Page 2699 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
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me, with the greatest of respect to the members of that committee, to be a decision based more on the spirit of compromise than on the desire to effect some scientifically valid position for the ACT.
When I read those sections that I have just quoted I had to ask myself: Why did the Social Policy Committee take a different view entirely from the National Health and Medical Research Council working party, based on the same evidence? The working party had a different view. Its view was presumably very thoroughly researched, yet it took a quite different view. Why should that be?
I also notice, however, that on the next page of the report the standing committee hedges its bets slightly by saying that the ACT Government should urgently seek NHMRC funding to establish an independent study on the effects on dental health of a reduced level of fluoride in the ACT water supply. It seemed to me, with respect again, to be an acknowledgment that there was some doubt, some lack of conclusive proof, that the position they were proposing - in other words, a reduction of the level from one part to half a part per million - was not well based on any scientific research. I have to say that my view is that the heavy onus placed on the Social Policy Committee was not discharged by the sources that were quoted in that report.
There was then discussion on some of the other arguments put forward by various people against mass medication and the compulsory fluoridation of water supplies, such as the argument that civil liberties were breached by the compulsory fluoridation of water. The submissions were not attached in their entirety, but there were some interesting summaries of what some of those submissions argued were the civil liberties arguments against fluoridation. They included: Interfering with freedom of religion; promoting or further moving towards socialised medicine; undertaking mass medication without the consent of the people; it being a step in the direction of socialism - an argument which would normally appeal to me, except that I could not see the basis for it; depriving people of the right to take personal care of one's body; not adhering to the 10 standards set up by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal for experimentation on the lives of human beings; and a measure to extend the omnipotence of big brother government.
Those arguments have been well canvassed in the past, including in this place. They were addressed by the Social Policy Committee. It wisely copped out and said that the committee was divided on whether or not fluoridation of public water supplies infringes civil liberties. It is an argument that I think would be impossible to win one way or the other, and I think it was wise for them to have avoided the issue in that fashion.
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