UKCAF website

24th June 2009

MEP challenges Secretary of State over link with British Fluoridation Society

This afternoon Dr. Caroline Lucas, MEP for South East England, attacked Secretary of State Andy Burnham over his undisclosed and potentially vested interest with respect to the British Fluoridation Society.

In her News Release she states

"It is of great concern that the Health Secretary was able to closely align himself with a body whose sole business it is to promote water fluoridation, at the same time that he was due to make key decisions about the future of the UK’s water supply. Parliament’s regulations on MPs’ interests are supposed to prevent alliances which can fundamentally inform policy – but clearly they are not fit for purpose."

For the background to this story
CLICK HERE

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23rd June 2009

New challenges to European Commissioners over water fluoridation.

Medical professionals dismiss a new EC Committee and its study on fluoridation as 'not fit for purpose', the EC Commissioner for Health is asked why MHRA is allowed to ignore Community law, and a demand is made for the practice to be referred to the European Court of Justice.

Not a good day at the office, then?

European Commissioners and bureaucrats are coming under increasing pressure to revise their ambivalent position on water fluoridation. Caroline Lucas, MEP for South Eastern England (including Southampton) has issued a formal complaint to Ms Androulla Vassillou, Commissioner for Health, that the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has not fulfilled its responsibility to verify the correct classification of a product, hexafluorosilic acid, as a medicinal product. She is now demanding to know
What action will the European Commission take to enforce Directive 2001/83/EC, given the ECJ ruling and clear evidence that member state authorities such as the MHRA are not properly classifying hexafluorosilic acid?

Meanwhile, the EC's attempt to sooth growing concern from the scientific and medical communities is also running into trouble. For the past couple of months the Health and Consumer Protection Secretariat of the EC has been trying to set up a Committee to look into the safety of water fluoridation. But in trying to establish a working mandate for the study, the Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER) has been challenged over its competence and authority to carry out the study.

Dr Philip Michael, Vice President [Europe] of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, has written to SCHER charging that is "not fit for the purpose of risk assessing fluoridated drinking water."

Dr Michael writes: SCHER's field of competence does not extend to clinical and physiological assessment of pharmacologically active substances. . . . As doctors, we do not accept that the terms of reference for risk assessment of fluoridated drinking water given by the Commission to SCHER satisfy the essential clinical requirements for pharmacologically active substances. These are that they should be safe and effective after clinically conducted trials, and the quality and dissemination of information about these substances to citizens must be such as to enable them to make informed choices about their own treatment.

Now we have added weight to these objections by warning SCHER that its proposed mandate is improper. Doug has informed the Secretariat that neither national regulators nor Commissioners have authority to express 'opinions' on whether or not fluoridation needs to be subjected to medicinal regulation, and that, as Dr Michael has pointed out, SCHER is not an appropriate body to assess the risks of a medicinal intervention.

Doug has emphasised that the legitimacy of the practice of water fluoridation must be established before any assessment of the safety of the chemicals involved can be carrried, even by an appropriately qualified Expert Committee. He warns that if a practice is unlawful, then no review of its safety is necessary, and has called for the issue of the legitimacy of fluoridation to be determined at an expedited hearing of the European Court of Justice.

Document downloads -
click on the links below to access the key documents

Caroline Lucas MEP's letter to Commissioner Vassillou on the refusal of the MHRA to implement the 2001 Medicines Directive

Dr Michael's letter, on behalf of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, challenging the SCHER Mandate on risk assessment of water fluoridation

Doug Cross' demand to SCHER that the legitimacy of water fluoridation must be tested in the European Court of Justice

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The last person you would expect to be in charge of the nation's health would be the Vice-President of the Flat Earth Society of medicine! But such is the terror of the malign attention of the Press amongst our worthy politicians that, when Telegraph and Times reporters come sniffing around, panic inevitably follows.

This week it was the turn of Andy Burnham, the shiny clean new Secretary of State for Health. His exalted post with the BFS was hastily downgraded to a mere Honorary position, then instantly relinquished, apparently to avoid a possible 'conflict of interest'. But faster than a speeding bullet he bounded back into the attack at the

NHS Conference in Liverpool, declaring Britain's Fluoridation War open.

In fact, it's been a rather bad week for the BFS all round. Its blatant attempt to persuade the Advertising Standards Agency to censor any opinion that the BFS objected to was thrown out on Wednesday. But its aggressive attempt to force us out of the Council chambers has allerted the Local Government Association to a serious covert challenge to Local Government democracy, which will now be passed on to Councils throughout the country. They may find their welcome at future Health Scrutiny Committee hearings a little cool.

Then their VP was forced

to resign on Thursday - the same day that a private Court hearing was announced to examine the apparent sabotage of the consultation process in Southampton. And then there's also the complaint to the Health Ombudsman over the inappropriate activities of the Strategic Health Authority in pushing the Southampton project.

