How Fluoride Flouts the Normal Rules

1. Article 1(2) of EU Directive 2004/27 lays down that substances or combinations of substances that make claims for preventing diseases in human beings, or are administered with a view to modifying physiological function, shall be classed as medicines, and thus subject to stringent tests for safety and efficacy.

FLUORIDE makes medicinal claims, yet escapes medicinal regulation.[1]

2. Medical ethics forbids treating people against their will, except in rare cases (e.g. to save life) which can include infectious disease (e.g. vaccination, in some countries). Even then, the targeted individual is intended to benefit.

FLUORIDE is given to millions who do not want and cannot benefit from it.

3. It is an accepted scientific principle that a medicine should have a wide safety margin between the therapeutic and toxic doses (preferably x 100).

FLUORIDE's safety margin is less than x 5.[2]

4. Any treatment should be given with full knowledge of the patient's medical history.

FLUORIDE is given indiscriminately within each water company's area.

5. Any treatment should be given with instructions, e.g. regarding specified dosage and duration.

FLUORIDE's dosage varies according to individual intake, and is open-ended.

6. Any treatment requires monitoring of recipients, with a system of surveillance in place ('yellow cards').

There is no monitoring of FLUORIDE's effects on people.

7. Governments disclaim any desire to tell people what to eat or drink, for fear of 'nannying'. Even the fortification of bread with a vitamin (folic acid) is approached with a careful eye to adverse effects and public acceptability (DoH/COMA Report on Health and Social Subjects 50: 'Folic Acid and the Prevention of Disease',2000, 9.4.1 & 2).

Whole populations are not told to take FLUORIDE: it is thrust upon them.

Notes

1 Although fluoride in water and toothpaste falls within the Medicines Control Agency's usual definitions, the Agency declines to apply the usual regulations. In the case of M'Coll v. Strathclyde in 1983, Lord Jauncey found that fluoride in water was a "medicinal product" under UK law.

2 The "optimal" dose is held out to be 1 ppm, at which level the recent NHS CRD scientific review has found a probable 48% to be dentally fluorosed; the USA's Maximum Contaminant Level is 4 ppm., which was declared too high by a 2006 scientific inquiry.

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