EDITORIALS - 2022
2nd November 2022
The Fluoridation Consultation Regulations have now cleared the the House of Commons and the House f Lords and the way is clear for the DHSC to announce its first Public Consultation for the North East of England timetabled to start in the New Year. Still missing though are the Environment Risk Assessment and the Cost Analysis for the scheme which were promised by Earl Howe (Health Minister) earlier this year when he spoke in the 2nd Health and Care Bill 2022 debate in the House of Lords. A Feasibility study was obtained from Northumberland Water in 2018/9 but we're unsure it that is still current and whether it included consideration of fluoridating Cleveland, Redcar, Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees and Middlesbrough, all of which have been added by the DHSC to the proposal. Freedom of Information requests now need to be sent to ask if the earlier feasibility study included the newly-added areas and whether it is considered that the original feasibility study is still current as far as costs are concerned. In fact, we really do need to know what the total costs of the new proposal are since this knowledge will inform any arguments we may wish to make during the Public Consultation. We'll also ask about the inclusion of Alston in north-east Cumbria which was threatened in 2018/2019.
The new Regulations allow nationwide organisations to submit objections to the Proposal but individuals who do not live in the threatened area cannot.
All our objections to water fluoridation are to be found on www.newfc.org.uk which will be updated progressively between now and January 2023.
9th July 2022
With the demise of Boris Johnson and the appointment (possibly temporarily depending on the wishes of the British people) of Steve Barclay (MP for North East Cambridgeshire) as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on 5th July, we don't exactly expect a change of policy relating to WF. That would be a miracle! One wonders however, about the £425,000 which will be paid out to each Minister who has resigned in the past few days. That's a huge chunk of cash. It has to have been borrowed from somewhere in the system. Can we hope that this money would have been used to pay for Public Consultations (PCs) and WF equipment - for make no bones about it (and we'll get to that in a moment), we would be foolish to believe that the results of PCs on WF will go in our favour.
I've just been reading a blog which I wrote in 2010. It dealt with the accepted fact that fluoride accumulation in bones has the effect of reducing the production of collagen. Those of us who are getting on in years have heard the tolling of the aging bell and how our skin starts to dry out and lose its elasticity. That's nature's way of telling you that the nicest swim suit in the shop does not have your name on it. But, not many people know that bones contain collagen. "Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, found in the bones, muscles, skin, and tendons. Collagen forms a scaffold that provides strength and structure within the body. It is an essential component of connective tissue and plays a crucial role in holding the body’s cells together. It also gives strength and elasticity to the skin." (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/262881?c=1301264600467 ).
When fluoride is present in the body, it has the unfortunate effect of weakening bones because it disrupts collagen. "... the production of collagen, a unique protein essential in bone and cartilage formation and in skin and vascular health is compromised by fluorides. This occurs because collagen, a protein, is composed of amino acids linked together in a chain. Unlike other proteins, collagen contains two unique amino acids, hydroxyproline and hydroxylysine. When collagen breaks down, the hydroxyproline and hydroxylysine levels in blood and urine increase. The presence of high levels of these two unique proteins [in the blood and urine], associated with low level exposure to fluorides, is considered conclusive evidence that fluoride accelerates the breakdown of collagen. (Y.D. Sharma, Biochimica et Biophysica Act., pp. 137-141, 1982; https://riordanclinic.org/2012/10/the-truth-about-fluoride/ ).
There have been several studies made on the effect that fluoride has on bone strength. A 1991 study by Walsh and Guzelsu reports thus: “The mechanical properties of composite material (such as bone) rely on the properties of its constituents as well as the interfacial bonding between them. This study demonstrates the importance of interfacial bonding between the mineral and organic constituents of bone through fluoride ion treatments. Fluoride ions alter interfacial bonding between the mineral and organic components of bone by exchanging with OH ions of bone mineral and creating an unfavourable electrostatic condition by a rise in pH. The reduction in interfacial bonding due to fluoride action lowers the mechanical properties of bone tissue.”