If Mr Burnham really wants to impose fluoridation across the country, there are just a few minor problems to straighten out first - and yes, there are more in the pipeline. Now we know exactly where we are, and the gloves are finally off. And since he has declared war especially on the North West, it looks like we will have something to keep us amused this summer after all.

15th June 2009

British Fluoridation Society Vice-President resigns over 'conflict of interest'.

Comment - A Conflict of Interest?
For a review of the Secretary of State's views on compulsory fluoridation

CLICK HERE

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UK Advertising Regulator throws out BFS's attempt
to censor opponents' evidence to Councils.

5th June 2009

The saga of the British Fluoridation Society's attempt to prevent UKCAF from providing evidence against fluoridation to Local Authorities has finally come to a grinding halt. Yesterday the Advertising Standards Authority threw out the BFS's vexatious complaint against our documents that carry large and explicit pictures of moderate dental fluorosis.

But this apparently rather trivial affair conceals a much larger issue. Whenever a contentious proposal or policy is under scrutiny by Local Authorities, one pressure groups may object to evidence provided by another, or even by a reputable expert. If evidence by one side can be improperly classed as advertising, then fair and informed public consultation on any subject whatsoever is impossible.

For a detailed review of this back-door attempt to impose
censorship on anti-fluoridation evidence,

CLICK HERE.

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9th June 2009

Hampshire goes to No.10

14,000 petitioners challenge Health Authority's decision
to fluoridate Southampton's water

Southampton anti-fluoridation pressure group Hampshire Against Fluoridation today travelled to London to present a petition from over 14,000 residents to the Prime Minister, demanding that the plan to fluoridate the public water supplies in Southampton be scrapped.

But the chances of getting a sympathetic hearing seem vanishingly small, as the new Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham, has a long history of active support for water fluoridation, so the prospect of getting any help from that quarter appear to be vanishingly small.

For an explanation
CLICK HERE

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23rd May 2009

UK medicines regulator accused of maladministration over refusal to obey European Court ruling.

In a dramatic challenge, the UK's medicines regulator has been accused of deliberately failing to implement the 2005 European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling that requires all 'functional drinks' to be regulated as medicines.

John Spottiswoode, Chairman of 'Hampshire Against Fluoridation' (HAF), wrote to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) demanding to know why it has refused to recognise fluoridated water as a medicine. In reply, John Taylor (of the improbably-named 'MHRA Information Centre') had attempted to dismiss the complaint by refering it to its 'Medicines Borderline Section. However, Spottiswoode rejected this evasion, stating that

"Our reading of the 2005 ECJ ruling (HLH Warenvertriebs and Orthica (Joined Cases C-211/03, C-299/03, C-316/03 and C-318/03) 9 June 2005) is that the 'borderline product' classification has effectively been abolished."

Now, in collaboration with UKCAF, John has accused the Agency of claiming to rely on this ECJ ruling case to support its position, when it actually demolishes it altogether. He says

"There can be no more damning evidence of the deliberate and politically-influenced improper exercise of (your) regulatory function. The ECJ ruling MUST be enforced in every member state - failing to do so for the past four years appears to constitute very serious maladministration, and demands an immediate Inquiry."

In a dramatic escalation of the confrontation, Taylor has now informed Spottiswoode that the Agency has referred the matter to its solicitors for an opinion, and will reply as soon as this is available.

This is a very important escalation of the challenge to the Agency over its persistent refual to concede that fluoridated water is a medicine. It has now been forced

into a corner, and must explain its position publicly and in detail. Any opinion will now need to be completely robust and verifiable, in Court if necessary, as any cracks will be pounced upon by those expert lawyers who have been waiting for an opportunity to test the Agency's increasingly desperate attempts to to justify its extremly shaky position.

There is no guarantee that the MHRA will just admit that its perverse interpretation of the EC law is wrong, forcing an immediate shut-down of fluoridation in the UK and a potential admission of liability for medical damages. After all, if the evidence of the high prevalence of dental fluorosis in all fluoridated communities is to be believed, thousands of children who were born in the UK since the 2005 ruling will now develop this disfiguring condition within the next few years. This would have been avoided had the MHRA immediately complied with the ECJ ruling, forcing this unlicensed medicnal product out of the nation's water supply networks.

An accusation of maladministration is a very serious charge against any public authority, and one that even this beleagured Government cannot ignore. This is especially the case where predictable and entirely avoidable physical damage to children has been, or will be, a direct consequence.

The challenge to the UK Government is hotting up, but this is only the first of several legal confrontations that are developing here in the UK. Others are under way before the European Commission, and our friends in Australia are keen to get to grips with their own fluoride pushers.

What is needed now are independent expert opinions from legal specialists, to establish that my interpretation of the ECJ's ruling with respect to fluoridated water is correct, and applies to their own domestic legal codes. Once that has been done, the discredited practice of water fluoridation will be on borrowed time, worldwide, as both the medical damages caused by fluoride and the obstacles to trade in fluoride-contaminated products begin to bite.

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