"Fluoride support against evidence" again.....

Looks like the local anti-fluoride mob have called in their "expert" from Geelong. A quick search reveals the author, David McRae BSc(Hons), Grad. Dip. Human Services. 

I must admit that his credentials had me a little intimidated, but I pushed on with skeptical diligence and had a look at the  USA’s National Research Council review of 2006 as he suggested. I could not have scripted it better myself. 

Read the comments to have a look at my response.

Sunraysia Daily

Letters to the Editor

01 Mar, 2010

Fluoride support against evidence

CLEARLY A lover of water fluoridation, Des Horwood writes an enormous letter (Sunraysia Daily, February 24). But in all those paragraphs he gives no evidence and virtually no credible reasons.

He says that his three children have no cavities; well if they live in the Mildura region they have achieved this without water fluoridation.

In Geelong, never fluoridated until a couple of months ago, 70 to 80 percent of children have no cavities, or one at most. Likewise, all the non-fluoridated cities and countries around the world do very well.

In Melbourne, fluoridated for 30 years, we see constant reports of rapidly rising tooth decay, and fluoridation is proving powerless to combat it.

The problem is eating and drinking junk food, not a lack of the toxic fluoride chemical.

The fluoride that the government wants to add to all water supplies is fluorosilicic acid, FSA, a waste product from several heavy industries.

As Mr Horwood points out, FSA is contaminated with heavy metals including arsenic, mercury, lead and cadmium, but then says we shouldn’t worry about it. What?

Any addition of toxic heavy metals to the bodies of our babies and children is dangerous. The goal of water suppliers is to reduce toxics as close as possible to zero, not to increase them.

He claims that only much higher levels of fluoride cause health problems. Has he consulted the USA’s National Research Council review of 2006?

It found serious health problems related to quite small daily intakes of fluoride that you can get from drinking and cooking with water that is artificially fluoridated.

Since Geelong was fluoridated mid-last year, we have seen many dozens of people reporting fluoride-related health disturbances like stomach pain, skin rashes and severe fatigue that only clear up when they take the costly measures to completely avoid tap water. That is unfair for them and they get no compensation.

Mr Horwood’s arguments against voting on fluoridation are just too silly to discuss.

If he really believes his own spin he would want to stop all democracy and elections of any kind. Parents always make the decisions for their children up to a certain age.

Fluoridation is a hangover from 1940s thinking, that throwing chemicals at everything will solve all problems. It is a blight on our country.

David McRae,

Geelong West.

"Fluoride support against evidence"

More anti-fluoride letters. This one is the latest, didn't have time to OCR the other. A quick search revealed that the author belongs to http://www.fluoridefreemurray.org/. I've already replied as I wanted to get it into the Saturday paper as I think it has the highest circulation.

Sunraysia Daily Newspaper
Letter to Editor

25 Feb, 2010

Fluoride support against evidence
SO Des Horwood, you are right and 98 per cent of European governments, our own Weary Dunlop, 12 medical Nobel Prize winners and thousands of professionals throughout the world (including dentists) are wrong.

You mention you have three children with no cavities – you live in an unfluoridated area so where does this come into the for and against fluoride argument unless you are giving your children fluoride tablets?
That is a totally different picture as they would be getting pharmaceutical grade fluoride, not the fluoride from the toxic waste stacks of a super phosphate factory.
The anti-fluoride groups around the world have no argument with that, besides you have a choice to give your children the fluoride tablets.
You should give a thought to all the people with health problems who could be affected by the type of fluoride which will be put in our water, and remember it is a chemical (not a nutrient), which is accumulative over the years, and as Weary Dunlop said the symptoms could show up even 40 years later.
I suggest you do a little more research!

Bette Schulz,
Red Cliffs.

"....connection between fluoride and cancer"

There is is big anti-fluoridisation campaign on in the Sunraysia Region and I imagine the rest of Victoria, as the State Government is talking about it's introduction. This letter is just the latest in a long line.

Sunraysia Daily Newspaper

Letter to Editor

19 Feb 2010

Landholders should be angry

HAD to laugh when I read the letter by Todd Harper from Vic Health (February 12).

What a parody of jokes.

Here we read about smoke-free streets to combat ill-health caused by second-hand smoke that smokers are polluting our streets with.

