Stuff | 11 Sept 2015
An increasingly slick anti-fluoridation lobby is causing concern for some Hutt Valley District Health Board members.
A paper presented to the board’s last meeting addressed an email from Fluoride Free New Zealand which included claims that fluoridation permanently damaged the teeth of “tens of thousands of Kiwis”.
The paper said the report Fluoride Free NZ was referring to contained no research that hadn’t already been considered by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor.
Nor did it “shift the balance of health benefit versus health risk,” the paper argued.
Board member Sandra Greig, who is also a Greater Wellington regional councillor, said those lobbying against fluoridated water were “very good speakers”.
“We rely on the DHBs [for advice]. What they’re saying is what we take in as regional councillors.”
Former Hutt City mayor and fellow board member David Ogden said the anti-fluoridation campaigners needed to be taken seriously.
“Having been at a number of public meeting with the anti-fluoridation people there, they have some very strong arguments.”
Hutt City deputy mayor David Bassett said the lobby was winning over more and more councillors.
“The whole vote is actually becoming closer and closer,” Bassett said.
“I wouldn’t want to say which way it would go, in fact, if there was a vote around the council table today.”
Upper Hutt mayor Wayne Guppy said the board shouldn’t get distracted by anti-fluoridation crowd.
“The evidence is very clear of the benefit [of fluoridation] for the teeth of the community,” Guppy said.
To board member and regional councillor Ken Laban, the anti-fluoridation lobbyists had significantly “polished their act”.
“They come with their own group of professionals, eminently qualified and respected people in their area and it places local politicians in a very difficult position,” Laban said.
Laban said the DHB’s response in the past had been to dismiss the arguments of fluoride opponents rather than address them.
“The argument was to say that they were bad, they were idiots and we’d be crazy to listen to them.
“That’s not good enough any more.
“In terms of the theatre of the debate we are losing, regardless of the absurdity of the debate.”
– Hutt News
