Last updated 11:06, Friday, 10 October 2008

THE CASE against non-consensual addition of fluoride into Cumbrian water supplies is persuasive.

The arguments your corresp-ondents have rehearsed in your columns over the years must by now be wearisomely familiar to readers, as are most of the argu-ments on other perennial issues we enjoy (or not) week on week.

But now and then one would wish for less rhetoric and more evidence in some parts of the debate.

Thus, your correspondent Lawley’s statement that the use of fluoride “violates the code of medical ethics” in the ECHCR, would she cite and quote in full the relevant sections which define, inter alia, that this use is a “medical intervention”?

No doubt she has read the Convention and has the document on her desk.

Then: “West Cumbria has been illegally (!) fluoridated since 1969”.

Would she please cite and quote the sections of the UK law she relies on? Again I assume she had copies of the acts she relies on before she wrote her letter.

And if such use has been illegal, why have not the various action groups either sought leading counsel’s legal opinion on this, and if that concludes there is illegality in the practice, why have not the action groups applied to the High Court for judicial review of the 1969 administrative decision?

Many of us are willing to be persuaded but when there is what looks like loose talk of illegality, we need to know that those who employ this tactic have their feet on firm ground and not up in the air.

In your back page report, one Doug Cross asserts a medical licence is required from the regulator. What licence and under what statute, and what regulator? Ofwat – or some other ‘Of’’?

And if a licence is required, then surely that would be a key part of an application for judicial review?

MICHAEL BARON
South Street
Cockermouth