Previously we have read about the banning of smoking in cars with children aboard, yet we are prepared to feed our children the same chemicals in far greater dosage through the water that they must drink.

So target a minority group (I am not a smoker).

Pass on the other side of the street if you are bothered by them.

Why can't their employer provide them with an area that they can use? After all it is not yet illegal to smoke cigarettes.

In reply to John Bunney of Irymple, the referendum was the first stage in what will be a long battle in our fight against a greedy and ill-in- formed government, a government that recalls toys because they have traces of heavy metals in their paint but tells us it's okay for our children to drink these same heavy metals, some of which are lead, cadmium and mercury as well traces of the semi-metal arsenic, and I ask you, to what end?

There was a commercial long ago which advertised fluoride toothpaste and showed children that the fluoride gets into teeth just like the colour of the water got into

Now we are being told that it works from the inside out and is good for the foetus, babies, children, teenagers up to the elderly, even if you don't have teeth, or at least that is implied if we all have to drink it.

Contemporary research overseas has been showing us that fluoride is dangerous, but no independent research in Australia is being used to show that there could be a connection between fluoride and cancer, fluoride and Alzheimer's, fluoride and fluorosis of both teeth and the skeletal system. Why?

I say it's the almighty dollar talking.

The fertiliser and to some extent the coal industries are selling their waste to the government who must get rid of it, so it sells it to councils by forcing them to use it even if their people do not want it.

In the playground that would be called bullying, and would be addressed, not so in reality and especially if it is coming from our government.

There is no democracy. It matters little what people actually want.

I can choose to buy products that do not contain fluoride but I will have no choice if it is added to the water.

Des Harwood's claim that "I am grateful that I grew up with fluoride in my drinking water" (February 13) maybe one of those people who do not react to its side effects.

He would be grateful for the many thousands of additives added to our food also, and he probably does not have children that are affected also.

What about the people who are allergic to it and who cannot toler-

They will now be forced to drink the very substance that makes them sick.

Abroad an association was made between the antisocial behaviour of society and fluoride.

What of the people in Tasmania who have the worst teeth in Australia?

Has fluoride been of benefit to them; no it has not there are many cursing its addition.

I say no more. An interesting web site is at: http://www.green-facts.org/en/fluoride/fluorides-2 /02-environment.htm#0.

Stefanie Ransome,

Mildura.

"Copenhagen Treaty is one world government"

Believe it or not, this letter was published on the same day as my Darwin response. What is this? some sort of conspiracy??? :)

Once again this is a form letter sent out so keep your eyes open and please help with forming a response to this that can be posted by skeptics in their local papers that this drivel is published. 

Sunraysia Daily Newspaper

Letter to Editor

16 Feb 2010

Copenhagen Treaty is one world government

KEVIN Rudd took an entourage of no less than 114 government-staff members to Copenhagen, or as some say, Dopenhagen, to sign your constitutional rights away without your knowledge.

We are talking about ministers and top shelfers, all flying business class, to a so-called climate change conference: which in fact was nothing more than a covert attempt to sign away the sovereign rights of each nation to an unelected and unknown international body.

Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is touring Australia and warning us all that Mr Rudd was prepared to sign an international treaty that would impose a communist world government on the world, and indeed Australia.

He said that a global government was going to be created, and that the word "government" actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity.

He said, the second purpose was the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, for the reason of "climate debt," and the third purpose — enforcement!

He went on to ask how many of us thought the word  "election" or "democracy" or "vote" or "ballot" occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty?

That's right, it doesn't appear once.

He said the treaty takes precedence over our Constitution, and we can't simply resign from it, because, to resign, it takes the signatures of all the other stated parties.

Copenhagen was held expressly to set up a transnatiotial "government" on a scale the world has never before seen.

With the release of the emails, the science behind global warming has now collapsed; and yet Mr Rudd was, and still is, exceedingly prepared to commit $7 billion per annum of your money to this body of unidentified people to "cut world emissions".

He was well aware that a signature would be required on the Copenhagen Treaty before he went and well aware he would be handing over your constitutional rights to this unknown global authority, and confident it would happen.

When was the government going to mention it? When were they going to put a paid ad on the front page of the newspapers informing their constituents? When was anyone from the Labor Government going to cross the floor on this issue? For that matter, when was anyone from the Liberals or Nationals going to mention it?

