarranted assumptions concerning the application in the biological context of laboratory studies using extremely high concentrations of fluoride. Extensive investigations both in Australia and other countries have consistently shown that the levels of fluoride used in fluoridation programs were not a health hazard.
In the 1979 report the council said:
There is substantial evidence pointing to a lack of adverse effects of fluoridation. The evidence suggesting various effects, and in particular the recently much-publicised allegations that fluoride leads to an increase in cancer mortality, does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.
Mr Prowse: That was challenged in court and he lost.
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