Mass medication is always worrying, but fluoridation is probably the most worrying of all, since it affects the many for the sake of the relative few.

A doctor/nurse couple, Richard and Karilee Shames, have recently changed their minds about fluoridation of drinking water, and have written an article on it:

Why We Changed Our Minds About Water Fluoridation

...The topic of our book, Thyroid Power (HarperCollins 2001), was the unexplained skyrocketing of thyroid disease and its spin-off epidemics of fatigue, depression, anxiety, infertility, and overweight.

While researching influences on the thyroid gland, we were astounded by the large number of fluoride citations. We were confronted with long lists of articles, from scientists around the world, reporting in medical journals about the harmful effects of fluoride.

We then did a review of the history of thyroid treatment, which showed that fluoride had previously been used by the medical profession to deliberately slow down overactive thyroid glands. It is no longer used for that purpose, only because now there are stronger anti-thyroid drugs [like Tapazole and PTU].

[snip]
After reviewing hundreds of articles and books, it became clear that, regardless of any other benefits and side effects, fluoride could indeed be considered a “hormone disruptor.” These are a class of chemicals from many unrelated sources, that have the unintended consequence of altering the proper function of important hormones in the body, such as thyroid.

For example, in the Archives of Oral Biology (1982, Volume 27), Kleiner found that fluoride interfered with proper metabolism of cyclic-AMP and thus diminished cellular energy.

Next, a career university scientist showed us a large textbook about the mechanisms of fluoride tissue harm. Kenneth Kirk in his carefully written volume called Biochemistry of the Elemental Halogens and Inorganic Halides (Plenum Press NY, NY: 1991), described fluoride’s remarkable disruption of enzyme systems.
We then consulted with a toxicology expert, who explained still another harmful fluoride effect. It progressively disrupts the sensitive G-proteins. These are the building blocks of our body’s hormone receptors. (For example, receptors are where thyroid hormone actually starts doing its job at the cell level.)

But at what dilution did fluoride have this disruptive effect? At high concentrations, it is well known to be acutely poisonous and caustic. Could it be that at the low concentrations in municipal water, teeth are being helped without thyroids being harmed?

No, the data showed otherwise. Contradicting the hoped-for scenario is research going back half a century. For instance, we came across a 1958 study by Galletti and Joyet, published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. The paper was titled, “Effect of Fluorine on Thyroidal Iodine Metabolism and Hyperthyroidism.” These scientists showed that fluoride in the range of 2-5 mg. per day (what people now ingest in a fluoridated area) was enough to slow down thyroid function.

Subsequent research on fluoride/thyroid was just as worrisome. Moreover, an added problem appeared. We learned that the source of fluoride for municipalities is not sodium fluoride, the compound used by researchers to determine benefit versus risk. Instead, surprisingly, we found that what is added to almost all city water when it is fluoridated is the industrial waste product hydrofluosilicic acid.

This scrubber waste item, generally from phosphate fertilizer production, is frequently contaminated with varying amounts of cadmium, aluminum, arsenic, lead, or mercury. We found serious studies showing that minute amounts of these heavy metals (much less than would generally be considered toxic) are harmful in various ways when combined with fluoride. Moreover, we were amazed to find out that not a single safety test has ever been performed on hydrofluocilicic acid!

[snip]
As a widespread hormone disruptor it is very likely to be causing wider mischief, even at supposed safe levels.

This larger environmental issue became the topic of our more recent book, Feeling Fat, Fuzzy, or Frazzled? (Hudson/Penquin, 2005) With fluoride added to city water, many millions of people are deliberately exposed to a hormone-altering agent. There is certainly now a massive epidemic of low thyroid, low adrenal, and low functioning sex glands. Many people rightly complain, “There must be something wrong with my hormones.”

Fluoride is, of course, just one of a great many environmental hormone disruptors. However, it is the only one we purposely put into our drinking water. Perhaps the most sensitive among us are like the canaries brought down into the mines. They might be feeling the adverse effects first. Their vague symptoms of ill health could be the early warning signal for us all.

Along with most dentists, mine denies that fluoridation has any harmful effects. I believe that he takes this on faith, as so many medical professionals take so many of their 'facts'. Even worse are the 'skeptics', sceptical of anything other than the randomised controlled trial (RCT), however poorly executed, in however inappropriate the situation (so long as it supports their beliefs. Any that don't will be ignored or ridiculed). They pride themselves on being 'scientific', when really they are exactly the same as the rest of us.

... falling over starts to really hurt.

When you are a kid, you fall over and it's nothing. When you're in your twenties, it comes as more of a surprise, but you still don't feel really hurt. My first bad fall was when I was in my thirties, and I didn't notice a step on the top of St Andrew's Castle. It was only a little step, but I fell really hard, and not only did it hurt, but I was disorientated and needed a little sit down before I could get up (this delay leading all around me to think I was really badly hurt, which I wasn't at all, but I was incapable of a coherent explanation.

