Page 1545 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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have seen them come to me, as the president of the Pure Water Association I have seen them come to me - people crying for help. In one case a man said to me, "My dizziness, my disease, cannot be diagnosed at Woden Valley Hospital. They told me that I have a disease that is unknown but I am going to die from it. I am now invalided from work". I will give members the name of this man if they wish. He could not go to work, he was invalided out of work, simply because of fluoride poisoning. When he went on to purified water, his disease went away and he is now back at work. Just one person in the community, that is all it takes. If, as a result of this imposition on us, that is going to happen to one person, it is not acceptable.
I will go further. You have asked for proof again, Mr Wood, so I will give it to you. I have a report from Abbott Laboratories Scientific Division, North Chicago, Illinois, dated 18 June 1963, and addressed to a doctor who was inquiring into this matter. I will not read the lot of it but what it says is:
Dear Doctor,
One per cent of our cases reacted adversely to fluoride.
One per cent - and that figure has been repeated in World Health Organisation factual documents. So we see a circumstance where one per cent of the community, or more - and I am saying everybody is affected, obviously, but these people are affected to the degree where they need help - are adversely affected. That means that in Canberra there are 2,500 people going to the doctor or seeking medical attention because of this toxin that is placed in the water supply. They do not have a choice; they have to drink it. If one does not drink water, one dies.
Here is a circumstance in which 2,500 people are adversely affected to that degree, but the point I am making is that this is a cumulative toxin. It is not one bathtubful of water. That is a load of rubbish. Would anybody suggest that we drink lead? Everyone knows that lead is a cumulative toxin. We suggest that that would not be on, would it? But here is fluoride, which is a cumulative toxin, being sold to us as being okay and that we really need to drink a tubful of water. Well, of course, if we drank a tubful of water, we would die immediately. We would end up with water poisoning. But the point is, if it has fluoride in it, we would get knocked off as well because of the amount of fluoride we ingested.
There is a social justice issue here. If one of us becomes unwell and it is identified that it is the fluoride in the water that we must drink to stay alive, we can go and purchase a water purifier. We can purchase purified water, per se, or we can purchase a purifier. But the poor people cannot. Now, where is the Labor Party's principle on this
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