Letter to local press:Readers of Easter Sunday’s Telegraph may have been concerned about an article estimating the risk to 1.2 million of us from the spread of dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.
In summarising the findings of the Department of Health’s Horizon Scanning Unit, we should all be alarmed at the prospect of 1 in 4 at risk with a 40 per cent increase in the 65 to 75 age range; 50 per cent for the 75 to 84s and with long-term care costs spiralling to a staggering £17 billion.
Comments by a psychiatric consultant, Professor David Wilkinson of Southampton University, included a plea for more research together with a swinging indictment of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence for withholding the £2.50 a day key drug from patients only on the borderline of dementia.
However, if he’s serious about defeating the disease, he should get together with one of his campus colleagues, Professor Jonathan Montgomery and, armed with a copy of health researcher Barry Groves’ book ‘Fluoride – Drinking Ourselves to Death’ turn to page 62, Chapter 5 ‘Fluoride and the Brain’ to find an introductory paragraph from a report credited to a US scientist Dr J A Varner and co-authors, titled: ‘Toxic-induced blood vessel inclusion caused by the chronic administration of aluminium and sodium fluorides and their implication for dementia’
Dr Varner’s prelim’ reads: “The presence of low levels of fluoride in the drinking water, equal to the amount found in fluoridated water, caused damage to the tissue of the brain similar to Alzheimers and the other forms of dementia, as well as kidney damage.”
One of the arguments put forward in support of the case for artificial fluoridation of drinking water is that the fluoride inhibits the enzyme responsible for tooth decay. Even if that was true, the degradation effect doesn’t stop there.
Acetylcholinesterase is another enzyme involved in the transmission of signals along nerves; and fluoridated water negatively affects its function. Chinese research on the effects of fluorides on health has revealed damage to 66 of the 83 enzymes we all need to maintain good health. Immune systems can be particularly hard hit and state-fluoridated South African water does its Aids victims no favours.
When the Southampton academics have read and digested Chapter 5, Wilkinson may care to ask his colleague how he reached the conclusion that fluoridation poses no evidence of harm.
Professor Montgomery was a team leader in the recent study ‘Bioethics in Health Issues’ conducted by the Nuffield Council.
Despite numerous well-reasoned submissions, verbally and on paper – my own included – highlighting the wide spectrum of health risk associated with fluoridation, not to mention the individual human right not to be compulsorily medicated, Montgomery summed it up as “…No risks, no evidence of harm, therefore no conflict with human rights.”
I attended Nuffield’s London launch meeting in November 2007, representing the Stroud based Safe Water Campaign. At question time I attempted to ask Professor Montgomery about the relationship between the toxic artificial fluoride concentration and water temperature but I was cut off in mid sentence, being shouted down by the distinguished Chairman Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, with the microphone being snatched away from my grasp.
So much for honesty and democracy in health matters.
I appeared to have been identified as a ‘whistle blower’ and censured for knowing more about the subject thanI was supposed to.
What chance for dementia and Alzheimers patients when we have two-faced ‘experts’, however well qualified, pontificating to the press about finding a cure? Their insincerity is palpable and their professionalism questionable.
Bernard J Seward
