Page 1542 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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Mr Whalan: If you get it in the water it makes you go mad.
MR PROWSE: I seek your assistance, Mr Deputy Speaker, to protect me from this man. There are six issues that can be debated with respect to fluoride: efficacy, legal conscription, ethical mass medication, social justice, health and pollution. So let us deal with them one at a time.
Let us deal with the "does it work" attitude. It depends which dentist you ask. And that is the problem. We have seen the results of reports from a Dr Philip Sutton who came here. The Chief Minister - and, really, I expected better of her - called this man a less than perfect person to speak on this issue. He is one of the very few people in Australia who has researched fluoride. He went to the islands to research fluoride; he is a doctor of dental science. I will repeat that in case members did not hear. He is a doctor of dental science. There are very few of these people in Australia. He is opposed to fluoride.
We have Dr John Colquhoun who was the head of the Dental Health Department in New Zealand, the man responsible for introducing fluoride to New Zealand's water supply. He researched his own figures, the school dental health reports, and found that teeth in non-fluoridated areas were as good as those in fluoridated areas. These are two very senior dentists, not those fellows who spend their days filling holes - holes which should not be there, I might add, if fluoride is working - not those fellows who sit around in Canberra. These are research fellows. And that is the difference. They have time to research the world literature and look to what is actually happening as a result of fluoride.
Mr Wood and Mr Humphries referred to the National Health and Medical Research Council document, a report on the working party on fluorides and the control of dental caries. This group of people whom we hold in such high esteem have come up with a report. I will read some significant points from this document:
Fluoride either activates or inhibits a wide range of enzymes mainly by complexing with the metallo-enzymes, but also by acting directly on the enzymes.
Would members please hear those words.
Mr Wood: Well, read the rest of it too. Read that whole section and it might give credibility to the report. That is a selective quotation.
MR PROWSE: That certainly is. I cannot go through the whole publication in 15 minutes, Mr Wood. Mr Wood is now saying I should read the whole publication. What I am saying in here is that these people say in their own words
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