Comment 61501

By JasonAAllen (registered) - website | Posted March 25, 2011 at 08:40:13

Bob - as valid as your argument may otherwise be, bringing up the old bugaboo of Flouride causing Down Syndrome, only seves to discredit the rest of your points. There are only a handful of studies claiming any link between the two - all of which are riddled with structural flaws, and scored very low on validity tests http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/1... As much as many of us would like to think that conditions like Down Syndrome are the result of a damaged world gone mad, DS has been part of the human population for as long as there has been a human population. It is the result of an error that occurs (probably during Meiosis) around the time of conception, and the only factor that has ever been proven to affect rates of DS is maternal age. Once you control for this - the rate of birth of babies with DS has been pretty consistent for a very, very long time.

Rates appear to be higher now in our age of flouridated water, but this is simply because so many more women are delaying having children until later in life. A clear case of correlation not equalling causality.

As I said, your argument may have some validity to it - but raising the pseudoscience spectre of flouride as a cause for DS, puts you squarely in the camp with other specious arguments such as Vaccines causing Autism. It only serves to damage your credibility.

Full Disclosure: I am the Communications Coordinator of the Down Syndrome Association of Hamilton, and Hamilton's representative on the Affiliate Council of the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. I also have a 4 yr old with DS. The views expressed here are my own.

Whatever you do, don't mention the Red Hill Valley Parkway!

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