COLWYN Jones, Dental Officer for A.H.A., seems to be possessed of some extra special knowledge about the effects of fluoride, denied to those who have spent years researching its effects upon both mankind, animals, and plant life. His bland assertion that fluoride is both harmless and even beneficial must cause us all to re-evaluate the present scientific knowledge and evidence for its toxicity.

I request that he immediately shares this special knowledge with us all. Given his "expertise" in these matters, I would like him to answer the following questions. Given the assurance that fluoride is non-toxic, why cannot fluoridated water be used in kidney dialysis machines?

Why do residents living in parts of the world where fluoride is found naturally, prematurely age? Why are they suffering from arthritic disease, osteoporosis, stomach pain, weakened, damaged and lost dentation?

Why did a healthy US serviceman living in a fluoridated area suddenly die of no known organic disease, trauma, drug overdose?

Why did a three-year-old child die on his first visit to the dentist after having a fluoride mouthwash?

Why did farmers' peach crops suddenly fail after being contaminated by fluoride? Why did Australian farmers' cattle die, abort, and give birth to malformed young, after their grazing land was found to contain high levels of fluoride? Why did Chile discontinue, and then ban artificial fluoridation?

All of the above and many thousands of incidents are examples found throughout the world of the toxicity of fluoride, yet you, Mr Jones, state categorically that fluoride is harmless and safe!

I think that it is about time that you contacted the manufacturers of rat poison, insecticide, and herbicide, informing them that, according to you, fluoride is no longer toxic, and therefore renders their product ineffective. Furthermore, you should also inform both Encyclopedia Britannica, and Pharmacopoeia, requesting them to remove fluoride from their list of poisons, as you know better than they. A rather arrogant posture, Mr Jones. I would like to know what gives you this confidence assurance that you know better than eminent scientists, one being a Nobel Prizewinner by assuring us that fluoride is harmless?

"Come off it, pull the other one"..

Seeing as you are one of a minority that wants to drink fluoride in your water, and there is no accounting for the eccentricities of others, then perhaps you should put fluoride into your own supply and shut up about it. But maybe, in time, you too will also develop fluoride-induced tumours like those laboratory monkeys.

Ms Alex Hastings

Craven Place, Montserrat, Bolton

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.