BOYNE CITY — A group of Boyne City residents opposed to an upcoming ballot initiative to resume adding fluoride to the city's water system will host a forum on the topic from 3-5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, at the Boyne District Library Community Room. The group calling itself Citizens Against Forced Medication is calling the event a debate in which it will use Paul Connett to represent the anti-fluoridation position.According to a release from the group, Connett, who lives in Birmingham, N.Y., is the director for the Fluoride Action Network, has a doctorate in chemistry and is a retired professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology at St. Lawrence University in New York and has co-authored a book opposing fluoridating drinking water.
In its release, the anti-fluoride group challenges proponents of fluoridation to "present any expert on water fluoridation they choose to debate the pro-fluoridation position."
However, Carl VanDomelen, one of the founders of Citizens United for Dental Health, said that organization will not be participating in the debate.
Citizen's United for Dental Health is the group which organized a petition drive that resulted in the question of whether or not the city's water supply being placed on the Tuesday, Nov. 4 General Election ballot.
The city's water supply, which had been fluoridated since a similar ballot question approved the practice in 1973 until May when the commission voted 3-2 to discontinue the practice citing concerns about health effects.
The commission made the decision against the strong recommendation of a host of medical and dental professionals, who said the fluoridation is safe and important for helping prevent dental cavities — especially in children.
In a release responding to the anti-flouridation group's challenge, VanDomelen explained why his group would not participate in the debate:
"Mr. Connett’s claims about fluoridated water have been repeatedly disproven as wildly wrong and entirely false by medical doctors and literally hundreds of peer reviewed medical studies and research papers published by some of the world’s leading medical journals for decades," VanDomelen wrote.
"He has a right to his opinion, but his opinion has been consistently proven wrong by 60 years of published medical studies and research. That fluoridated water systems are entirely safe and provide significant public health benefits to children and adults is now a scientific fact that is beyond any level of debate."
"We choose not to appear with Mr. Connett in any public or media setting because to do so would give him and his discredited and disproven message a level of respect and credibility he does not deserve."
"We urge the citizens and voters of Boyne City to ignore this charlatan, and we urge the news media to bury or, better yet, totally ignore him.
3 comments:
So the pro fluoride side prefer to discredit and name call, whilst the anti fluoride side wish to have a debate, if Mr Connet is all they say he is then come to the meeting and prove it...I think the pro fluoride side are showing the classic signs of, "We know best" syndrome, and need to seek scientific facts...Put up or shut up...
This "disproved and discredited" argument is the last refuge of these scoundrels. No science or debate - just flinging abuse and insult because they have nothing left but to smear.
I seem to be having a bit of a problem getting this comment concerning proponent tactics to stick in the Echo. It seems apposite so I'll leave it here...
When, after 35 years of intermittent fluoridation in Lincoln, the 4 July 2005 Lincolnshire Echo led with the news that 90000 people in Lincolnshire were looking for a dentist, it was a fair bet that at least some of them used to go to Oliver Chapple, a very good dentist there who was however excessively fond of fluoride.
Despite having every reason to suspect animal rights campaigners of an arson attack on his surgery, the then vulpicidal Mr Chapple seized upon this unfortunate incident, and took to the headlines in the aforementioned Echo to accuse anti-fluoride campaigners of the crime instead.
This was shocking enough to quench any respectable protests about a planned expansion of personal fluoridatedness which just happened to be on the cards in Lincolnshire at that time.
And utter tosh. The front-page story was unbacked by the police or any, er, evidence. And although this is of no importance, as the most vocal anti-fluoride guy in Lincoln at the time, this was kind of a personal slur on moi, in some unlitigible way.
As Cllr Shields also demonstrates, what matters evidence, if you have a strong opinion? See, Southampton? That's the way to do it!
Oliver's rush to demonise opponents of personal fluoridatedness as surgery arsonists illustrates well the human tendency to think in clumps. Instead of seeing independent samples people, and especially zealots, quickly resort to stereotypes to fit new information into their existing opinions.
You know, like the racists and flying saucer people.
It is the very opposite to the null hypothesis of scientific method.
In an example of what I mean, last year a paper showed a statistically bulletproof correlation coefficient (R2=.9994) between water fluoride levels and racehorse breakdowns at two Southern California tracks.
Breakdown incidence peaked with fluoride elevated to 1ppm, with 10.8 fatalities per 1,000 starts. In a two-year period, 186 horses perished at Los Alamitos. When the fluoride level was lowered to 0.7ppm, fatalities also dropped. Fatalities were lowest when no fluoride was added.
Although there was no unfluoridated control racecourse, as the author wryly observes: "Water district officials were unaware of treating the horses. The horses were unaware of the treatment, and the owners were not informed. The author/observer had no role in either the treatment or handling of the horses. The most logical objective explanation of these data is that the breakdown incidence parallels the level of fluoride in the fluoridated water supply."
So now Cllr Shields can finally see some harm attributable to fluoridation. All he has to do is look. What about a Council-funded trip to California to check up?
And why were those 90000 people searching anyway? Had all the dentists left by then, thanks to fluoride?
http://holistichorse.com/resources-sp-1210586277/in-the-news/122-old-news-from-years-past/728-fluoride-in-pet-food-linked-to-bone-cancer
http://www.fluoride-class-action.com/wp-content/uploads/Sauerheber-Racehorse-Breakdowns-and-Artificially-Fluoridated-Water-in-Los-Angeles1.pdf
It is sad that Lincoln's now-retired white-knight-hunter-dentist fluoride expert was not only willing to ill-treat his horse and hounds - though perhaps he has his own well - but was prepared to dispense any cheap emotion-wringing propaganda from atop his Pickled Walnut (that's his horse) to do down the irrational masses who wanted to ruin everything.
www.nfl.si/f-bombs
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