Report from Southampton Campaign

Lynne Edmunds reports here on the meeting organised by "Southampton and district Anti-Fluoridation Campaign" Tuesday 09\06\2009.

Meeting chaired by the latter group's organiser\chair....John Spottiswood. Present at top table, Caroline Place and Anna Peckham of the Southampton group\ local M.P.'s Sarah Gidley-Lib Dem ; Alan Whitehead-Lab ; Julian Lewis- Con..

The hundred strong audience came from far afield in the U.K. and from Ireland. The National Pure Water Association was represented by several very active members. Others represented local campaigning groups, including Lynne Edmunds of the committee of the Avon , Glos. and Wilts. anti-fluoride group who has compiled the account of the meeting below.

The meeting lasted close on two hours, with a great deal of information and opinion offered from the floor. At the start Caroline Place announced that the petition handed in at 10 Downing Street earlier in the day (protesting at the health authority's decision....despite a 70% plus rejection rate by the local population to go ahead and fluoridate the water supply) currently totalling 15000 and numbers of signatures are still rising.

POSITIVE ACTION REPORTED TO/ AND ARISING FROM/ THE MEETING
John Spottiswood confirmed that an application had been made for a judicial review of the government's stance on fluoridation ( linked to the European court of justice's decision in 2005 that fluoride could not have the legal status of a food* but was a medicine and hence would have to have all the detailed conditions and related legislation applied before a decision could be taken on whether it is legal to employ it as mass medication.

If legal aid is not forthcoming then a fighting fund of a minimum £200,000 would be needed to ensure this legal decision was applied.

The European Court ruled that any food that also has a medicinal function must be regulated as a medicine. They said that this included fluoridated water. It also ruled that fluoridated water may not be used for processing food and any exporting of food treated in this way to EEC states is illegal unless it has a medicinal licence. (This could affect large areas originating exports in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.)

*This decision -The opposite of what the government has asserted for several years after the European court pronounced!!!!!-was uncovered by the United Kingdom Councils against Fluoridation. An application has been made by UKCAF to the government's medicines and health products regulatory agency which is constantly informed of European legal pronouncements.

HOUSE OF COMMONS MEETING
It was reported that an early day motion on the status of fluoride as a medicine and its implications for any attempt at mass medication with it is circulating in parliament and everyone was asked to pressurise their M.P. to sign it.

Lib. Dem. M.P. Sandra Gidley pledged to try to put down a question on the above for Prime Minister's question time. A conservative councillor in the Southampton area is making a complaint to the local authority ombudsman about the phoney consultation exercise despite its legal status in the fluoridation section of the water act.

Conservative M.P. for the Southampton area reported that he would raise a question about the government campaign too fluoridate- at the regular question time held by the health service.

A regional delegate warned against assuming stringent safety over the amount of fluoride added to public water supplies, citing a situation in Australia where an overdose of 39 to 40 times the legal amount was added despite a process of three failsafe procedures- not for the first time (Australia is the only country other than Britain continuing to push for a major extension of fluoridation).

Delegates were told that the new health minister Andy Burnham was vice-president of the pro fluoride fluoridation society. The times " outed" him this month (June 09) and he then announced he was standing down!

Horrendous statistics about the increase in levels of fluorosis in children in the Republic of Ireland were reported by an Irish delegate. He reported that in 1984 the level of fluorosis was 5% and by 2002 this reached 37%. A major increase was being found among young teenagers.

Another delegate told us that in the south and west `midlands dentists had been instructed- if they found fluorosis on childrens' teeth to mark them in their reports as "sound" and not to record the fluorosis.(The York review put the levels of fluorosis of "aesthetic concern" where water had been fluoridated as between 7% and 17% of the population.)

(The British government has categorised fluorosis as a "cosmetic" condition and instructed dentists to refuse to treat it on the NHS).

So the victims have to pay the heavy cost of treating it and alleviating the visual effect (as well as the toxicity of the victim's system which its presence indicates) not just once but repeatedly since they continue to imbibe the "poison" which is causing the fluorosis.
(In 1999 government papers recorded that fluorosis was the result of "system toxicity").

Other people pointed out at the meeting that under current legal circumstances forcing fluoride on people was a civil wrong under common law and that each water company should be warned of this and threatened with legal action if it co-operated in bringing it in under current European law. (As a legally defined medicine , it has to go through the extensive conditions and checks which all medicines have to before being labelled as legal to dispense).