Dad was telling me how he used to occasionally come off his motorbike - no problem, then one day in his early thirties he came off and couldn't get straight back up.

So I think it is the case that your body starts packing up in your thirties. Then one day you suddenly realise that you don't jump out of bed any more. You get up and have to stretch, then hobble the first few steps until you get going. Or you realise your hands never used to ache after treating patients. And that nine-mile-plus walks used to mean a bit of a dodgy hip, not a whole body ache.

I think of myself as pretty fit, and it is only looking back that you see the difference.

With your mind, you can keep on learning and keep on growing, and your mind expands and becomes better and better as you get older. but your body, however well you treat it, just starts to pack in.

However, this weekend I'm going to see John Upledger demonstrating Craniosacral treatment on patients. I am really excited, as he is the founder of Upledger Craniosacral Therapy (CST), which is the version I do. I'm sure if someone had CST regularly, it could delay the ageing process - by preventing the cumulative effect of minor stresses and strains. The other treatment I think is excellent is neuromuscular conditioning, which is a way of those muscles that aren't amenable to conscious release. This got rid of my 'nine-mile hip' for a long time (until I kept forgetting to do it).

So I better go and revise, in case I get asked a question tomorrow.

Nice to see that as our government reveals more of its corruption daily, the BBC is concentrating on the real issue. Top story on Breakfast this morning? Bird flu. Not even H5N1 (which is a non-story anyway), but an H7 strain - of no consequence to human health.

Still, that hasn't stopped them hyping it up on their web site:

OOOOOH! It's an H7 virus, though we don't yet know which one. In the Netherlands there was an outbreak of H7N7 once, and 80 people caught it! 80 people!!!!!!!!t on to die of pneumonia!!!!!!!! You don't want that to happen to you, do you, even if you aren't a vet?

And of course, we can't miss this opportunity to remind you that one day H5N1 might mutate and then we're all going to die!!!!!!!!

Less people have been killed by H7N7 than have been killed by the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine which was introduced to Britain this month for babies. In the US, 114 children have died as a result of this vaccine since its introduction two years ago. In contrast, in the year prior to its introduction, 23 US children died of pnemoccocal meningitis (the disease the vaccine is 'protecting' against).

Glad to see the Blair Broadcasting Corporation is still keeping us abreast of the big issues.

I'm feeling much more optimistic about things today.

Of course, it is always fun to watch Labour ministers scrabbling about in a thoroughly undignified manner trying to cling onto their jobs at any price. This time, with all the undigested foodstuffs colliding with the temporary air conditioning at once, it's kind of giving me the feeling I was getting when John Major's government was squirming its way off the wings into obscurity.

You wouldn't get this happening in Alastair Campbell's day. He'd take Hewitt and Clarke aside and say, 'here's your resignation letter: sign it." Prescott would be offered the resignation letter or marriage to his secretary. Then Alastair would quietly take the blame for everything, because the newspapers would insist that whatever was wrong, the real problem was down to spin in general, and Campbell in particular.

How Tony Blair must miss him.

Hopefully all this bad press will have people questioning how such a sleazy incompetent bunch of people, totally and utterly bereft of prinicples, can possibly be trusted to implement ID cards without cocking it up and/or creating an incompetent Police State (as in they'll only police those dangerous to their rule, and to hell with the rest of us).

Thanks to Private Eye for highlighting the 1995 words of a man they call an 'unreconstructed Bevanite'.

"Is not the effect of government policy on the health service now to pit nurse against nurse, hospital against hospital, doctor against doctor?

The result will be to divide and rule: and the commercialisation, demoralisation and break-up of the health service, when people want to see the National Health Service run as a proper national service for the people."

Of course, this was Tony Blair speaking. Although I suppose he's not so much a chameleon as a snake. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he's even advertised the fact in advance. What is even worse is that in doing it, he's well aware that it isn't what he was voted in to do.

From the kquote>The details of how Britain's three main political parties managed to spend nearly £40m to woo voters at the last general election was disclosed in full for the first time yesterday by the Electoral Commission.

Those people who support public funding of political parties are presumably of the opinion that it is fine to spend taxpayers' money on bad haircuts and make up (and that's just for the men), as well as Star Trek outfits and animal costumes. It has set me wondering, though, if I can claim for my make-up as a business expense - since looking professional is obviously vital in creating a rapport with my patients.

More importantly, Alastair Campbell was paid £10,000 per month for his services as a consultant. Taking that as 20 working days, 8 hours per day, that means that I can buy him for £62.50 an hour. Call it £100 for a couple of extras, and that is what I call a bloody good bargain.

Now where is Little 'Un's piggy bank......

