We are writing as a group of concerned homeopaths in response to your article on fluoride in The Argus (April 17).

We would like to take issue with the stated opinion of the British Fluoridation Society when it compared the use of diluted fluoride in the water supply with the use of diluted homeopathic remedies.

Firstly, homeopathic remedies are not simply "extreme dilutions of poisons".

The dilutions used when administering a homeopathic remedy are both infinitely varied and very precise, different levels of dilution having different medicinal effects and therefore used for different medical reasons.

The manufacture of a homeopathic remedy is also more than just simple dilution of a substance, as each stage of dilution involves an energy process known as "succussion".

Secondly, a diluted poison does not necessarily mean a safe poison.

Homeopathy clearly demonstrates how the potential healing (or damaging) properties of a medicinal substance can be used in two ways not just by the ingestion of significant amounts, as for example, with traditional painkillers, but also by frequent repetition of minute amounts.

However, in homeopathy, once the desired effect is produced, the remedy is discontinued.

No homeopath would ever advise multiple daily doses of the same remedy for months or years on end, as would occur to each of us if fluoride was added to our water.

On the contrary, such indiscriminate, long-term use of a substance would most probably lead to considerable health problems.

Adding fluoride to our water would therefore, in our opinion, cause more health problems than it seeks to cure and your article rightly listed the serious health risks associated with fluoride.

The issues involved in fluoridation are hotly debated and contested by both sides in the argument.

However, it is interesting to note Switzerland has now removed fluoride from its drinking water after many years because there has been no discernible benefit to the population.

And in Ireland, for example, 50 per cent of children living in fluoridated areas suffer from dental fluorosis an unsightly mottling of the teeth which occurs as teeth absorb fluoride.

This is one of the outward signs of fluoride poisoning there will also be internal damage occurring to bones, organs and metabolic processes which we will not see until it is too late.

Finally, we believe fluoridation of water supplies is effectively mass medication of the population and as such violates our human right to refuse any medication unless we consider it to be needed, to have been appropriately chosen for each individual and to be given with our full, informed consent.

There are other delivery methods which can be targeted specifically at children without involving the whole population in a mass medical experiment.

-Liz Brynin MARH MSECH,, Veronica Walton LCH MARH, Kate Diamantopoulo RGN MCH RSHom AROH, Jane Prisley RGN LCPH MARH, Jeannette Adair RShom, Janet Miles SDSH MARH, The Homoeopathic House, Hove