Page 2700 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
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As I indicated, I also looked through Mr Stevenson's dissent. I again indicate that there is a welter of information, much of it quoted by Mr Stevenson, much of it purporting to establish that fluoride is harmful in varying degrees. I consider some of it to be hard to understand in terms of its combination of scientific facts with semipolitical or moral comments.
Mr Stevenson: Which part was that?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Stevenson asked which part that was. He refers, for example, to the activities of apparently secret societies of dentists - - -
Mr Duby: On what page?
MR HUMPHRIES: This is on page 279. There is apparently a society called the Delta-Sigma-Delta organisation which is exclusively male; it has English freemasonry connotations; it is led by a grand master; it displays its own coat of arms and requests its members to take an oath of secrecy.
Mr Stevenson goes on to say that this organisation has effectively infiltrated parts of the Australian Dental Association and strongly influences its policy and, in effect, he suggests, in fairly explicit terms, that much of the activity of that body, with respect to fluoridation, is attributable - - -
Mr Stevenson: It was a quote from the Labor Star, Mr Humphries. Why not give the correct quote?
MR HUMPHRIES: No, that is not the case. The bit that I am quoting is above that, as I understand it, Mr Stevenson. It is alleged that there is some kind of conspiracy at work here, producing the view among dentists that fluoridation is good for people's teeth.
As Minister for Health, I spoke to a great many dentists about fluoride. When I spoke to them I had in mind the argument that dentists, when being educated in dental schools around the country, were heavily influenced by accepted thinking on this question and were inclined to accept knowledge handed down to them from their elders and their teachers. That is not the sort of experience that I encountered when I was at university; there was a very strong spirit of questioning when I was there.
I find it very hard to imagine that dentists are somehow so different that they would accept, blindly and without their consideration, arguments that fluoride is effective in the prevention of dental caries. Frankly, Mr Deputy Speaker, the belief that I encountered in most dentists, that fluoride was effective in preventing dental caries, was very much a matter of conviction produced by years of working in the field. I have no doubt at all that most dentists come to that view through their experience and their observation of the way in which fluoride affects children's teeth particularly.
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