Articles/Letters
Our Big Night Out™ with the twins at Comer Bem® David Lovejoy
I
t was the twins’ birthday last week. They were ten years old. Before the event they surprisingly came to one of their rare agreements, and wanted to celebrate in a child-friendly restaurant. Nothing crappy like a KFC®, which they knew their mother would never allow, but the new Brazilian chain, Comer Bem®. Portuguese is their father’s native tongue and they already speak it rather well. As the Vovô (grandpa) in charge of special events – that was news to me too – I had to organise this outing. I thought I had got all the ducks in a row, but it was a trying experience. The nearest Comer Bem® in the city is situated about five miles away from the twins’ home, so I had to drive there to make the arrangements. I don’t like driving in the city because of all the billboards encouraging me to smoke. I have a medical certificate which allows me to prohibit smoking in my own house and car, but I have never really got used to the new laws. They came in a few years after Australia signed the Trans Pacific Partnership™ agreement. It was during Tony Abbott’s government – the prime minister who said on winning an election, ‘Australia is now open for business.’© Nobody at the time realised what he meant. AnyLETTERS continued from page 9
There is virtually no science behind it, and what there is doesn’t support the myth that fluoride is good for us. I may not know politics like Mungo, but as a Bostontrained physician, specialising in preventive medicine at Johns Hopkins, with six years as a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service, the founder of the first wellness centre in the US (1975), and published in the American Journal of Public Health, The New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, I believe I can assess the science (or lack thereof) more accurately than Mungo has. Fluoridation was actually grandfathered during the same era that doctors were advertising Camels, irradiating children’s thymuses with X-rays, and lobotomising those with mental illness.
way, one of the clauses of the agreement, kept secret until it was enacted, allows multinational corporations to sue governments that make regulations affecting their profits. Australia’s laws against cigarette advertising and smoking in public were among the first targets of big tobacco, and the government had to capitulate. When I got to the restaurant and explained to the manager about our intended birthday party, he was very helpful. In fact, he had a printed tariff covering such events and I was able to choose from the items that were within our budget. Unfortunately there were not many we could afford. Bringing in a Birthday Cake™ and singing Happy Birthday© were right out. McDonald’s® have registered a trademark over ‘all cake and pastry products designed for use during birthdays or other significant celebratory events’ and the Disney® Corporation owns copyright on the song. It would have been much too expensive to go the traditional way. Some parents of course cannot bear not to give their children what they had free in the days before the trade legislation, so there are cases of birthdays causing bankruptcies and rumours of illicit home performances of Happy Birthday© being discovered by the Intellectual Property™ police. Most people are law-abiding, and don’t even know
what the penalties are for breaching Intellectual Property™ rights. I’m not sure if I’m up to date on them, but I know that they have got steadily more severe since the original ‘negotiations’ were made by Andrew Robb with the US corporations on behalf of the Liberal Party. Back then the IP™ issues were things like pirated music and movies, and five-figure fines were considered sufficiently intimidating. But some people are incorrigible and have no sense of economic responsibility, so the penalties had to be strengthened. I think ten years’ jail for a first offence is in the current statute. Mind you, IP takes in a lot more these days than it did when Mr Robb was conducting his secret sessions with the multinationals. Then he only needed to ensure, for example, that the pharmaceutical giants got to write clauses in the draft agreements banning cheap generic drugs and that the media
No hard research was ever done and I challenge him to show me any science behind his statement, ‘the evidence was, after all, overwhelming: huge improvements in children’s teeth at a minimal cost with negligible, if not nonexistent, side effects’. The improvements in children’s teeth were across the board in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas. His most grievous error is that he, like so many others, have it backwards. The burden of proof of the effectiveness of any intervention lies with its proponents. This has never been accomplished with fluoridated water. What’s backwards is that untainted-water proponents are not required to prove that it’s dangerous (although this is being done because of the negligence of the authorities pushing fluoride). Evidence of the dodgy ‘science’: 1. NSW Health’s Novem-
ber 2013 report, distributed to Council last month, asks on p. 11: ‘Do randomised controlled trials support the fluoridation of the water supply? A: ... Although there are no randomised controlled trials of fluoridation of the water supply.’ They then proceed to compare it to topical fluoride treatments. This comparison is not scientifically sound. Topical treatment does not begin to compare to systemic dosing via water – they are two entirely different mechanisms. By their own admission, there is no science to show fluoridated water’s effectiveness. 2. 97 per cent of western Europe does not fluoridate and their decay rates are comparable to fluoridated countries. 3. A 2012 Harvard University meta-analysis of about two dozen studies in a peerreviewed US federal journal continued on page 12
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companies were comfortable with extending copyright protection by 100 years. Now the protection of corporate rights is much more comprehensive, and constitutes one of our government’s key responsibilities. Anyway, I chose what we were to eat and drink, and what we were allowed to sing, negotiated a price and on the appointed day the family turned up to celebrate the twins’ birthday. The first thing we did, of course, was find coins to unlock the stack of IKEA® chairs that had been reserved for us to rent. Unfortunately, after we had settled down we had an argument with the waiter. It was my fault, as I hadn’t
looked at the tariff carefully enough. I had turned down the manager’s suggestion of Nestlé® bottled water and said that tap water would be acceptable. Now I found that Nestlé® also owned all the artesian water in the ground beneath us, having been assigned the rights in return for dropping their TPP law suit against the government. Everyone agreed it was an example of corporate civic generosity as they were almost certain to win. After all, breast-feeding does severely affect the sales of powdered milk, and many people look on the practice as trying to get something for nothing. Despite Nestlé®’s publicspirited gesture there is still a lobby of magistrates and churches trying to outlaw breast-feeding, so the corporation may end up with the legislation it wanted as well as all the potable water in the state. In short we had to pay for our drinks, which I wasn’t expecting, but I was able to balance the budget by quietly deleting the Nestlé® chocolate mousse dessert from the menu. You may be wonder-
ing why we, of all families, were drinking water rather than alcohol. Alas, the twins in their innocence when they made their choice of venue did not know that Comer Bem® is affiliated with CocaCola®, which only allows the serving of water or sugared water in its restaurants. We have a family rule against taking more than ten teaspoons of sugar in any one drink, so for once the adults, like the children, had to make do with water. Despite this, and my clumsiness with the menu, we had a good time. The Brazilian food was tasty, the twins loved the out-of-copyright carols we sang, and the Party Hats™ we put on, purchased in advance at Wal-Mart®, which has taken over all the familiar Woolworths® and Coles® stores, lent our group such an air of desperate frivolity that the other restaurant patrons gave us a wide berth. On the way home we encountered long traffic delays as emergency crews dealt with another fracking gas rig explosion in a nearby suburb, but we were too tired and happy to worry about it.
The Byron Shire Echo December 31, 2013 11