FLUORIDATION OF WATER

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28362, 22 August 1957, Page 16

FLUORIDATION OF WATER

Sir Rudolph Peters And Mrs Wilkinson

Mrs Amy Wilkinson, author of a pamphlet on fluoridation, has acceded to the request of a correspondent that she should publish the full text of a letter in which. Sir Rudolph Peters, formerly Professor of Biochemisty at Oxford, acknowledged her ;■ explanation of the source of a quotation attributed to him in the pamphlet an<L which he described elsewhere; as “a garbled misrepresentation of the facts.’ Mrs Wilkinson wrote to the editor of “The Press” on August 20 as follows: “Sir, —As 'Cheesemonger' is apparently ashamed to identify himself, and as the correspondence on fluoridation has drawn out and revealed this individual as a pernicious discrediter, I have decided, for the benefit of those readers opposing fluoridation, to ask the editor, who has seen the original letter from Sir Rudolph Peters, to now print this letter in full. I am flattered that out of nearly 10,000 words contained in my pamphlets, fluoridation Facts,’ ’Further Facts on Fluoridation,’ and ’Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies— Hazards!’, the Commission of Inquiry into Fluoridation, which carefully examined all these pamphlets, could find only 68 words to contest—this comprising a misquote in F. Battelle’s otherwise excellent booklet, which was requoted by me in good faith. Therefore to cast any doubt on the authenticity of the rest of my work on fluoridation is to cast a doubt on the competency of the Commission of Inquiry into Fluoridation, seeing they have examined them so thoroughly." Sir Rudolph Peters’s letter is as follows: “Biochemistry Department, A.R.C. Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham Hall, Babraham, Cambridge, England. “Sth Nov., 1956. “Dear Mrs Wilkinson, “Sir Rudolph has asked me to write to thank you for your letter of 25th October. “He quite understands that you would consider what was written in the booklet ‘Fluoridation Unmasked’ as reasonable to quote, but regrets that the quotation is not accurate. He is going into the matter, and trying to discover what statement of his gave rise to this quotation. Yours sincerely, ‘ ‘Winifred Pourtney, Secretary to Sir Rudolph Peters.” Un the interests of accuracy we would point out that the commission did not, as Mrs Wilkinson suggests, accept and approve the remainder of the contents of her pamphlets. The commission challenged, specifically, the opinions of Dr. C. T. Betts quoted in one of Mrs Wilkinson’- pamphlets, and elsewhere said that this pamphlet contains "highly exaggerated and misleading descriptions of the fluoridation process.’ ’ The commission, obviously, could not deal with every paragraph in all of the pamphlets and publications which came before it. The commission did, however, challenge and answer all the objections to fluoridation put forward by medical and lay witnesses, as well as the main theses of the overseas medical opponents of fluoridation. These theses, challenged and answered, are common to most anti-fluoridation literature, Mrs Wilkinson's pamphlets not excepted.—Ed., “The Press.”]