Irish Medical
News, 8 July, 2000. (Get a friend with an Irish accent to
read it to you!
Health
Research Board ‘handouts’
Andrew
Rynne
In a very interesting
letter to this paper (IMN, 24/6/02) Dr Ruth Barrington, Chief Executive
of our Health Research Board (HRB) gives out to me and tells me
not to be calling their research grants “handouts”. They
are no such thing, she says.
As a clear example
of just how research grants are not handouts, we are then cited
the case of Prof Denis O’Mullane of University College Cork,
where he recently received e500,000 smackeroos by way of a grant
from the HRB. But the letter tells us that the good Professor didn’t
get it that easily. Oh no, there was genuine competition here, really
up against it, the poor man was. Would you believe that before Prof
O’Mullane walked away with his cool e0.5 million, he had to
beat off no fewer that 103 other contenders for the big prize.
But it is even
tougher than that to get a HRB grant. The letter tells us that:
“For a prestigious research programme award from the HRB, each
application was subjected to rigorous, international peer review
by a panel of international experts”.
Oh be Janey,
there you are now, and me thinking that these kind of things were
easy. I must confess that I have no idea what any of that is supposed
to mean, peer review and so on, but it sounds terribly painful,
embarrassing even.
So, what was
it, you might well wonder, that caused the UCC application to float
to the top of all this tough competition and, along with 11 others,
win the great prize, the ever-so-hard-to-get HRB grant.
You’d imagine
now, wouldn’t you, what with all that peer review stuff and
international panels and so on, that to get through all of that
you’d want to be talking about something pretty compelling:
a new and vital proposal, a dynamic, exciting research programme
to seize the imagination and sway international panels and peers
alike. Not at all. Would you hold on there now for a minute and
take a grip.
All Prof O’Mullane
had to do was to submit a proposal for the study of the effects
that fluoridating their drinking water had on the Irish peasantry
over a 50-year period, circa the 1950s to date. And that was it;
bang; you win the watch. Now you’re sucking diesel, says the
international panel and reviewing peers. Well, you’re sucking
fluoridated water anyway, which is much the same thing.
Did it matter
at all that there are already reports of about 40,000 similar studies
on this subject published in the peer review literature? Not at
all; one more is exactly what we need. Or did it matter that the
fluoride-quaffing citizens of this State had already forked out
over £250,000 on a Forum on Fluoridation in which the recipient
of this grant was involved in and whose report is now almost a year
overdue? Not at all.
Give the man
another half-a-million euros worth of taxpayers’ money and
let him off there. We’ll get to the bottom of this old fluoridation
thing yet, by God we will. Three million volunteers drinking the
stuff three times a day for 50 years; I mean to say is this good
or bad? The answer must be there somewhere. It is only a matter
of finding it. And listen. There is none of your old Irish begrudgery
here, you know. Not at all; the best of good luck to Prof Denis
O’Mullane and to the Chief Executive of the Health Research
Board, Dr Ruth Barrington. And here’s to them all – the
international panel, and to each and every one of the reviewing
peers.
Up Cork and
the sky above it, that’s what I say. If you can’t beat
them, join them. I am going to submit a few research proposals of
my own to our HRB next year and who knows, maybe a lowly GP from
Clane could be next to walk away with a cool half-a-million euro
handout. Sorry, half-a-million euro research grant.
Why do I keep
making that mistake? Let’s see now. Obviously, they like quaint
and old-fashioned technologies like fluoridated water. Here’s
a protocol summary for them. A single-blinded, randomised double
cross-over clinical trial into the efficacy of large doses of syrup
of figs in the management of infantile chronic constipation using
16 volunteers. That should be all right. Syrup of figs was all the
rage about the same time as fluoridated water. But you need more
than one. When you are submitting for a HRB prestigious research
grant you need to throw in several proposals. You know what sticklers
these international panels of peers can be. How about: a randomised
double-blinded single crossover study into the efficiency and safety
of large doses of orally-ingested ether for the expulsion of flatus.
I read in an
old book that the expulsion of flatus was a most unfortunate side-effect
in those given straight ether for the relief of toothache. I am
only trying to turn misfortune into a virtue.
Or what about
a clinical trial into the efficacy of deeply inhaled asbestos dust
in the management of chronic snoring? Ah listen, leave me alone
will you. There is money to be made here. When did you say was the
closing date for Health Research Board applications?
http://www.irishmedicalnews.ie/articles.asp?Category=Pview&ArticleID=5543
*********************************************************
The following
letter was published in Irish Medical News, 8 July, 2000 -
(same date as Dr Rynne's piece appeared.).
Dear Editor,
Milking the
grant system.
How can Dr Ruth
Barrington, Chief Executive, Health Research Board, possibly justify
Professor O'Mullane's 'success' in snatching E500,000 for a five
year period of research into water fluoridation, when a body of
more than 40,000 published papers on the effects of fluorides on
health and the environment already exists?
As a good example
of what she (and we) can expect, consider the absurd conclusion
of his work with Ketley, Cochran, Lennon and Worthington (Urinary
fluoride excretion of young children exposed to different fluoride
regimes, Community Dent Health 2002 Mar;19(1):12-7) on the subject
of fluoridated school milk, which reads "The daily fluoride
excretion in these children, corrected for age and fluoride ingested
from toothpaste, appeared to indicate that the fluoride intake in
the children drinking fluoridated school milk was SOMEWHERE BETWEEN
those living in an optimally fluoridated area and those in a low
fluoride area." Hardly a scientific conclusion!
But wait - compare
it with the earlier, but equally nebulous conclusion, by two of
his co-authors, Lennon and Ketley, published in a different publication,
(Urinary fluoride excretion in children drinking fluoridated school
milk,Int J Paediatr Dent 2000 Dec;10(4):260-70), "the children's
mean 24 h fluoride excretion was SOMEWHERE BETWEEN that reported
in low fluoride conditions and that reported in optimally fluoridated
areas. The fractional urinary fluoride excretion was found to be
in agreement with the findings of other workers."
Is this the
calibre of work the taxpayers are expected to swallow for their
money?
Has Dr Barrington
actually read any of these 'studies' or is she simply content to
support the distribution of largesse to amass more dubious 'research'
in an effort to shore up the sacred cow of fluoridation?
Think on this:
How can the Irish (or any) Government possibly admit that fluoridation
is harmful when, to do so, would drown them in lawsuits costing
untold millions of Euros, Pounds, Dollars and Piastres after fifty-odd
years of balderdash about tooth decay? Maybe they believe that doling
out 'research grants' to build a 'weight of evidence' (in tonnes
of paper), will see off the enemy!
Governments
should recognise - and respect - the rights of people and stop the
practice now, before someone opens the floodgates. And the fluoride
promoters should recognise - and respect - the rights of individuals
to refuse their self-serving quackery.
Yours faithfully,
Jane Jones,
Campaign Director,
National Pure Water Association,
12 Dennington Lane,
Wakefield WF4 3ET, UK.
www.npwa.freeserve.co.uk/mccormick_letter.html
