Letter to Telegraph re cosmetic surgery

Here's a letter from one of our members to the Daily Telegraph. We have also had a meeting last month to update on issues like Southampton and how the changes to the NHS may impact on government plans to fluoridate. Next meeting not until next year now - do get in touch if you are interested in coming along to hear more.


Theodore Dalrymple reminds us that the NHS has, for a long time, limited access to cosmetic surgery.

Is he aware that one of the crying needs for such treatment is actually being caused by the NHS itself contining to insist that by adding an illegal and poisonous substance; fluorosilicate waste chemical, to our water supplies, the teeth of young children will acquire an enhanced resistance to dental caries?

Contrary to the extravagant claims made by the British Dental Association, ill supported by global peer-reviewed science, even the Government's own review (The York Review) indicated a 42 per cent incidence of dental fluorosis, predicting the same for the total skeleton of which teeth are the only visible evidence.

Of that number,12 per cent of our children will have fluorosed teeth 'of aesthetic concern', in other words, visually repulsive, for which there is no cure; and no NHS funded cosmetic treatment  Those children are being ridiculed both at school and in society at large with expressions like "You've got shitty teeth"

If suicide is on the agenda where despair dominates compassion, we do not owe any merit to the NHS for its stupidly uncompromising policy in this aspect of dental health.

Bernard J Seward
Member : Gloucestershire Safe Water Campaign