The Irish Examiner Letters Column of 5th March 2004.
Get off the fence on mass medication
On January 27, Health Minister Micheal Martin treated Dail deputies to his well-worn refrain that fluoridation of drinking water must continue as a mass public health measure.
Never mind the fact that not one of the recommendations of his Fluoridation Forum, which reported 18 months ago, has been implemented. As for the expert body that he promised would implement all eight of the forum's recommendations, not a word has been heard of it.
Is this the same minister who, not 50 metres away on the steps of Dail Erieann, proclaimed on RTE's Prime Time of February 24, barely a month later, that the reason he would not entertain the addition of folic acid to flour, even though it could reduce by half the 75 babies born here annually with neural tube defects, was because mass medication was beyond contemplation ? Why ? Because it infringes human rights, is unethical, has many legal obstacles and is rejected by consumers.
All these were the very same reasons submitted to the same minister's Fluoridation forum by hundreds of people from across the country representing a massive 91% "No" to this ongoing mass medication of Irish people. Yet he continues to enforce it on us. Do we really deserve a Minister for Health and Children who is such a Tadhg an da thaobh ?
Robert Pocock, VOICE of Irish Concern for the Environment. 7, Upper Camden St, Dublin 2