Not one political party debated the fact in parliament of this supreme international body having rule over our economy through "carbon tax" and "climate debt": no, not the Labor Party, nor the Liberal Party, nor the Nationals: and yet we are paying a fortune to keep these people in office and to protect us from exactly this.

The entire government MUST be removed from office for their betrayal.

They were quite prepared to invite another regime of control over our nation, and in such a covert manner. Rudd, Wong and the Government went over to Copenhagen on our behalf, in secrecy, to do something to our nation that we would not have known about nor agreed to, bypassing our constitution and the rights it gives us.

Ironically, about 25 years ago I recall the story of a man who returned stunned from a conference in Texas, and said "the one world government will be brought in through the 'green' movement".

At the time it was a throw-away comment, but now we see how remarkably accurate he was.

The worrying thing is that it needs the buy-in of governments, and they nearly got ours.

Surely there must be a way removing and penalising high ranking people in Australian public office who attempt to undermine our sovereign rights?

We are in our deepest and most deceptive constitutional crisis since Federation, brought on by our elected public servants, and I am calling on Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II our Head of State, to come to Australia and remove this government!

We are very privileged to someone who is above government as it is plainly difficult to place trust in some politicians.

Niven Neyland, Sydenham, Victoria

"Flaws in Darwin's theory of evolution"

Believe it or not, this letter was published on the same day as my vaccination letter. What can I say Bob.....bad timing dude!

Sunraysia Daily Newspaper

Letter to Editor

13 Feb 2010

Flaws in Darwin's theory of evolution

CHARLES Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has greatly influenced science and its institutions.

However, there are many flaws in the evolution by natural selection theory.

There are many blanks or lack of evidence in the claim that evolution by natural selection produced life.

It's- a claim that can never be proven!

There is proof that species can change through adaptation, but to argue that all life came about by blind natural selection or cause and effect is akin to tossing paint onto a wall and expecting to produce a Michelangelo or Raphael fresco masterpiece, only a trillion times plus more difficult.

Scientists, for all their efforts, have not now or never will discover the secret of life.

Whether creation was completed in six days or six billion years or more is irrelevant to the complexity, harmony and beauty thereof.

There just has to be an infinitely higher intelligence to mastermind all these majestic and inspiring wonders of the cosmos and nature.

Man's puny intellect cannot fathom these wonders, nor the spiritual world beyond.

Bob Hogarth, Mildura.

"Poisonous mercury is in vaccines"

This is the letter to the editor that sparked my skeptical indignation enough to start this blog. As such I have already sent in a reply to the newspaper that can be read in the comments.

Sunraysia Daily Newspaper

Letter to Editor

11 Feb 2010

Poisonous mercury is in vaccines

AUSTRALIA'S chief health officer Professor Jim Bishop is to write to doctors urging them to "redouble efforts" to vaccinate as many patients as possible.

But the 10-dose vials of this vaccine contain a 24.5 micrograms per 5 mL dose of the preservative thimerosal, a mercury derivative.
The Food and Drug Administration removed mercury-containing ointment for horses from the market and proclaimed zero tolerancefor mercury in any product used to treat an animal.

Those wishing to be vaccinated against swine flu would do well to insist on being vaccinated with CSL's 0.5mL thimerosal-free, single-dose, pre-filled syringe.

After all, mercury can cause birth defects, have detrimental affects on the brain and, believe it or not, mercury used to be added to some infant teething powders!

NOW mercury is added to public water supplies in cocktails of arsenic, fluoride and other heavy metals known as fluoridating agents!

Ailsa Boyden
Farleigh, Queensland.

Introductions

I was reading my local newspaper and spotted a form letter to the editor from way out of state. This particular letter raised my skeptical indignation enough to write a skeptical response, and received the letter of the week award (A parker pen and a Tatts Lotto package..... oh the irony!) This was the inspiration for this blog.

I'm a big fan of all blogs/podcasts skeptical however I fear we may be preaching to the choir and not reaching the wider community with a skeptical point of view. 

I hope this will become a resource for skeptics that keep an eye on their local papers giving them help in putting together skeptical responses. I would like this to not only be a place to combat against the form letters that are sent nationwide spreading their pseudo science, conspiracy theories, and other unsubstantiated woo, but also give praise to the very good articles and letters as well.