Page 569 - Week 02 - Thursday, 21 February 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Your consent is required before treatment begins.
... ... ...
You are entitled to refuse such treatment.
People in Canberra are not given the right to refuse such treatment. I should like to read into the record a very well-balanced argument from Fluoridation - Good Intentions and Bad Principle. It states:
Those who wish to fluoridate the community's water supplies are very powerful and very persistent in the face of a large and growing volume of opposition. Moved as they are by a genuine concern for the state of children's teeth, emotionally predisposed to attach very great authority to what purports to be the result of objective scientific method, they are wholly convinced that they have discovered a scientifically attested, safe method of remedying effectively and easily a serious menace to health. Hence their thinly suppressed irritation when their will is frustrated by opposition. Although this is one public controversy among many, yet, in this instance, because the bulk of professional opinion is aligned on one side, the opposition is contemptuously dismissed as agitation stirred up by an alleged 'handful' of well-meaning but mischievous cranks.
But 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 his right to personal liberty. This cannot be denied. Of course, if we all wanted to drink water 1 p.p.m. of fluoride, there would be no difficulty. Hence the irritation of the authorities, convinced of their own good intentions and authoritative expertise, when through 'pure ignorance' on our part we do not wish to take what they say we so clearly ought to want. The question therefore must be faced: Why are some men no less stubborn in opposition to this measure than those in advocacy of it? All, no doubt, are equally public spirited; all, no doubt, equally and deeply concerned about the grave state of dental decay in children's teeth. The opposition fully appreciates the reasons animating the public authorities; their opposition is none the less unswerving. Why? There are two essential and related reasons.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .