Daily Echo - Legal? It doesn't make it moral

Legal? It doesn't make it moral
ONCE again, in these columns, we have been treated to a diatribe by Olga Senior, from South Central Strategic Health Authority (SHA) (In My View July 28).
Her article was entitled "Evidence is in support of fluoridation". In my view the question that needs to be answered is if the evidence really is in support of fluoridation, why is it that the pro-fluoridationists, seem unable to quote any published research, with references, done by completely independent laboratories, that show this?
By independent I mean not funded by any pro-fluoride group such as governments, which already do, or intend to, fluoridate, or by any company with a vested interest in the outcome, such as the chemical companies, which produce the stuff and have to dispose of it somehow.
The answer is quite simply because any research which has been conducted independently and in an unbiased way has revealed that fluoridation is not only ineffectual it is also harmful to the very thing it is purported to protect - teeth.
There are literally hundreds of published studies, by well qualified people, that show the harmful effects of fluoridation, but the pro-fluoridationists dismiss them all as quackery. Why? Perhaps the answer lies more in something I was told by one of the politicians I spoke to during the visit to Westminster.
That person, who I will not name, said to me: "This is not about children's teeth, it never has been. This is all about money."
Olga Senior again pushes the point that the SHA followed the law. Well, so did most of the MPs who have been held to account in the expenses scandal. Just because something is legal it does not make it moral.
The wording of the Bill she keeps quoting had been manipulated in between readings in Parliament, to make it appear to the MPs voting on it that fluoridation would only take place after the people it affected had chosen to have it in a public consultation. But, because of the way the wording has been twisted it leaves the door wide open for any unscrupulous health authority to impose it on people against their will. All they have to say is: "We are satisfied that water fluoridation is safe and effective."
This after having probably done as little research into the subject as the SHA board member who, I am told, asked her colleagues in the meeting at St Mary's Stadium: "Can dental fluorosis be reversed?" Unbelievable ignorance is not the word.
By the way Mrs Senior, please do not imply in your letters to the paper that the majority of people using the Internet are too thick to understand what they are reading. Perhaps you would like to quote us the reference for the research papers that you say are inaccurate so that we can research them ourselves.
If instead of fighting the judicial review, the SHA were to spend the £400,000 (of our money) that it has set aside for that purpose, on educating the children (and their parents) that they say this is about, they could afford to have a dozen full time health workers and a couple of dentists doing just that for the next year or more and forget the forced medication of the rest of us.