The Footsteps of Facism March to the Fluoridation Drum

The Footsteps of Facism March to the Fluoridation Drum.

Media release
Wellington, 21 November 2016

The introduction of a Bill to blatantly introduce mandatory fluoridation “by the back” door is a sad day for democracy in New Zealand.

This Bill doesn’t stop with empowering DHBs to force fluoridation on the population without consultation or public input, and ignoring any scientific research showing health risks: it allows the Minister of Health to mandate fluoridation through the Drinking Water Standards – a move specifically rejected by a former Health Select Committee.

The Ministry of Health has lost the scientific debate in two successive public tribunal hearings, the York and Cochrane reviews say there is no reliable scientific evidence that fluoridation reduces tooth decay, while the US National Research Council review showed there was risk of harm, especially to some subsets of the population.

Statistics obtained from DHBs across the country show there is no difference in tooth decay between fluoridated and unfluoridated communities, across the entire spectrum of decay. In particular, there is still a ‘tail’ of fluoridated children with extreme decay, requiring extraction under general anaesthetic. What is the Ministry of Health going to do about them, while it is fanatically pushing on others the fluoridation that hasn’t helped them?

If anyone has any doubts that the DHBs will reach a predetermined decision – the media release says it in plain English: “Decisions would be based on the assessment of health-related evidence and local needs.” Then, “recognition that fluoridating water is the single-most important initiative to improve dental health, particularly child dental health, is long overdue”. How can you assess the evidence impartially when told that recognition of (non-existent) benefit is “long overdue”? And the minister of Health can direct the DHB through its governing legislation.

The report (not a review) by Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor and the Royal Society of New Zealand, assisted by a panel of political fluoridation promoters (not scientific experts), has been heavily criticized by independent international scientists as scientific garbage, and nothing more than political propaganda.

Within a year the Cochrane Collaboration, the ‘gold standard’ in health science reviews, completely contradicted the report’s claim that there was “compelling evidence” that fluoridation was effective. Cochrane said there was NO reliable evidence for this.

The Sapere report is commissioned nonsense. Sapere used figures for decay savings contradicted by the 2009 Oral Health Survey – self-confessed non-science on which they heavily relied. A perfect example of the GIGO principle – garbage in – garbage out.

New Zealand has exactly the same levels of fluoride in the water as most of the world – under 0.3ppm. Dunne and Coleman cannot get even this simple fact right. And that is relatively inert calcium fluoride. The chemicals used in water fluoridation are hazardous industrial waste, contaminated with heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, and lead, as recently admitted by the Ministry of Health.

The majority of the world’s governments have soundly rejected water fluoridation as ineffective and/or unsafe and/or unethical. It is a sad day when a tiny minority of zealots can force toxic waste into the public water supply, against all science and commonsense.

For accurate scientific information on fluoridation visit www.fluoridefree.org.nz and www.fluoridealert.org.

© Scoop Media