UKCAF website

Censored!.
How the Dental profession and the BFS tried to silence inconvenient evidence.

Doug Cross, 15th June 2009

The futile attempt by the British Fluoridation Society to censor its main opponents is only the latest incident in its desperate efforts to silence its critics. But this time they have put their heads above the fence, and Councils are aware of their tactics.

When the British Government decided to try to expand its irrrational programme of water fluoridation, it knew it faced a problem. During the last round, back in the early 1990s, Local Authorities had formed a resistance group, the UK Councils Against Fluoridation, and wherever the BFS tried to persuade Councils that fluoridation was a wonderful solution to the appalling state of the teeth of children living within the Councils' areas - a little bit of blackmail there, perhaps? - their efforts were thwarted by UKCAF's explanations of exactly what the fluoride zealots were trying to get them to accept. As a direct result of UKCAF's involvement, no new fluoridation schemes have been introduced since.

So if the shiny new scheme to fluoridate 40% of the country was going to stand a chance to succeed this time around, it was obviously necessary to silence the Councils. The first round in this battle was fired in February last year, when the Chief Dental Offcier, Barry Cockcroft, issued 'Guidelines' on water fluoridation consultation. In them he claimed that 'legal advice to the Department' was that Council Health Oversight and Scrutiny Committees were not 'statutory consultees' under the consultation regulations, and that they therefore had no authority to participate.

This went down with like a lead balloon with the Councils, and they started to ask difficult questions. One was, where was UKCAF? So reluctantly we reformed and started providing them with background information and news about who was doing what, and where. So angry did the Councils become that the Department of Health was forced to back off, so it decided to try to beguile Councils into accepting its pro-fluoridation propaganda. So once again, UKCAF and the BFS met on the Council Chamber floors.

And the contests really were pathetically one-sided. The BFS relied on presentation aids that were rigid, excruciatingly boring, and hopelessly biased, and we wiped the floor with them every time we met. In the later stages of the contest, people in the audiences were laughing at the hopeless inability of their proponents to answer even the most basic questions. Clearly, UKCAF had become a real threat to their programme.

The BFS had already started to attack the work of those whom it regarded as its opponents. A couple of years ago the BFS became alarmed to hear that respected authors who had been involved in preparing the 'York Review of Water Fluoridation' intended to publish an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal, calling for fluoridated water to be regulated under the medicines law. The BFS considered this so unhelpful that it tried to organise mass opposition to the article before it was even published.

This was not a wise move, and so angered one of their correspondents that they passed the BFS's mailing list over to our side. So now we know who is sympathetic to their extremist views, and which units of the NHS have been infiltrated. The fact that Mr Andy Burnham was on that list is not, of course, evidence that he was involved in this little escapade.

The repeated rejection of the BFS's presentations by Councils was a serious threat to its ambitions and those of its backer, the Department of Health. Obviously, something had to be done to try to silence us, so they hit on the idea of complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that it regarded UKCAF's

evidence as unacceptable 'marketing advertising'. But the ASA's refusal to adjudicate on the complaint is insignificant compared with the concern that has emerged as a result of the BFS's ill-advised vexatious complaint. The BFS's attempt to suppress UKCAF's evidence presented has back-fired spectacularly. It is regarded as a blatent attempt to censor opinions requested by Councils, and has been taken very seriously by the Centre for Public Scrutiny of the Local Government Association, the organisation that represents every Council in the country.

In doing so, and without apparently realising the implications of its action, it initiated a challenge to the democratic process of local government in the UK. The results have been explosive - the saga of our run-in with the ASA has already been described on our web pages, so suffice it to say that after I warned the ASA that the documents were not within its remit, and represented a direct threat to the democratic process of Local Government, the ASA backed off and refused to consider the BFS's complaint further.

Had this vexatious challenge suceeded it would have established a very dangerous precedent. It would have allowed any special interest group to have opposing evidence to which they object declared to be misleading advertisements and suppressed, one of the most serious threats to the democratic process of Local Government for many years.

Their latest forray against us and another professional scientist who has insisted on publishing 'unhelpful' commentaries on fluoridation involves burrowing into our personal records to try to dig up - well, shall we say 'interesting' information. (I hope you enjoyed examining my CV on the Expert Witness site, Sheila - but should you have been using NHS facilities at the time?) But writing sneaky letters to heads of academic institutions really is not a good way to enhance your own reputations - such as they are.

So having failed miserably to present their case using reasoned argument, the BFS now appears to be engaged in trying to discredit their opposition. Fair enough - but it is, of course, a waste of time, as we have all moved way beyond their field of understanding. At a public debate last year I warned one prominent member of the Society that there were certain aspects of the law that he needed to be aware of when promoting fluoridated water. More recently, a colleague of his had an unexpected communication from lawyers over a BFS presentation to a Local Authority.

But the interminable arguments over bad teeth and disadvantaged children are out of the main line now, and the legal obstacles to fluoridation are now firmly in the hands of busy lawyers. The scientific arguments - especially the exhausted and discredited mantra of 'it's completely safe and effective', are now a matter of public ridicule. Can you identify a single person to me, dear BFS members, that you can prove without any doubt has perfect teeth as a direct result of drinking fluoridated water? These futile arguments have had their day, and it is now the legal prohibitions that are the front runners in the fluoridation confrontation.

The old (mainly) men of fluoridation do not understand the law, their efforts to censor the opposition have been binned, they have had their day. It's time to retire quietly - the consequences of continuing this futile battle really could be unfortunate.

http://www.ukcaf.org/censored_the_bfss_attempt_to_suppress_informatio.html ___________________________________________________________________________________________________