Today is Guy Fawkes day in the UK. This day has been celebrated for hundreds of years as the day when Guy Fawkes and friends' plot to blow up the House of Parliament in London failed.

Hopefully, Doug Cross and friends will be more successful in blowing up Blair's plans to fluoridate the UK. There, incredibly, the new water bill provides indemnity for private water suppliers for any lawsuits which result from adding fluoride to the water. However, that indemnification would only apply if the action is "legal" - which according to EU Directives, which came into force on October 31, 2005, it is not.

When I was a teenager I was keen chess player and I remember the thrill of anticipating a scissor move, where one move threatened simultaneously two of one's opponents pieces. Whatever they did they had to forfeit one piece. I can still feel the joy of watching one's opponent's agony when they had to decide whether they were going to lose their bishop or their castle- or giving up their castle because one was also threatening their queen!

I got the same delight from reading the latest analysis from Doug Cross who finds the following scissor move. If the UK authorities concede that fluoride is a medicine then they are in trouble because this medicine has not been authorized; if on the other hand they deny that fluoridation is medication, then they could be in even greater trouble because they have been making "medicinal claims" about their product and thus are advertising "illegal" medicine. Cross explains below. Now I am not a lawyer and much of the legal stuff flies over my head but I am enjoying this. Once again I seek some input from other legal minds - am I getting too excited about this? Is there some loophole here for the Brits?

Meanwhile, there are several other hopeful signs over the last few days which suggest that at long last "the fluoride deception" is beginning to unravel.

1) The Online petition www.powalliance.org/petition took off again yesterday. After taking an age going from 7000 signers to 7200, yesterday it leapt forward by over three hundred votes! The current total at 7 am this morning was 7560. I was thrilled to see that among the recent signers was Lisa Finaldi the National Toxics Campaign director for Greenpeace! If Greenpeace signs on as an organization that could have huge ramifications in the U.S.

2) It looks as if the effort to introduce mandatory fluoridation in Massachusetts is floundering. Even the state senator who introduced the bill is talking about the need for more research. If it sinks that will make it four for four this year at holding off mandatory statewide efforts in the U.S. (efforts in Arkansas, Oregon, and New Jersey have already been thwarted). This will be delicious because these bills have been given huge support by the usual suspects: state health departments; dental associations (both state and federal) and of course the CDC, in the shape of Richard Maas who has made personal appearances on behalf of three of these state bills. It is looking as if these proponents can convince themselves that this is a good idea but cannot do the same with politicians or the public - once they have gotten past the hype.

3) The Australians are putting up a huge resistance to the tin pot dictators in their state "health" departments who - given their arrogant way - would force this measure on every last unfluoridated village, town and city in Australia. How anyone can watch this and tolerate the proponents' refusal to debate the issue in public is beyond me. However, Bill Kilvert, of the Australian Labor Party, has thrown down the gauntlet to the local health "expert" in Cairns, Queensland to debate, and citizens in Horsham, Victoria have invited state health officials to attend a public form. It will be interesting to see if the state's idea of "consultations" with the public actually includes defending the measure when there are people around who have actually read the literature!

4) Then, of course, there is the national coverage that this issue is getting in the U.S. Following on the Washington Post (July 13); Associated Press (July 13); Wall Street Journal (July 22), and Time magazine (October 24) articles, there will be a story on the ABC TV national news on Sunday evening November 6. Needless to say the promoters do not want this exposure, we do! Like certain nocturnal creatures the proponents' arguments cannot stand the light of day.

5) Hopefully, all this activity will translate into some positive referendum results from Bellingham, Washington; Springfield, Ohio, and Mount Pleasant, Michigan to name just three of the votes in which we have taken a great deal of interest. Despite the huge amount of money being spent against them (about $250,000 versus $10,000) in Bellingham, and a pretty awful editorial, citizens are desperately hoping that the people are going to come through. Ah, the people; yes the people! Win or lose, hats off to those wonderful folks (Shirley Jacobson, and many others in Bellingham; Debbie and David Catrow and friends in Springfield and Gladys Mitchell and friends in Mount Pleasant) who have spent night and day for the past few months trying to keep this monster at away.

 

Doug Cross writes from the UK:

Things are really hotting up here now, and we are seeing signs of cracks appearing in the entire industry. For example, if it's illegal to advertise unregistered medicinal substances, which is the position of the water companies, as manufacturers of what is the largest bulk production of medicine in the UK, the advertising legislation implies that the manufacturers of medicines for which illegal claims are made are themselves liable under this legislation. And of course, if the claims about the efficacy and safety of this medicine are illegal, there can be absolutely NO Government indemnity for the manufacturers.

