Dr. Paul Connett, director of the US anti-fluoride activist organisation Fluoride Action Network (FAN), will be speaking in NZ next week. He is accompanied by Dr. William Hirzy, a staff member of FAN. They will speak at meetings organised by Fluoride Free NZ (FFNZ) – a local activist group affiliated to FAN – in Thames [...]
The authors of the NZ Fluoridation Review are correcting a few mistakes in the report which slipped through proof-reading. I described one of the mistakes in my blog article "Did the Royal Society get it wrong about fluoridation?" This is little more than a "typo" where the words ‘one IQ point’ had been wrongly substituted [...]
Declan Waugh is continually searching the scientific literature to find something, anything, he can use to discredit community water fluoridation. Problem is, he really doesn't read things properly and any close checking of his claims show they are just not warranted. However, his lack of checking must have left him with a red face the [...]
US elections show majority support for fluoridation. Several communities in the US have been holding fluoridation referendum alongside the mid-term elections. Not all results are in yet but indications are that any swing against fluoridation has died in the water. Support for this social health policy has been about 60 or 70% - ironically similar to [...]
Fluoride Free Hamilton is up to their tactics of misrepresentation and scaremongering again. They are raising financial scares with the assertion that the "unbudgeted cost of getting the fluoride plant back into working order" is $100,000. Wrong. The council had said "Costs for council to reintroduce fluoride is $100,000, which has been considered as part [...]
Readers will recognise this graph - similar ones are always being presented to argue that there is no difference between improvement in oral health of people in fluoridated and unfluoridated countries. This one is from Connett's book and he says of it "there is little obvious difference in the rate of decline in tooth decay [...]
For a while now I have thought the mistake of the Hamilton City Council was a cloud with a silver lining. It was a wake-up call to people concerned with evidence based approaches to health and society. A warning that anti-scientific groups were getting far more influence than they deserved. So news of that decision [...]
"He put at least 6 people to sleep". Click to read article. It's been a fine afternoon in Hamilton so I thought I would wander in to the Fluoride Free Hamilton Information meeting. Should have known better. Didn't stay long as the chairman announced first thing that the audience had to remain quiet [...]
The anti-fluoride activist organisations just don't take kindly to open discussion and having their claims challenged. Fluoride Free Hamilton had originally allowed comments on the event page for the upcoming "information" meeting with "informed" dentists. They have now closed it because they found contributions from science-minded people intolerable.
This is a figure from the US National Academy of science publication "Earth Materials and Health: Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health." This lists fluoride (F) as one of the trace elements "considered essential for human health and metabolism." The upper figure indicates the pattern of harm and benefit as the intake of [...]
