The European Society of National Associations for Dental Patients

This letter was sent to the different national organizations of dental patients of Europe in March of 1997:

We would like to invite your organization to become a member of the European Society of National Associations for Dental Patients (ESNADP). We would also request that you appoint a representative to participate in the working committee.

No membership fee will be charged for the first year. Our activities will be financed by the Elementis Vitae Foundation, Sweden.
The background for the formation of the ESNADP is the fact that national organizations for dental patients have been routinely denied insight into relevant decision making processes in the EU Commission and have thereby been denied any influence on important issues. We have been told that a European organization would be given a roll but no such organization was to be found. The dental manufacturing interests are currently well represented in the EU Dental Amalgam Expert Group, for example. But the dental patients' organizations of Denmark, Norway and Sweden have, in spite of repeated requests, been excluded from the work of this group and been denied "reference group" status.

The EU laws concerning medical-technical products undeniably accommodate the interests of the corporations manufacturing dental products at the expense of dentists and patients, all of whom are exposed to poorly tested and hazardous products and materials. The various national inspection and regulatory agencies have shown a consistent pattern of nonchalance and disregard of new research findings. One example of this attitude is Danish legislation which specifically permits the use of mercury based amalgam in retrograde root canal fillings. Another instance is the American Dental Association which claims in its directives to dentists that patients who experience an recovery from serious illness after a removal of mercury fillings do not do so due to the removal of mercury but due to other, unknown causal factors. Such examples could be enumerated at great length and clear demonstrate the need for a forceful, effective and vocal international dental patients' advocacy.

The goal of the ESNADP is to constitute just such an effective coalition of European dental patient organizations. We intend to represent the interests of dental patients before the EU Commission, in the European Parliament, within the WHO and the EDI and to support them in their contacts with the various national bureaucracies.

The European Society of National Associations for Dental Patients currently has the following provisional executive committee:

Sten-Olof Grönqvist, Department of Biomedical Radiation Science, Uppsala University, Sweden
Ulf Lindh, Ph.D., Associate professor, Director of the Centre for Metal Biology in Uppsala, Sweden
Björn Carlmark, Civil Engineer, Scandlab, Sollentuna, Sweden

Sincerely yours,
Sten-Olof Grönqvist
Chairman

Postal adress	Visiting address	Send e-mail to Sten-Olofs´ fax!
Box 7013	Apeltunet 4	Phone +46 8 765 53 10
S-191 07 Sollentuna	S-181 48 Lidingö	Fax +46 8 765 53 10

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