. tamiflu vaccines and antiviral drugs. tamiflu parvo. tamiflu lead investigator. tamiflu shelf life. tamiflu warnings. …

It is a shame that the article is built around decrying ‘bad science’ and then does precisely that. Only using one side of the scientific argument is not acceptable. There is a lot of excellent science showing the dangers to health of fluoride when ingested in the body at levels very similar to those proposed in water. And yes there is evidence from those area that are fluoridated that harm is taking place to the people there.

I am afraid that it is just scientifically ignorant to take the pro-fluoride line in this article. If you can’t be bothered to get the science right, don’t pretend that you have science on your side.

And your evidence for all of these assertions is?

Unity provided many links for, and quotations of, scientific studies into water fluoridation. You have provided no evidence.

Put up, or shut up.

And don’t use the argument that because the government is in favour of it then it must be OK.

Since no-one has made that argument, then we don’t need you to tell us not to use it. We’re doing quite alright arguing with just the scientific evidence, thank you very much.

Top scientists around the world, including a Nobel Prize winner have called for water fluoridation to be stopped.

1. So? You never get 100% support for any scientific idea, even amongst scientists. Especially when there are two issues here: the science, and the ethics, of water flurodiation. Maybe some scientists are opposed to water fluoridation because of the ethical implications, rather than the science. But so what if such scientists are opposed to it for that reason? They’re scientists, their ethical arguments mean as much as anyone else’s do.

2. Argument from authority.

3. Even assuming that the Nobel prize winner got it in Medicine, it’s very possible for them to be very wrong about their subject. Consider Milton Friedman on fiscal policy. He’s good if you want to understand monetary policy amongst other things, but not fiscal policy.

Please stop using science as the basis for your argument when the scienitifc argument is hugely flawed.

In other words, we shouldn’t use science because you think science is flawed. Wow, you’re now amongst the wooists that comprise Creationists, homeopaths, naturopaths etc.

I am afraid that it is just scientifically ignorant to take the pro-fluoride line in this article. If you can’t be bothered to get the science right, don’t pretend that you have science on your side. And don’t use the argument that because the government is in favour of it then it must be OK. It isn’t. Top scientists around the world, including a Nobel Prize winner have called for water fluoridation to be stopped.

Please stop using science as the basis for your argument when the scienitifc argument is hugely flawed.

It’s right that the ethics are argued over though.

Whilst I don’t have any strong feelings on this particular subject, I am glad to note that the last time the issue came up in Scotland, the SGP, whilst opposed, at least restricted themselves to the ethical objections.

Teaching kids creationism in Kansas it is, then!

Bloody well ought to be. It’s the most reactive element we know of, will strip the flesh off your bones (whether it’s because you’re burning or because the reaction with moisture to create hydrofluoric acid is eating away at you) and leave said bones crumbling into the dust.

Fluoride however is another matter.

Free sciency bit for a Wednesday.

“I don’t think science should dictate policy and I think especially for these sort of matters, democratic decision-making must trump scientific reason.”

I desperately wish that science would trump. For example, when we’ve greenie idiots stating that renewable power is lovely “because it will provide more jobs” and then those sciency type economists wade in and point out that jobs are a cost, not a benefit. That taking one million people to heat the country is worse than using 100,000 people to do so.

Sure, but we might go further and say that only a scientifically literate society is able to be evidence based, since delegating responsibility to a panel of experts will not (in the end) deliver evidence based policy. It will deliver elite interest policy.

And by scientifically literate, we need to mean a lot more than just giving the population a lecture or two from the great and the good of today’s science. Everyone would need to be taught exactly what makes science what it is, in other words its unique methodologies.

In a scientifically literate society, evidence based decision making and democracy would be the same thing.

Assuming that you’re referring to the Bassin et al (2006) which is the only study to find any statistically significant evidence for a link between fluoridation and osteosarcoma, or rather that you’re referring to the newspaper coverage that the paper received in 2005 (because its way to much to expect you have read the actual literature) then the NHMRC systematic review has this to say on the subject of its findings…

The current literature review identified four additional studies that investigated the relationship between water fluoridation and cancer incidence or mortality, including three Level IV ecological studies and one Level II-3 matched case-control study (Bassin et al, 2006). The latter study compares the fluoride exposure of histologically-confirmed osteosarcoma cases with that of matched controls – a sub-set of patients from a larger case-control study initiated by the Harvard School of Dental Medicine that is yet to report its findings. After adjusting for significant differences at baseline between the cases and controls, the results of Bassin et al (2006) suggest an increased risk of osteosarcoma amongst young males (but not females) with water fluoridation.

However, the attention of the reader is drawn to a Letter to the Editor by co-investigators of Bassin in which the letter authors point out that they have not been able to replicate these findings in the broader Harvard study, that included prospective cases from the same 11 hospitals. Furthermore, the bone samples that were taken in the broader study corroborate a lack of association between the fluoride content in drinking water and osteosarcoma in the new cases. The final publication of the full study is not yet available, and the authors of the Letter caution readers not to over-interpret the results of Bassin and colleagues in the interim.

Case control studies are rated as low quality, grade 3 on the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine scale, being particular prone to both confounding and expectation bias in the researcher. As such, they typically serve useful, low cost, pointers to areas in which additional research may be merited/necessary but require confirmation from more robust research evidence in order to be considered conclusive.

Perhaps Unity is right, and that this principle of democratic control is occasionally too much to bear and is worth overiding. But even then I would not want it to become standard practice, nor am I sure there has been example where democratic decisions of that kind have failed utterly to make a no-brainer decision.

Flouride causes bone cancer. As usual, the decision to flouridate the water was based on junk science. I wonder who will benefit from it.

The same goes for the food security issue, flagged up by Hilarious Benn. No doubt he’s softening us up for the introduction of GM crops – which, the Greens oppose. (Not that I care for the Greens).

http://faustiesblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/food-security-excuse-to-introduce-gm.html

All this can lead to real harms that not only affect personal health but also the health of others, e.g. increases in measles and mumps following the decline in MMR vaccinations.

I beg to differ that science and democracy need be opposed to one another. … I imagine that [scientific groups attached to political parties] would provide ample weight (proposing and campaigning for policy resolutions, for example) to counteract the pseudo-science that tends to infect the Greens.

1. Hundreds of millions of vaccinations without ill-effect, tens if not hundreds of studies, vs. one recommendation by a so-called doctor, given undue publicity, that did not even follow the conclusion of his paper = more cases of measles in the UK than there are of swine flu.

2. Politicians hear evidence from scientists a lot but often go ahead with their plans regardless. That is because they place more weight on politics than science even if it would lead to adverse outcomes for the people they represent.

That is not to say that scientific attachments would be unhelpful.