Ireland is being forced to copy undemocratic UK decision Dr Clare Craig On 13 July 2026, the Irish Minister for Public Health, Jennifer Murnane O’Connor, launched a public consultation on the mandatory fortification of non-wholemeal flour with folic acid. It closes on 5 October. The stated aim is to reduce neural tube defects, a group […]
Author: Clare Craig
Chapatti flour and the highest-risk women
The most at risk women eat flour that has been exempted from fortification Dr Clare Craig Key points Neural tube defect risk is highest among women of Indian and Bangladeshi origin. They are also the least likely to take a folic acid supplement before pregnancy. Despite their higher risk these groups only account for about […]
Dosage is key to efficacy, so why is it ignored for safety?
Smaller doses act differently to larger ones Dr Clare Craig Key points • The same molecule at different doses can produce different effects and sometimes opposite ones. • Regulators expect different efficacy by dose including non-linear dose responses • Safety assessment is built around finding the dose at which harm begins as the dose rises. […]
The children who pay the price
Children are the ones most likely to overdose on folic acid Dr Clare Craig Key points The safe upper limit for a child aged one to three is 200 micrograms of folic acid a day. For an adult it is 1,000. The limit is precautionary because no safety trials have ever been done. At the […]
Government reimagines dead babies as a benefit of folic acid exposure
When a claim becomes unfalsifiable it is no longer scientific Dr Clare Craig On 10 July 2026 Esther McVey asked the Department of Health and Social Care what assessment it had made of a 1997 Lancet paper by Ernest Hook and Andrew Czeizel. They tried to highlight the troubling possibility that the claimed reduction in […]
Folic acid and Cancer: the safety studies do not show what is claimed
Folic Acid is a building block for DNA and drives cell division. Will the proposed fortification of bread inadvertently increase cancer risks?
Reality behind the claim folic acid could “save 200 babies”
Modelling and false assumptions have led to an inflated number Dr Clare Craig Key points The government said fortification would “help avoid around 200” neural tube defects a year and that “hundreds more babies will be born healthy”. Of the “200”, only 31 are live births, about 28 would be children living with disability and […]
The NHS’s folic acid rewrite
What an FOI revealed Dr Clare Craig The NHS has altered its online advice as to who must avoid folic acid right before it is mandated in our staple foods. Internal records show a warning to people on dialysis was cut because staff found it “confusing”. A warning that people with heart stents must avoid […]
Some people should avoid folic acid but how?
Government response to folic acid petition Dr Clare Craig There have been two parliamentary petitions regarding folic acid. Both have received a response. The NHS advises many people to avoid folic acid. The government claims people can avoid it if they need to. That claim is provably untrue and the adverse effects of medicating the […]
Why can’t Public Health U-turn?
When experts recommended removal of fortifications from flour – nothing happened Dr Clare Craig The last time public health in the UK moved to keep flour pure was 1875. Ever since, there has been a push to add more and more to it. A serving scientist employed by Unilever was handed the chair of a […]
Prostate cancer: Why Jeremy Clarkson was well meaning but wrong
Don’t readily gamble when the consequence is impotence and incontinence Dr Clare Craig Introduction In June 2026, Jeremy Clarkson announced that he was in remission from prostate cancer and called himself the luckiest man alive. An aggressive tumour had been caught early the previous year, and a follow-up PSA test had come back clear. He […]
Vaccines are not a panacea
The shingles vaccine has not cured dementia Dr Clare Craig Vaccines are not a panacea The shingles vaccine has not cured dementia Over the past month, four studies have been read as showing that the shingles vaccine prevents, or even reverses, dementia. A national newspaper has turned that reading into advice. The advice is to […]
The Forgotten Medicine for ‘Russian Influenza’
Today historians debate whether Russian influenza (1889-1891) was caused by influenza virus or coronavirus. That is the wrong question. The more important question is what contemporary observers were saying about the medicines.
Supporting debate on folic acid in flour
Can you help?
1. Do you know any celebrities that might use their platform to help us gain signatories
2. Can you help us achieve attention from politicians or journalists?
3. Can you distribute flyers or put up a poster (with permission)?
What you need to know about Folic Acid Part Three: Folic Acid Is Not Folate
Vitamin B9 is benign, folic acid is not Dr Clare Craig In the previous article I explained how the body only needs 100 micrograms of folate to replace daily losses. The claimed recommended daily allowance of 400 micrograms a day only came about once industry was involved in setting the allowance. This higher level is […]
What you need to know about Folic Acid Part Two: How 100 Micrograms Became 400
The dose that was doubled, and then doubled again Dr Clare Craig Ask almost any doctor how much folate an adult needs to eat and the answer will be four hundred micrograms per day. That figure is printed on supplement bottles, prenatal tablets, cereal boxes and government leaflets the world over, and it is repeated […]
What you need to know about Folic Acid Part One: The Deficiency That Wasn’t
No one needs folic acid fortification Dr Clare Craig In 1875, Parliament made it a criminal offence to adulterate flour. The Sale of Food and Drugs Act of that year was written in answer to a scandal that had been building for decades. Bakers bulked out their flour with alum, chalk and plaster of Paris, […]
Human to human hantavirus
The evidence does not match the alarm Dr Clare Craig When severe pneumonia aboard the MV Hondius was attributed to hantavirus this month, the reporting moved quickly from a handful of sick passengers to the claim that a rodent-borne virus had begun spreading efficiently from person to person. There were comparisons with the first weeks […]
