The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7268 p404
27 September 2003

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  Consultants
  Fluoridation
  CPD
  The Society
  Modernisation
  Workforce census

Letters to the Editor

Fluoridation

Is this mass medication?

From Mr B. W. Whittaker, MRPharmS

I would like to comment on the Broad Spectrum article by Paul Clein (PJ, 23 August, p234), which appears to confuse medical and ethical issues. Is fluoride safe? Well, people have been drinking it for centuries where it is naturally occurring. Mr Clein cites the benefits of fluoridation to children in Liverpool as being decays reduced by one third of a tooth per child. In my local area, Bradford, the figure would be two and a half teeth less decay per child. In Manchester, the average five-year-old has three times as many decayed, missing and filled teeth as a child in Birmingham, a city which has had fluoridated water for 40 years (Bradford Telegraph and Argos, 3 September 2003).

Regarding freedom of choice, water from the tap is not straight from the skies: it is chlorinated and subject to other treatments. Is this mass medication?

B. Whittaker
Keighley, West Yorkshire

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