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Fluoride book to be changed after criticism
7:36am Friday 25th July 2008
Comments (15)
HEALTH chiefs have admitted that information due to be given to the public about fluoridating water supplies was unfairly balanced in favour of the scheme.
An education booklet containing arguments for and against the plan to put fluoride in tap water will now be changed after criticism it was biased.
Anti-fluoridation campaigners have already accused the South Central Strategic Health Authority, which will ultimately decide whether to give the plan to fluoridate water to 20,000 homes in Southampton and Hampshire the green light, of peddling propaganda.
Yesterday, the SHA board agreed to change documents designed to inform residents about fluoride during the consultation, after hearing feedback suggesting they don't fairly represent both sides.
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Director of communications and corporate affairs, Olga Senior said focus groups felt the literature gives a good case for fluoridation, but failed to provide reasons against it.
"The feedback told us if what you want to do is give balance, you haven't done that," she said.
"The pro-fluoridation group bases its arguments on science. The group against also bases its argument on reports and science.
"What doesn't seem to have come out at this stage is that balance."
The board agreed at the meeting to put consultation back two weeks to change the literature.
Board chairman, Dr Geoffrey Harris said: "We do need to be assured that in the public consultation document we are not closing down one side of the argument."
As revealed in the Daily Echo, Hampshire Against Fluoridation has lodged a formal complaint with the authority, saying the decision to take the issue to a public consultation was based on flawed facts.
Chairman John Spottis-woode has demanded the process be abandoned, because he believes evidence showing negative effects of fluoridation has been ignored.
Mr Spottiswoode last night welcomed the move to revise the literature.
The consultation will run until December 19, and the SHA board will make a final decision at a special meeting in February.
Your Say YourThis is Hampshire
Christoff, says...
9:39am Fri 25 Jul 08
sue wrote:totally agree, it is disgusting...but hardly surprising. The public get hoodwinked on so many agendas due to misleading 'facts'.
What an absolute waste of money, how can the SHA board be trusted if they can not present a balanced point of view. The process should be abandoned immediately - too much money has been wasted on a process which the majority do not want.
I am praying this doesn't go through, more because of principle than anything else...we shouldn't have to pay for water that has had something added which we didn't want.
The fluoride issue is obviously important but personally, I feel our choice will be taken away. I hope that those objecting can put a spanner in the works by bringing up the good old Human Rights Act. It would be the one time I would welcome the use of a loophole to scupper any decision to go ahead.
Any Human Rights Act experts out there? Step up...please!!
nyscof, says...
10:34am Fri 25 Jul 08
They will find those studies scientifically flawed and do not necessarily show fluoridation reduces tooth decay or that it is safe for all
What's really at work here is politics. Those with the greater political clout get favored treatment.
Gilmore, Shirley, Southampton says...
10:58am Fri 25 Jul 08
goard, Southampton says...
11:06am Fri 25 Jul 08
Well, that's my idea of power.
goard
bingolover, Gnashing My Teeth.... says...
11:26am Fri 25 Jul 08
I've been paying National Insurance for years and still can't get one, and I can't afford to go private.
Surely more dentists would help solve the problem of Southampton's decaying teeth instead of trying to force people to have their water contaminated?
spotburst, Southampton says...
12:19pm Fri 25 Jul 08
bingolover wrote:Can't get an NHS dentist in Southampton? Try http://www.southampt
Could they not just have spent all the money they're clearly wasting on a few more NHS dentists?!
I've been paying National Insurance for years and still can't get one, and I can't afford to go private.
Surely more dentists would help solve the problem of Southampton's decaying teeth instead of trying to force people to have their water contaminated?
onhealth.nhs.uk/ours
ervices/nhsdentist/h
ampshiredentalhelpli
ne where there's 3 listed apparently accepting patients.
Dr Ferrett, says...
1:49pm Fri 25 Jul 08
Get a job, get some clean teeth.