I've got this thing that I can do that is a bit spooky. I can tell if someone has Parkinson's disease or ankylosing spondylitis, before any symptoms are apparent. I can't do it via TV (not reliably, anyway - I missed Michael J Fox!), but I can in person. Usually I'll write and ask a GP to test, and they'll be really sceptical, and then be amazed when I'm right because of how early I've spotted it. It's nothing I can put a finger on - the idea just comes into my head and won't go away.

Thing is, I've only been able to do this since being a physio, and only after I'd had about 5 years experience. I'm assuming there is something I'm not aware of that gives me that 'gut feeling', but I've 'learned' to notice it outside of a conscious level.

Anyone else do things like this?

This year I happened to be reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens over Easter. It was this that finally crystallised the problem I have with Christianity. Its central premise doesn’t make any kind of sense.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Yet in ATOTC, we have Sydney Carton willingly giving his life to save not the whole human race (or at least the ‘born again’ portion of it), but just one man. With no promise of resurrection, and no seat at God’s right hand at the end of it.

Let’s leave aside that the whole premise is mad. No, in fact, let’s not. If Yahweh/Jehovah/whoever created the Universe, and everything that exists, then presumably He made the rules too. Why make a rule that sin requires propitiation by a blood sacrifice? I’m not the best mother in the world, but I don’t feel wrath when my child falls short of my expectations (at least not every time!). I certainly don’t expect him to go and kill something to make me feel better. Why would God be less understanding than me, a rubbish human?

But anyway, let’s take it as read that this madness is true. Who wouldn’t give their only begotten child to save potentially the whole human race? Granted, I’d rather it was me who had who had to do the cross thing (though if we believe in the Trinity, then it would be me, wouldn’t it?), but given that I’d be God, and I’d thus be sure that Little ‘Un was going to be resurrected, and all he had to do was suffer horribly for less than a week, well, it’s worth it, isn’t it?

Abraham had no such assurances, and he was still up for it – not to save the human race, but to satisfy God’s whim. Our troops are over in Iraq sacrificing their lives to satisfy Tony Blair's whim. The papers often report on people who give their lives for strangers, dying to rescue them, and a good proportion of them, according to Christians, are going to hell. It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t believe it.

AND it’s got nothing to do with eggs!

Something is really wrong. You expect sensationalism and so on from the likes of ITV and the Sun, but last week on the BBC we've had three days of the lead story being a poor lad who sadly died of a childhood killer disease, and three days of the lead story being a dead swan who died of a bird deadly disease. Meanwhile 79 people are killed in another atrocity in Iraq and it's barely reported on. So just how many dead Iraqis do equal a dead swan?

P.S. Have been very quiet as family have been ill with a virus thingy. All getting better now.

The Sunday Times and all the other Sundays seemed to be running with this one:

Flu Pandemic Mass Graves Planned By UK Government

The Home Office is considering the use of mass graves as a worse case scenario measure if a flu pandemic strikes. According to a confidential report seen by the Sunday Times, 320,000 people in Great Britain could die as a result of a flu pandemic originating from a mutated H5N1 bird flu virus strain.

Such a death toll would overwhelm the country's burial services, resulting in burial and cremation delays of up to four months. A cabinet committee quoted the Great Plague burial pits used during the seventeenth century.

No one getting anything out of proportion there then. Plague=flu, 17th century healthcare=NHS, insanitary conditions=modern sanitation etc etc etc

Experts are convinced the H5N1 bird flu virus strain will mutate. The question now is not ‘if', it is ‘when'. However, it is most likely the mutated virus will not be as deadly for humans as it is at the moment.

But let's not mention this until well after the plague pits

Humans are not easily infected with the H5N1 virus strain. New research has indicated that this is because the virus has to make its way deep down into the lower respiratory tract (deep in the lung) to make the person ill. In order to infect a person, that person must be surrounded with huge numbers of the virus - be surrounded by infected birds for a long time - for it to have a chance to get deep down into the lungs and infect. Even if a person does get infected, his/her coughs and sneezes will expel hardly any H5N1s (because they will be too deep down) - making it virtually impossible for one human to infect another human.

For the H5N1 to mutate so that it can spread from human to human, it will, most likely, have to learn how to infect the upper-respiratory tract (nearer the throat). Then coughs and sneezes will expel many more of the virus. However, infection of the upper-respiratory tract is much easier to treat. In other words, a mutated virus will probably not be as virulent (deadly, potent).

I like all this talk of H5N1 'learning' how to infect the upper respiratory tract. Maybe the common cold is the teacher?

H5N1 could mutate any old way at any old time. Yes, eventually it will mutate, but who knows how and who knows how the mutation will affect its transmission or the way it reacts within the human body? So why the hell are we worrying about that when there are for sure 700,000 obese children in the UK who will live restricted lives and die horribly if they don't learn how to eat properly?

Still, probably easier to just dig a bigger plague pit....