Democrats for Social Change

Media Release
Thursday 18 July 2013

Ryall misleads the public on fluoridation

Health Minister Tony Ryall’s distortion of the evidence on fluoridation when he appeared on a recent Q and A programme reveals either an abysmal ignorance of the subject or a deliberate agenda to misrepresent the huge quantity of valid evidence which endorses the anti-fluoridation movement, says DSC health spokesman David Tranter.

Mr. Ryall’s claim "There's no doubt all the science points to the fact that there are benefits for families from fluoridation and that the levels of fluoridation are safe for New Zealanders" is precisely the sort of misinformation he alleges the anti-fluoridation movement uses.

To be blunt Mr. Ryall is simply not telling the truth about fluoridation.

The evidence against fluoridation goes back many decades and comes from world-wide sources. It is simply not credible that Mr. Ryall is unaware of this, Mr. Tranter said.

As just one example, in the 1930s U.S. dentist Dr Weston Price visited the Pacific including New Zealand where he examined 1,000 year old Maori skulls as well as Maori living in urban areas and those still living in rural areas, away from the trappings of “beneficial civilisation”, and in accordance to their traditional ways which included nutrient rich food. He concluded that these Maori had the world’s best teeth. Price's findings clearly demonstrated that it was the European’s refined and nutrient devoid diet that wreaked havoc, continuing today, on the dental and general health of some of the traditional Maori people and on other populations he visited.

Price found that people who avoided the Europeans’ refined foods such as white flour products, sugar-containing foods, and refined vegetable oils, which still today detrimentally affects the body’s biochemistry, exhibited fine dental and general health their ancestors enjoyed for centuries.
Price’s work and that of countless scientists since proves for those willing to consider both sides of the issue that fluoride is irrelevant in protecting teeth while posing serious health dangers. Its misleading status as a supposed silver bullet regarding tooth decay disguises the real cause of poor dental health - the sugar-laden and junk food-affected modern diet.

Mr. Ryall’s comment that "there will be people who come from out of town and tell all sorts of shock-horror stories around fluoridation” simply attacks the messenger while evading the evidence, Mr. Tranter said.

Many New Zealand communities and innumerable individuals have made themselves familiar with both sides of the fluoridation debate and while they sometimes have outside experts to endorse their views, local groups have researched the evidence for decades.

It is not the anti-fluoridationists who are pushing “highly organised campaigns of misinformation”, as Mr. Ryall claims, but the very Minister who should be encouraging health authorities to tell New Zealanders the full truth about why our society has so much dental decay - and how to prevent it, Mr. Tranter concluded.

ENDS

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