DRAMATIC NEW DEVELOPMENT IN FLUORIDATION DEBATE
STATEMENTS UPON WHICH PRO- AND ANTI-FLUORIDATIONISTS MIGHT AGREE


Water and enzymes are basic to all life.

Debates about applied science are never closed.

There is not much common ground between the pro- and anti- fluoridation camps.

You can't stop people eating junk food.

Lack of fluorine is not the cause of tooth decay.

You can't enforce the administration of fluorine by other means.

Twenty people can fluoridate a generation of people by political vote.

There can be no danger from added fluorine if fluorine is not added.

The debate on fluoridation should be scientific, not political.

Fluoridation does not provide a means of controlling individual dosage.

The debate should be conducted in neutral language.

The terms "controlled fluoridation" and "artificial fluoridation" are each emotive in their own way.

Fluoridation does not attempt to replicate naturally fluoridated water.

Each outcome (fluoridation or no fluoridation) creates an economic disadvantage to people on the losing side.

Water is not the target of fluorides used in fluoridation.

Fluorine forms negatively charged ions (anions) which bind to positively charged ions (cations).

If a fluorine-containing molecule gets close enough to a different molecule a fluoride ion will move from a weaker bond in the first molecule to a stronger bond in the second, if the opportunity exists to do so.

Fluorine will replace less electronegative elements -- e.g. Oxygen and iodine -- in chemical compounds.

Fluorine is more electronegative than any other element.

The fluorine-hydrogen hydrogen bond is the second strongest known.

The fluoridation reagent hydrofluorosilicic acid is of medium nucleophilicity.

"Rights" issues cancel out: they can be used by either side -- but only by the proponents if fluoridation can be proved to be harmless and effective.

Mass-prophylaxis with pharmacologically-active substances should be regarded with suspicion unless and until it is proven that the good outweighs the harm.

Human experimentation without consent should be illegal.

Fluorine crosses the placenta and the "blood brain barrier".

The presence of something in certain natural water supplies is not a guarantee of its desirability.

Something's absence in water is not evidence of a deficiency in water or man.

Fluorine is not demonstrated to be essential in any human biochemical pathway.

Fluoridation could not survive a wider open discussion of fluorine pollution.

Debating fluoridation publicly is disadvantageous to the proponents.