Page 66 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 1991
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And, indeed, it is. It is because fluoride is given by tapwater, and is therefore invisible, that many people perhaps do not understand the argument well. Let us imagine that your fluoride was given in a different form, that the Government required you to take a tablet every day. If that was the case the situation would be undoubted; people would not allow it to happen. But the fact that fluoride is given to us via our drinking water changes the principle not one whit.
Dr Sampson was a professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol. He said:
However irritating to them the fact may be, try as they will the fluoridators cannot answer the objection that the measure is incompatible with human freedom. No amount of ransacking constitutional law books, invocation of legal authorities, appeals to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, touches the principle, immediately evident to all unprejudiced men, that the forcing of any ingredient into the body of another is a most fundamental violation of the right to personal liberty.
A legal opinion on the matter was given by Paul McCormick, a research fellow in law at Nuffield College, Oxford. He said:
From the legal point of view fluoridation is compulsory medication. It is done without the permission of the person at the receiving end.
Do we have health rights? It was stated in the 1988 book by the Australian Consumers Association, Your Health Rights, that the final responsibility is yours. You have the responsibility for your health.
Let us look at the chairman's statement that it is beyond any doubt that its use reduces dental caries. He says that there is absolutely no doubt. Let us look at the evidence. Dr John Lee in his submission to the ACT inquiry said that it is true that children's caries rates have fallen dramatically in the past 15 years. We acknowledge that throughout the world - better than 80 per cent of the world's population. He says:
The improvement has been equally great in both fluoridated and unfluoridated communities. Whether the reason is improvement in nutrition, the advent of fluoridated toothpaste, better dental hygiene, the widespread use of antibiotics ... the only certain conclusion to be drawn at this time is that water fluoridation cannot be the answer.
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