SOURCE: Walsh WR, Guzelsu N. (1991). Fluoride ion effect on interfacial bonding and mechanical properties of bone. Journal of Biomechanics 24: 237.
In the above extract, the organic component of bone is collagen.
We're emphasising the role of collagen in bone strength and the role of fluoride in weakening bones in this editorial because a study by Hilte et al (2021) found up to a 50% increase in hip fractures in Swedish patients who had had a lifelong exposure to natural fluoride in their diet. Not so the 2022 DHSC Health Monitoring Report on Fluoride: here the executive Summary gave fluoride a clean bill of health in relation to bone fractures. However, if one studies the main text of the Monitoring Report, one finds that the scientists who provided the DHSC with data found that there was an increase of 5% - 10% of hip fractures in fluoridated patients. Moreover, the Hilte report which was available at the time that the chapter of hip fractures was written was omitted from the references.
They can't have it both ways and I prefer to believe the data in the main body of the Monitoring Report. The Executive Summary is a device to make it easier for the layman to follow the argument. Investigating further into the Monitoring Report may not be in the gift of most people. And so this might have flown beneath the radar. But guess what DHSC? Your little game has been rumbled.
So, even if one does not experience inexplicable fractures throughout the course of a lifetime, the knowledge that something added to our drinking water will result in bone weakness and hip fractures which are excruciatingly painful and which cause an early death in aged patients should be enough to vote down the attempt by HM Government to add the fluoride toxin to our drinking water.
14th June 2022
The "doldrums" is a term used when referring to the belt around the Earth near the Equator where sailing ships used to get stuck when there was no wind. We're not saying that the current climate is windless though. Far from it: there's wind and even gas issuing forth from Downing St and Parliament. But to all intents and purposes, nothing much seems to be happening regarding WF. However, that would be a completely wrong assumption. While we are waiting for Parliament to enact the "Commencement Regulations" which will decree who will be allowed to take part in the spurious Public Consultations, we've been busy - behind the scenes. Since that position is a place which the audience rarely sees (behind the curtain and in the wings), it's not possible to divulge what those activities are. Sorry.
Let's just say that progress is being made.
17th March 2022
In 2011, in Australia, before Mr Justice Peter Biscoe in the New South Wales Land and Environment Court, the decision handed down was that in order to fluoridate a public water supply other legislation that may require WF practice to be modified in order to avoid prohibitions established by legislation dealing with other arms of the law need to be considered alongside the law which permits WF.
In short, Mr Justice Biscoe ruled against arguments by Rous Water and Ballina Shire Council that the Australian legislation on water fluoridation should be regarded as ‘unfettered’ - that is, that it stood alone and that no other legislation can obstruct or modify it.
However, when there are two or more extant laws which are from different arms of the law which argue for or against a practice all have to be obeyed even if this causes difficulties regarding implementation or otherwise.
So, wind forward to 2022. UK Law (The Water Industry Act, ss.87-88 currently permit WF. They are enabling sections. UK law doesn't specifically state that WF should be initiated throughout the Nation by decree of Parliament as it is in The Republic of Ireland. Our politicians have come up with a more subtle way of fluoridating our water: they ask us to send them our objections or blessings. This is laughingly called a "Public Consultation". The submissions disappear into a deep black hole where they are churned around and the result miraculously appears a few weeks after the closing date. We are told that this is a not a simple head count for how could it be justified to apportion a few thousand "for" and a few thousand "against" and decide on the preferred option when over 50 million people are about to be affected? instead, our submissions have to be cogent with citations to justify our point of view. Those with more weight are accepted whilst those which are lightweight with no citations are rejected. Thus, this patently unfair process where a few thousand scientists etc are heeded and a few thousand non-academic citizens are more-or-less ignored could be the method of choice for deciding the health outcomes of the Nation for 20 years - the length of time Water Companies are to be left in peace to poison our drinking water for the sake of political ideology.
