Page 65 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 1991
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MR STEVENSON (8.31): Mr Speaker, is fluoride a poison, as it says on the packet here, or is it a panacea for children's teeth? The committee chairman began his speech the same way that proponents of fluoride have been doing for decades. It is the same way that the ACT inquiry report begins; with an attack on those who oppose compulsory drugging with a toxic chemical, sodium silico-fluoride. I believe that that tactic is about as subtle as being hit by a Mack truck. The committee chairman spoke that way for some six minutes into his speech. He also said that he believes that "there is no evidence of adverse health effects". That statement - we will see - is like saying that there is no evidence of gravity.
In the 1960s Drs Feltman and Kosel conducted a study where they gave pregnant women and children fluoride tablets. They showed that one per cent of those women and children suffered ill health because of the fluoride. When they gave the patients a placebo tablet, the diseases went. When they again gave them fluoride, they returned. Those studies continued for 14 years. That was an equivalent of one part per million of fluoride. People may think that one per cent is not too much; but, when you understand that in Canberra that is about 2,700 people and 170,000 in Australia, that is of great concern. That study was not mentioned in the ACT inquiry report but only in my dissenting report.
In Holland, 10 family physicians conducted studies using fluoridated water. Once again they were blind studies. They showed that a small percentage of people suffered ill health from drinking fluoridated water. Those studies were validated in the Dutch High Court. George Waldbott was one of the world's greatest allergists. In the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania court case in 1978 where top proponents of fluoridation from all around the world had the opportunity to present their case, Waldbott gave condemning evidence of the harm caused by fluoridation. Though the defence attorneys had every opportunity to question him on the evidence he had given, his evidence went absolutely and totally unchallenged. When you read something of the case against fluoride you will have no doubt as to why that was.
Sir Stanton Hicks was a noted Australian professor of pharmacology and physiology. He summed up the matter well when he said:
I submit that medication of a whole populace variable in individual response, regardless of individual age, state of teeth, of general health, rate of consumption of water, and so on, is quite unscientific and unethical, and that passive acceptance of the right of a government or municipal authority to implement such medication through its water supply is to sacrifice a fundamental principle of medical practice.
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