Page 2730 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
It is a matter for concern that the Working Group cannot point to a single ongoing Australian study which monitors adequately the impact and possible adverse consequences of this policy, and that in its pursuit of the terms of reference the Working Group has had to rely on: indirect analyses of very inadequate datasets, collected not for the monitoring of this policy but for other purposes; a limited number of Australian studies; and upon overseas investigations of these matters.
I will not quote the whole paragraph. It is the third paragraph on page 110. It says further:
Those recommendations and conclusions must be qualified by emphasising the current dearth of an adequate evaluative Australian database.
In receiving evidence, as Mr Wood has hinted, we pursued some of this; we wondered about that one part per million. It is such an arbitrary figure. How did it come to be that? Again, that is why we turned with care and consideration to, after all, something that is a study by local experts, including a member of the NHMRC. I quoted one part of that Hill and Douglas report earlier. I will now quote the last sentence:
With the almost universal use of fluoridated dentifrices in Australia, it may also be appropriate to revise downward the level of fluoride in the water supply.
We listened carefully to what we were told about that and we read that material carefully. We looked carefully at the working group's earlier comments and asked questions about those. So, there are problems about actual evidence, and I quoted on that from the NHMRC report; and there are questions about the statistical methods related to that evidence. It just so happens that in Canberra we have one of the world's experts in that field, and we also had him as a witness and he gave evidence. I am not saying that we accepted it all, but certainly that was another area of concern about the evidence that the NHMRC has and that we had.
In very recent years, some doubts were raised in connection with cancer. Here I have to disagree with Mr Stevenson. I believe that the NHMRC does try, in a tentative way - I stress, in a tentative way - to set aside those questions about cancer; but, in that same section about future monitoring and research, there is this urge in terms of public health to continue that research. This matter is by no means ended or certain or without question. The report in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that that evidence is not conclusive, but that is always the way that these conclusions are
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .