New challenges to European Commissioners over water fluoridation.

Medical professionals dismiss new EC Committee and its study on fluoridation as 'not fit for purpose', the EC Commissioner for Health is asked why MHRA is allowed to ignore Community law, and a demand is made for the practice to be referred to the European Court of Justice. Not a good day at the office, then?

European Commissioners and bureaucrats are coming under increasing pressure to revise their ambivalent position on water fluoridation. Caroline Lucas, MEP for Southwest England (including Southampton) has issued a formal complaint to Ms Androulla Vassillou, Commissioner for Health, that the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has not fulfilled its responsibility to verify the correct classification of a product, hexafluorosilic acid, as a medicinal product. She is now demanding to know
What action will the European Commission take to enforce Directive 2001/83/EC, given the ECJ ruling and clear evidence that member state authorities such as the MHRA are not properly classifying hexafluorosilic acid?

Meanwhile, the EC's attempt to sooth growing concern from the scientific and medical communities is also running into trouble. For the past couple of months the Health and Consumer Protection Secretariat of the EC has been trying to set up a Committee to look into the safety of water fluoridation. But in trying to establish a working mandate for the study, the Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER) has been challenged over its competence and authority to carry out the study.

Dr Philip Michael, Vice President [Europe] of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, has written to SCHER charging that is "not fit for the purpose of risk assessing fluoridated drinking water."

Dr Michael writes: SCHER's field of competence does not extend to clinical and physiological assessment of pharmacologically active substances. . . . As doctors, we do not accept that the terms of reference for risk assessment of fluoridated drinking water given by the Commission to SCHER satisfy the essential clinical requirements for pharmacologically active substances. These are that they should be safe and effective after clinically conducted trials, and the quality and dissemination of information about these substances to citizens must be such as to enable them to make informed choices about their own treatment.

Now we have added weight to these objections by warning SCHER that its proposed mandate is improper. Doug has informed the Secretariat that neither national regulators nor Commissioners have authority to express 'opinions' on whether or not fluoridation needs to be subjected to medicinal regulation, and that, as Dr Michael has pointed out, SCHER is not an appropriate body to assess the risks of a medicinal intervention.Doug has emphasised that the legitimacy of the practice of water fluoridation must be established before any assessment of the safety of the chemicals involved can be carrried, even by an appropriately qualified Expert Committee.

He warns that if a practice is unlawful, then no review of its safety is necessary, and has called for the issue of the legitimacy of fluoridation to be determined at an expedited hearing of the European Court of Justice.