FLUORIDE 32 (1)  1999, p 1	International Society for Fluoride Research	Table of Contents

TRAGIC LOSS OF OUR LATE EDITOR
A MAN DEDICATED TO THE TRUTH

While preparing this long-overdue issue of Fluoride for publication, we learned, to our great sorrow, that our much-admired editor for the last eight years, Dr John Colquhoun, passed away on March 23 after gradually losing his battle against complications of intestinal cancer.

From the time he first wrote to me in the early 1980s, when he was Auckland's principal Dental Health Officer, I sensed that Dr Colquhoun was no ordinary public health official. He, unlike others in his position, had begun to acknowledge the uncomfortable fact that water fluoridation, which he had previously vigorously promoted, was actually showing little evidence of reducing tooth decay, especially in large-scale surveys. He soon confirmed these findings with his own research, and he also found that unsightly dental fluorosis had increased far more with fluoridation than expected.

He challenged the New Zealand Department of Health to recognize this new evidence and stop fluoridation. Instead, he was ordered to cease open opposition or resign from office. But knowing the undeniable truth of what he and others had found, Dr Colquhoun followed his conscience and took early retirement at considerable financial loss rather than continue to deceive the public, whose best interests he had sworn to serve.

During the next few years, Dr Colquhoun ably continued his research and also earned a Ph.D. in 1987 at age 63 from the University of Auckland on the history and promotion of fluoridation in New Zealand. In 1991 he generously took on the demanding but unsalaried job of editing and publishing this Journal. So well did he perform this task that Fluoride quickly grew in quality and renown as he broadened and strengthened its scope and contents.

Over the years I saw what a great honor and privilege it was to work closely with Dr Colquhoun in helping him edit and publish Fluoride. As a person who saw all too clearly how vitally important it is to follow the path of truth, even when others would not, Dr Colquhoun was a model of honesty and fairness in dealing with the many challenges confronting him as an editor. For all this and much else, we owe him more than we can ever repay.

Albert W. Burgstahler
Editor, Fluoride

APOLOGY TO OUR READERS

Your new editor offers his sincere apologies and requests your forgiveness for this unfortunate delay in publishing the first issue of Fluoride for 1999. After our Society's conference last August, he went on extended travel in the Far East, and after his return he became too ill to work. Making new typesetting arrangements has also involved additional unexpected difficulties which, fortunately, are now fairly well resolved. Regular publication will now resume.

FLUORIDE 32 (1)  1999, p. 1	International Society for Fluoride Research
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