Page 1498 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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MR HUMPHRIES: Well, you may say that, Mr Prowse, but the National Health and Medical Research Council went through all the claims that had been made by the anti-fluoridationists. It went through all the claims and looked at each one about particular diseases flowing from the use of fluoride - skeletal fluorosis, cancer, Down's syndrome, the connection between fluoride and enzyme function and renal function, allergies, hypersensitivity, mutagenicity, repetition strain injury, dental fluorosis. All of those claims were dismissed. The council said that there was no connection between any of those things and fluoride on the basis of the evidence put before it by the people who said that there was.
Now, Mr Deputy Speaker, I think I have indicated clearly enough that I do not believe that we can rely on that kind of evidence. I believe that we should rely on the more reliable evidence of bodies that we normally trust to give us accurate information about all sorts of other things in our communities and in our everyday lives. I think the simplicity, the simplistic nature, of the argument against fluoride is best summed up by some bumper stickers that I have seen which say something like, "How can fluoride be a poison and a medicine?".
We should think about how simplistically stupid that kind of statement is. Look at things like salt. Our bodies must have certain quantities of salt to survive. We must have salt. But in large quantities salt is very, very damaging - in fact even lethal - to human beings. The same could be said of pure water probably or vitamin C. The question is one of dosage, not whether the substance is intrinsically poisonous or not. To argue otherwise is, I think, frankly antiscientific.
It has been pointed out that other countries in the world have removed fluoride or not taken it up. I am not convinced by that argument either. Australia, for example, has the best air safety regulations in the world; we are one of the few countries in the world to have compulsory voting. I do not think that the fact that other countries in the world do not follow our very laudable lead in these sorts of respects means that we should abandon our own progressive ideas and return to the more primitive ones being used elsewhere in the world.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I will say in conclusion that this Bill assumes something of a conspiracy between government, chemical manufacturers, doctors and dentists in our society. It says that there is clear evidence that damage by fluoride is being subverted by a combination of disinformation, the turning of a blind eye to the evidence before us and self-interest.
Mr Prowse: The Bill does not say that.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, it does by implication, Mr Prowse, and that hypothesis to my mind simply does not stand up. It
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