Now, if could be that the farcical Public Consultation rubric for future WF proposals will be modified. ""My noble friend (Baroness McIntosh) asked about the consultation process and how this will be tackled. We will carry out a public consultation to gather views on future consultations. Following that consultation, we will be required to set down in secondary legislation how we will consult on water fluoridation proposals in the future. These regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure and will be debated in Parliament during the coming year. Pie in the sky because nothing short of a Nation-wide referendum would satisfy our democratic leanings!
To recap: we need a public consultation to work out how to conduct future WF public consultations! We've been here before in 2003 when the current code for conducting WF PCs was painfully brought into the World. Will the DHSC really be able to cobble together anything which will remedy the deficiencies of the current WF PC rubric?
But it does not have to come to this. Since the DHSC is clearly in a hole of its own making, it needs to make a ladder to clamber out. That is, Sajid Javid needs to get his legal advisors to examine all the extant law in the UK which has something to say about adding a developmental neurotoxin and a medicinal substance to the drinking water of the Nation. However, Earl Howe in the House of Lords on 7th March 2022 (as a Health Minister) only promised that the DHSC would perform an impact assessment and a cost-benefit analysis:
"Finally, any future public consultation on expansion would also include information on the impact of any proposals on health, the environment and cost-benefit analysis. I hope that these reassurances will satisfy my noble friend, at least in part, and that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment."
(7th March 2022, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2022-03-07/debates/f6666cb7-9e0f-453a-b00f-e45b07926288/LordsChamber)
We have to ask if the environment impact assessment (EIA) will contain mention of the retained Directive 2006/11/EC which relates to dangerous substances in the aquatic environment and surely this should be examined by the DHSC's legal advisors before money is wasted on an impact assessment which may not be necessary if it was recognised that "fluorides" are List II.7 substances.
"Article 3: Member States shall take the appropriate steps to eliminate pollution of the waters referred to in Article 1 by the dangerous substances in the families and groups of substances in List I of Annex I, hereinafter referred to as ‘List I substances’, and to reduce pollution of the said waters by the dangerous substances in the families and groups of substances in List II of Annex I, hereinafter referred to as ‘List II substances’, in accordance with this Directive."
26th January 2022
A piece of text dating back to 1959 has grabbed my attention:
"In the report of the proceedings of the 3rd Medical-Dental Conference on the Evaluation of Fluoridation, held on March 7, 1959 in New York City, the committee concluded that “It is apparent that the practice of fluoridation is not the simple, trustworthy procedure that the promoting authorities have given the profession and the public to believe.
Added to the lack of control of fluorides at the consumers tap are these major uncertainties:
- the gross variation in individual water consumption,
- the varied intake of fluorides in food and
- the fluoride intake from atmospheric and occupational exposure.
These unpredictable issues make meaningless any talk about “controlled individual fluorine intake.” Most, if not all of this research has been buried by the authorities, who maintain glibly that “fluoride compounds are safe in the water supply”."
Simples: all medicines should only be administered to patients/recipients after their age, weight, gender, existing illnesses and current exposure to the active substance are assessed. Since fluoride added to drinking and bathing water is a medicine (a prophylactic) then the same criteria should apply. A baby should not be given the same amount of the active substance as a 2-year-old child, and yet that is what has been happening in the fluoridated areas of England. The poisoning of infants with fluoride in baby formula is criminal negligence by the State which blindly promotes the practice. Fluoride is NOT safe to ingest and by adding it to drinking water and encouraging young parents to use it to make up baby formula instead of using bottled water, the NHS Choices website administrators are guilty of pushing bad science.
Fluoridated water is a medicinal water. It is not drinking water. The Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) cannot regulate it because the Drinking Water Quality Standards do not apply to medicinal water. The Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should be regulating it but because the MHRA refuses to accept that fluoridated water is a medicine, they cannot protect consumers if they fall ill. So, no Agency or Government Department is responsible for regulating it even though the DWI pretends to be doing so.