As one of our Barristers said recently - "There is no indemnity for a criminal act." Could be that there's no future for those committing them. Medical professionals have Ethics Committees to steer their activities and research - so how unethical do you have to be before these Committees will act? Is recommending illegal and unavoidable dosage of vulnerable children with cancer-causing chemicals ethical because it is 'the most cost-effective delivery system available'?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Here are the details:

If silicofluorides and fluoridated water ARE medicines, as the EU and ECJ definitions clearly indicate, then it is illegal to administer them with the intent to medicate because they have no Marketing Authorization (pure water for injections does have such a license, by the way, and has to be subjected to frequent batch testing for safety - isn't this a bizarre anomaly?).

If, however, they are NOT medicines - and that is the present official situation in both the UK and Ireland - then the following should be read very carefully indeed.

Under the EU Regulations on the Advertising of Medicinal Products, it is illegal to make any public claims regarding the medicinal properties of any substance that does not have a Marketing Authorisation, and under UK Law derived from it this is also the case.

Here is the relevant extract from the UK legislation: it is derived from Council Directive 92/28/EEC (OJ No. L113, 0.4.1992, p.13) ("the Advertising Directive") concerning the advertising of medicinal products for human use

Statutory Instrument 1994 No. 1932 The Medicines (Advertising) Regulations 1994

Prohibition of advertisements for unlicensed products

Article 3.-(1) Subject to paragraph (2), no person shall issue an advertisement relating to a relevant medicinal product in respect of which no product license is in force. (Paragraph 2 refers to homeopathic remedies)

Offences

23.-(1) Any person who contravenes regulations 3(1), 4, 6(1)
or (3), 7, 8, 10(1), 14(1), 15(1), 16, 18(1), (2) or (3), 20(2) or (3), 21(1) or (3), or 22(1)(a)shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable-
(a) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum,
(b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to both.

Advertising can be any form of recommendation, including the spoken or written word, and through the use of electronic media. The European Code of Practice covering this specifies a range of prohibited actions relating to the promotion of legitimate medicinal substances - so you can imagine just how serious is the breach of the Code by advertising illegal substances in such ways.

So the fact is that the BFS, BDA, BMA, Fluoride Information Center, and all of their spokespersons - and we all know who they are - are committing a criminal act by promoting the 'benefits' and 'safety' of the unlicensed medicinal substance fluoride in their Conference speeches, 'information' leaflets, pseudo-scientific papers, and - aha! - in their web sites.

The penalty for doing so, as you can see from the above extract, can include a hefty fine and/or a prison sentence of up to 2 years. In addition, any medical or dental professional found guilty of such unprofessional and unethical action would automatically be subject to censure from the Local Ethics Committee - and of course, from your friendly neighborhood Judge.

We all know perfectly well that the authorities will employ whatever delaying tactics and political chicanery they can to subvert any attempt to force the Licensing Authorities to recognize that these substances are medicines. So let's not beat about the bush, banging our heads against brick walls, and whatever other fatuous cliché we can think of to divert us from getting things done!

I suggest that if we want to circumvent all of this guff then we simply note the authorities' claims that these substances are not medicines, and demand that criminal action be taken against those making illegal medical claims for them (particularly as they are targeted at children).

Let us document the illegal claims being made for these unlicensed medicines, and demand that criminal action be taken against those making and advertising them in this way. Let us notify the relevant Web Site ISPs that these websites are contravening the law, and demand that the ISPs shut them down. Can you imagine the publicity that would accompany the closure of the web sites of the BDA, BMA and BFS on such grounds?

And of course it would (we would make sure of this) come to the notice of the Deans and Principles of the Universities that these members of their staff had been behaving in ways that are incompatible with the medical legislation, the medical Codes of Practice, and most certainly also with public approval. The results should be extremely interesting.

The point is simply this. If 'they' want to bluff about the lack of a need to license these products as medicines, then let us simply call their bluff - if they aren't medicines then why are they permitting these people to break the law about promoting them as such?

And I have another equally nasty question about this. If these are criminal acts, how come the English Parliament and the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland Assemblies are giving public money to these organizations to promote these illegal claims? That is surely a matter for the Audit Commission here in London; Heaven alone knows what the Scots would think about their own Assembly illegally supporting - and using their money to do so - an activity that the Scottish Court has already defined as medication (the Mrs. McColl decisions by Judge Jauncy).

Regards
Doug Cross, Forensic Ecologist <maverick65@tiscali.co.uk>
Tel (*44) (0) 1398 371305