Alli Larkin’s Address to Washington Board of Health
Alli Larkin, Vice-President
Washington Action for Safe Water
March 14, 2012
To the Washington Board of Health
I hope you have done your ‘due diligence’ and read “The Case Against Fluoride” by Dr. Paul Connett that we gave each of you. I am going to share part of an email that Dr. Connett sent out to the Fluoride Action Network.
The subject is, “An Ambitious Campaign Against An Unacceptable Realty”. The title of the article is, “My Involvement With Fluoridation”.*
“When we published our book I thought it would raise the level of the debate. It has not. The promoters have not produced a single scientific response to our text. They have so much money to spin the issue that they have simply ignored this book, just as they ignored the landmark NRC report on fluoride’s toxicology of 2006.
This is nothing new. The promoters have ignored the demands of normal scientific debate for over 60 years. Instead, they have used two strategies: 1) insist that “authority” is on their side using a list of endorsements and 2) claim that opponents know nothing about “real science.”
Both strategies have worked superbly because they have served to intimidate most doctors, dentists and academics and kept them from reading the literature for themselves. Additionally, every time that more strong scientific evidence is presented that would convince anyone with an open mind that fluoridation is a bad idea (e.g. Bassin’s study on osteosarcoma; the 25 IQ studies; Li’s study on hip fractures, etc.), we have people supposedly “on our own side” giving these studies the kiss of death with nutty rants about Hitler and Stalin. I sometimes wonder if the proponents pay these people!
Every day I am confronted by the fact that the world doesn’t really function on a rational level on this and many other issues. As a scientist concerned about health this is a painful realization. Who would have thought that there are health professionals out there who would lend their names to a practice that may be harming people – may even be killing a few young men with osteosarcoma -without examining the issue carefully for themselves? Who would have thought that there are public health officers who confidently tell decision makers that it is “safe and effective” simply because their employer (e.g. Health Canada; CDC; UK Ministry of Health; Australian health authorities in every state etc) tells them to do so.
I keep going for several reasons. Firstly, I am working with some really wonderful people around the world who continue to stand up for the truth on this issue. Secondly, I realize that other people in history have fought even harder battles with far more pain and sacrifice and have finally won against the odds. I remember reading a statement from the South African author Alan Paton (Cry the beloved Country) during the apartheid era, “The only way to endure man’s inhumanity to man is to make one’s own life an example of man’s humanity to man.” Those few words have inspired me ever since.”
Please make this a “Safer and Healthier Washington” by removing the toxic waste silicofluoride out of Washington’s public water supply.
Alli Larkin, Vice-PresidentWashington Action for Safe Water
* Read the full statement from Dr. Paul Connett here.