Sean Plunket interviewed Dr Robin Whyman 13 February 2025
The late Dr John Colquhoun is a New Zealand hero. He was an ardent advocate of fluoridation and instrumental in it being introduced in most of the big cities in New Zealand. However, he ended up studying the facts and finding the data did not support what he was saying. He is one of those rare individuals that put the truth and the welfare of others above their own considerations.
His story is very important to the New Zealand fluoridation story. So many people dismiss our concerns about fluoridation because they can’t believe that it could continue if what we are saying is true. Dr Colquhoun explains how it happens. In the article Why I changed my mind about water fluoridation, he says “I now realize that what my colleagues and I were doing was what the history of science shows all professionals do when their pet theory is confronted by disconcerting new evidence: they bend over backwards to explain away the new evidence. They try very hard to keep their theory intact — especially so if their own professional reputations depend on maintaining that theory.”
Read the full article below, and watch an interview with him from 1998.
Why I changed my mind about water fluoridation
John Colquhoun* © 1997 University of Chicago Press.
To explain how I came to change my opinion about water fluoridation, I must go back to when I was an ardent advocate of the procedure. I now realize that I had learned, in my training in dentistry, only one side of the scientific controversy over fluoridation. I had been taught, and believed, that there was really no scientific case against fluoridation, and that only misinformed lay people and a few crackpot professionals were foolish enough to oppose it. I recall how, after I had been elected to local government in Auckland (New Zealand’s largest city, where I practised dentistry for many years and where I eventually became the Principal Dental Officer) I had fiercely — and, I now regret, rather arrogantly — poured scorn on another Council member (a lay person who had heard and accepted the case against fluoridation) and persuaded the Mayor and majority of my fellow councillors to agree to fluoridation of our water supply. continue reading…..
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