Plus THERE IS NO EVIDENCE IT CAN HURT YOU!!!
Miles Sway, Scotland says...
2:08pm Fri 25 Jul 08
Dr Ferrett wrote:Absolutely, just like that nice John Gummer feeding his kids hamburgers during the BSE scare - absolutely nothing to worry about!
Whats the big problem with Flouride in your water? If your kids didnt have hideous, freakish teeth and brushed them, instead of eating Iceland junk food from your dole money, then this wouldnt be a issue. Get a job, get some clean teeth. Plus THERE IS NO EVIDENCE IT CAN HURT YOU!!!
del boy trotter, peckham says...
2:44pm Fri 25 Jul 08
Check out history of this FCAT & you will see that flouride in water can be very damaging to the human brain.
Ever wonder why 100's of thousands of people in concentration camps never fought back at the few hundred nazis that were holding them ? answer: CONTROL OF THE MASSES BY USE OF FLOURIDE IN WATER. FACT
Stuart Jebbitt, Eastleigh and Thornhill says...
3:33pm Fri 25 Jul 08
I was under the impression that in a democracy, both sides of an argument should be allowed an equal chance to be put across.
This is yet another erosion of our civil liberties by the current Labour government.
We are to be medicated against our will, because Labour
are worried about their appalling record on dental health,
their destruction of access to NHS dental treatment, and
need a 'quick fix' before the next general election.
Imagine going to the doctors and rather than being given a prescription, you are rugby-tackled to the ground and injected in the backside! That's effectively what will happen.
They are under pressure from above to drive this through despite the total lack of peer-reviewed science to back up its alleged benefits, despite the growing evidence of it's harmful effects and despite the overwealming majority who oppose it
(as borne out in the Southampton Echo Poll - the only poll, so far, that has offered equal space to both sides)
Some of the materials coming out of Southampton PCT are so full of misleading spin you'd think they were straight out of a 'yes minister' script.
It might be good if the green MEPs Do end up taking it to the european courts as this may save other areas of the UK suffering the same fate.
Gilmore, Shirley, Southampton says...
3:41pm Fri 25 Jul 08
I'm against fluoridation by the way, but I'd rather rely on hard evidence than crazy Nazi-inspired hysteria.
Stuart Jebbitt, Eastleigh and Thornhill says...
3:52pm Fri 25 Jul 08
Gilmore wrote:I agree. If it was about controlling us, they hardly be telling us!
I do love the way that adding the word FACT to the end of sentence must therefore make it so. According to Mr Ian E Stephen, a man whose book is quoted by the anti-fluoridation camp all over the web, the Nazis did use water fluoridation in an attempt to control prisoners of war, those in concentration camps and the general population. However, you should remember that this scheme was proposed by the same \"leading scientists\" who thought they could advance the evolution of the human race by breeding Ayrian Supermen. FACT... Or more accurate... INSANE. I\'m against fluoridation by the way, but I\'d rather rely on hard evidence than crazy Nazi-inspired hysteria.
They'd have just gone ahead and done it in secret.
so..please give the conspiracy theories a rest folks, it only plays into the hands of the pro-fluoride people.
There are solid scientific and ethical reasons to oppose this. Let's stick with those and make sure that we educate as many people as we can.
Linda Rosa, RN, says...
7:51pm Fri 25 Jul 08
Certainly the fears of harm should be addressed. For instance, some "fluorophobe" organizations claim that fluoridated water lowers the I.Q. of children. This claim is based on a few Chinese studies that are so poor and so vague that they are meaningless.
Similar study groups, such as one in Fort Collins, Colorado, found that there are no good studies that establish harm from adequately fluoridated community water.
The real puzzle here is why this hysteria over fluoride persists to today???
Brian Jackson, Lancashire says...
12:29am Sat 26 Jul 08
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sue, Southampton says...
8:56am Fri 25 Jul 08