Page 2712 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
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Mr Humphries talked about some requirement of medical people to determine what must be the simplest decision that anyone can make: Should government have the right to force everyone to take a drug? He did not explain to us why you need a four-year degree in medicine to work out whether or not you can force me or anybody else to take a drug. At the end of the all-party report are listed the names and locations of the people who made some 160 submissions. I looked at that and thought that was interesting, but it did not give who was for and who was against fluoride. So, I thought I would do it. I listed them all and found that 141 people who made submissions to the inquiry were against fluoride and only 19 were for it.
Mr Humphries: It is not an opinion poll, Dennis.
MR STEVENSON: It is not an opinion poll. We could talk about opinion polls, but I will do that a bit later. In summary, may I quote a past president of the American Medical Association, Dr Charles Heyd. He stated:
The plain fact that fluorine is an insidious poison, harmful, toxic and cumulative in its effects, even when ingested in minimal amounts, will remain unchanged no matter how many times it will be repeated in print that fluoridation of [the] water supply is "safe".
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (9.36): Mr Speaker, it must be two years since this matter was first raised in this Assembly. No doubt the speaker who follows me can give us the date on which that occurred. I remember Mr Prowse standing in a position that is now on my right and displaying a large photograph, that was truly quite alarming, showing one or two people - I think there were several photographs - with teeth in a very bad state. My response then, as it remains today, was to indicate that literally thousands of photographs can be displayed showing the bright smiling faces of children and young adults who have mouths full of excellent teeth. That is substantially the result of the addition of fluoride to our drinking water.
Perhaps the most vivid memory of the long process we went through in that committee was of a very pleasant, kind and courteous gentleman who must have been in his seventies and who came to explain to us that we should not add fluoride to the water because some years before he had gone through a period of debilitation, loss of energy and a range of other symptoms which he attributed to fluoride. I cannot pass judgment about that. He said that that was the case, and I was in no position to dispute it. But I noted his teeth and afterwards I said to him, "You have false teeth. Tell me about them". He said, as well as I can recall, "Oh yes, of course. Where I came from in Victoria, all the
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