FLUORIDE DATE LECTURE #47: PEW! THERE'S SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF (AUSTIN) TEXAS
Hamlet had his problems too...
Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. We've heard tell of a letter sent by the Pew charitable trust to the Committee on Public Health and Human Services in the days just prior to the Committee's October 18 vote to defer action on a health warning about fluoride for the monthly water bill.
Is any one of you able to produce a copy of that letter? I'd like to have a look at it.
The letter allegedly pressures the Committee to reject the warning. The reason we know about it is that a reference to it was posted on the Public Health Dentists' listserv on October 24 by a Pew official. Matt Jacob is communications project manager of Pew's Children's Dental Health Campaign, so we assume he knows what he's talking about. His exact words to his newsgroup were:
“Just last week, a committee of the Austin, Tex. city council voted 3-0 against a proposal requiring the city's water company to place a warning about CWF on all consumer water bills. Pew wrote a letter urging the committee to reject this unnecessary and misleading warning.”
What I’d like to know this: How often do distant bureaucracies, meddling in Austin's internal affairs, determine the outcome entirely or in part? Why are they permitted to meddle at all?
The question goes beyond the matter of water fluoridation—to the issue of home rule. Who does the City Council really answer to? Austinites? Or outside interests?
So far as fluoridation goes: this City Council listens to the CDC (based in Atlanta); the ADA and AMA (both based in Chicago), and now, it appears, the PEW trust (based in Philadelphia and D.C.). The one group whose input it resists is, seemingly, the people of Austin themselves. Austinites of community stature and impressive credentials - practicing dentists, doctors, Ph.D. scientists, pharmacists, nurses, dental hygenists - have appeared here only to have their testimony cavalierly dismissed. Nor has the Council heeded voices from the past: the misgivings of the late Mayor Roy Butler on whose watch fluoridation passed; the warnings of the late UT biochemist Dr. Alfred Taylor, whose monumental laboratory studies proving the link between sodium fluoride and cancer, remain definitive to this day.
That’s all I have time for today. Something to think about. Thank you.
Categories: health environment politics wellness
Tags: fluoride water fluoridation austin activism Pew charitable trust foundation
Please be aware we can use the PEW dental data for our own advantage. Their own data shows just shocking data on how many poor kids do not get dental care. How many dentists flat refuse to treat the poor medicaid kids. They prove a disaster caused by lack of dental care and nutrition-not a lack of fluoride toxicity. They are failed policy promoter no matter how stupid or harmful. They are blind to the truth. They promote the lie instead for some reason.
My dentist mayor even got a special meeting at the health department with me as a agenda item on how to silence my science on fluoridation. How to block me from meetings like they banned me in Ormond Beach. I am now again allowed to speak and my own commissioner stated they were wrong and I was right. They still have not voted fluoridation out. Three of 5 of the commission are attorney. I am emailing them the current litigation information with Nestle, Gerber and the San Diego lawsuit. The Seattle links with Fluoride class action also. I know these people are not dumb and the Mayor is even talking about so many sources of fluoride besides the water and maybe it is not needed anymore.
Austin has so many experts that deserve respect willing to speak out loud and skillfully also. And you get ignored for the most part. Like PEW gets much anything right on policy.
I think the tipping point is coming soon. I am thankful for all the hard work from your many experts speaking out. A major lawsuit win will change the game when it happens.
Reply to this
We are very much aware. Links to the Pew dental reports of both 2010 and 2011 are posted on the "Reading Room" page of www.fluoridefreeaustin.com
Reply to this
Thanks for your support, Golda. We'll get it posted on some Facebook pages for sure. This chapter of the story isn't over by any means.
You Washington state activists are kicking butt too, and I really admire your efforts.
Reply to this
Excellent research and great question. Can you post this on local facebook pages, send it to the local newspaper as an editorial, find other local blogs to post it on? Are there ways to let your local community know about the functioning political process. This is unacceptable, fully unacceptable. So glad to see that you were able to figure it out!!
Reply to this