It is incumbent on us all to look after our own health and to fight against this outrageous policy which has never appeared in any UK political party manifesto.
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Editorial, November 2021
The following was written in respect of threatened vaccination passports but applies equally to compulsory water fluoridation for 6 million people in England:
"Any medical intervention that is for the benefit of society, with no conceivable benefit for the individual, must always be voluntary. The rights, freedoms or opportunities conferred on an individual in society should never be contingent on participation in such an act.”
The fact that the right of an individual to assess personal risk, and to prioritize their own quality of life is now being derided as something heinous is a dangerous and inhumane development. The idea that your physical body belongs to the state, and that you have no right to make your own decisions about what is to be done to it, is nothing short of slavery.
The rights of the individual to assess risk and prioritise the quality of their own life has been forgotten.
UKFFFA's comment:
"Any medical intervention" exactly describes the administration of a medicine via our drinking water. Two court rulings (Judge Lord Jauncy in Scotland in 1982 and the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 2018) both ruled that fluoridated water is a medicine and is an intervention intended to cause physical change as opposed to swallowing potable drinking water which is intended to sustain life. Neither ruling has been appealed.
Regardless of WF being enabled by the 1985 Water (Fluoridation) Act, the indisputable fact remains that other laws, directives and ethical codes exist to suppress practices by the State which threaten to suppress our individual human rights. These instruments do not specifically mention hexafluorosilicic acid but their intention is clear: it can never be right to add a medicine to drinking water just so that a tiny minority of children might experience less tooth decay. As things stand, WF is the only compulsory medicinal intervention practised in the UK (unless administration is under the Mental Health Act). The State backed off in the case of the Government deciding (quietly) not to add folic acid (Vitamin B9) to white flour in order to prevent spina bifida in children whose mothers have not supplemented their diet with Vitamin B9. The reason for not doing so is because in many elderly people a sufficiency of Vitamin B9 administered to correct folate deficiency anaemia cloaks a deficiency of Vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 deficiency is a cause of neurological problems. Neither has the mad-cap suggestion by a couple of scientists to add lithium to drinking water because in many areas drinking water levels are inadequate to prevent depression and schizophrenia, grown wings.
We daily expect more dangerous suggestions by certain academics and Public Health England to add more "goodies" to our drinking water and staple food as an attempt to make us "better". Such universal strategies are most definitely standing in the wings now that we have the threat of universal vaccinations staring us in the face.
We have hope - but it's a slim one: quoting Vaccine Deployment Minister Nadhim Zahawi who said in relation to reopening pubs that it would be "discriminatory" for proof of a jab to be required before, to enter shops, pubs or music venues. Mr Zahawi said at the time the Government had “no plans” to introduce such measures. "That's not the way we do things in the UK". We wonder is Nadhim Zahawi knows about WF?
We can only hope that he and his Prime Minister and advisors do not attempt to use WF as a precedent.
References
Moran, T. (2021). “Vaccine Passports and the Recalibration of Social Ethics,” Artillery Row, The Critic.
https://thecritic.co.uk/vaccine-passports-and-the-recalibration-of-social-ethics analysed in https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/16/have-you-been-recalibrated-for-covid.aspx?ui=77c370b37f5666927cbbbaca16fd8f122497b4d827ebed1acc29fe34e7c0528b&sd=20080221&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=
email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20210416&mid=DM859364&rid=1133987271
Falvey, D. (2021). "Vaccine Passport Bombshell: Pubs could be off-limit to anyone without Covid jabs." The Express, 22/2/21. https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1401173/vaccine-passport-pub-uk-lockdown-latest-boris-johnson-covid19
National Health Service (May 2019) Treatment: Vitamin B12 or folate deficiency anaemia https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamin-b12-or-folate-deficiency-anaemia/treatment/
