No fault with fluoride quiz answers

The Advertising Standards Authority has found no fault with the answers to the fluoride quizzes run earlier this year. The Authority has simply ruled that, because FANNZ is an advocacy organization, it needed to identify whether the answers were established fact or only FANNZ’ opinion.

The Authority said that simply stating on the quizzes that FANNZ is an advocacy organization might have been sufficient.

In fact, most of the answers are established, or generally accepted, fact. The remaining four are all supported by current evidence-based science, although opposing advocacy groups might consider other answers to be correct. Of course extremists such as the complainant’s group refuse to accept anything against fluoridation as a religious/political posturing, no matter how settled the science is.

On many points the complainant accepted that the answer was correct, but simply argued about how the public would react to these facts. As an example of the extremism of the complaints the complainant says that “the claim that tooth decay is primarily caused by poor diet is … alarmist”.

In a recent online debate international fluoridation expert Dr Paul Connett, who recently visited NZ, fully discredited this groups’ claims, which they could not support with credible science. Neither would any bona fide fluoridation-promoting organization support their claims in an open public scientific forum held in Wellington in March.

Even in the High Court, Justice Hansen recently stated “with all the evidence against fluoridation it is a wonder anyone still supports it”.

The evidence for and against fluoridation will be presented to the Kapiti Coast District Council at a special tribunal-style hearing on fluoridation on 21 May.

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