Tag: fluoride

Interesting Information: “Water Fluoridation Lowers IQ: Medication Without Consent”

Interesting Information:  July 10, 2014

“Water Fluoridation Lowers IQ:  Medication Without Consent”

 

Here’s a quote from this little sidebar article in the July/August 2014 issue of Well Being Journal (10, 12):

At present, 37 out of 43 studies, conducted in China, India, Iran, and Mexico, show water fluoridation lowers IQ in children.  Even the lowest level of fluoride assessed in these studies–1.8 part per million–lowered IQ.

So why is fluoride still being added to our water???

I’ve written at least three Mainely Tipping Points Essays on the high points of the issues involved in water fluoridation–using information from scientists with the credentials to evaluate this issue.  You can click on the Mainely Tipping Points Essays OR use the search button on the right side bar.

Interesting Information: Best Known Peer-Reviewed Medical Journal–THE LANCET–Officially Classifies Fluoride As A Neurotoxin

Interesting Information:  March 25, 2014

Best Known Peer-Reviewed Medical–THE LANCET—

Officially Classifies Fluoride As A Neurotoxin

 

Well, this story floated into my email this morning from Health Freedom Alliance.

Thank heavens, I thought.  Hope has emerged again.

Here’s the url:

Health Freedom Alliance » Success! Best Known Peer-Reviewed Medical Journal Officially Classifies Fluoride As A Neurotoxin.

And here’s the url from The Lancet itself:  http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(13)70278-3/abstract

 

Fluoride harms developing brains–among many other damages that it does.  There is plenty of science now showing that one to one cause and effect.

Here’s a quote from The Lancet abstract, which Health Freedom Alliance reproduced–and for heaven’s sake, don’t miss the reference to the  neurotoxicity of methyl mercury, which is “common in vaccines”:

“Neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia and other cognitive impairments, affect millions of children worldwide, and some diagnoses seem to be increasing in frequency. Industrial chemicals that injure the developing brain are among the known causes for this rise in prevalence. In 2006, we did a systematic review and identified five industrial chemicals as developmental neurotoxicants: lead, methyl mercury (common in vaccines), polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic and toluene. Since 2006, epidemiological studies have documented six additional developmental neurotoxicants – manganese, fluoride, chlorpyrifos, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, tetrachloroethylene, and the polybrominated dihenyl ethers. We postulate that even more neurotoxicants remain undiscovered. To control the pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity, we propose a global prevention strategy. Untested chemicals should not be presumed to be safe to brain development, and chemicals in existing use and all new chemicals must therefore be tested for developmental neurotoxicity. To coordinate these efforts and to accelerate translation of science into prevention, we propose the urgent formation of a new international clearinghouse”(1)

Here’s another quote from the Health Freedom Alliance posting:

“In point of fact, fluoride causes more human cancer deaths than any other chemical. When you have power you don’t have to tell the truth. That’s a rule that’s been working in this world for generations. There are a great many people who don’t tell the truth when they are in power in administrative positions. Fluoride amounts to public murder on a grand scale. It is some of the most conclusive scientific and biological evidence that I have come across in my 50 years in the field of cancer research.” (2)  – Dr. Dean Burk, Biochemist, Founder of Biotin, and Former Chief Chemist at the National Cancer Institute of Health.

 

I put three essays about the danger of putting fluoride into our water system on the blog a few years back–Mainely Tipping Points Essays, 34 to 36–using the text THE CASE AGAINST FLUORIDE:  HOW HAZARDOUS WASTE ENDED UP IN OUR DRINKING WATER AND THE BAD SCIENCE AND POWERFUL POLITICS THAT KEEP IT THERE (2010), Paul Connett, PhD, James Beck, MD, PhD, and H.S. Micklem, DPhil,   In the essays, I cite the formidable credentials of these three authors–all of whom are now senior scientists.

Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote regarding who is tasked with responsibility for the safety of fluoride in our water:

 

Astonishingly, Connett et al report that no federal agency accepts responsibility for the safety of fluoridation.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved fluoride for ingestion and rates fluoride as an “unapproved drug”—which is why it can mandate the toothpaste warning.  Nor has the FDA subjected fluoride to rigorous randomized clinical trials for either its effectiveness or its long-term safety (270).

At the Center for Disease Control (CDC), only the Oral Health Division (OHD) is involved with fluoridation, and the OHD is staffed largely by dental personnel.  In 2008, Connett et al note, not one of the 29 staff members had scientific degrees qualifying them to assess the toxicity of fluoride, yet this division aggressively promotes fluoridation throughout the United States (23-24).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an indirect role in that it regulates safe standards for all “contaminants” in drinking water.  In 2002, as it is legally required to do every 10 years, the EPA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to review the current 4 ppm (parts per million) Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) standard.  The NRC appointed a 12-member panel that, the authors state, was “the most balanced ever appointed in the United States to do any kind of review on fluoride” 137).  This panel issued its 507-page report in March 2006, in which it declared that the seemingly low-level 4 ppm maximum standard was not protective of health (25).

The ADA [American Dental Association] declared the NRC report irrelevant to water fluoridation on the day it was released—claiming erroneously that the panel only reviewed water fluoridation of 4 ppm.  The panel, in fact, “examined several studies that found adverse effects at levels less than 2 ppm” (138).

The CDC followed six days later with the same conclusion.  To date, write the authors, the CDC has produced “no comprehensive analysis to support its claim.”  And “it’s hard to believe that in six days Oral Health Division personnel could have read and digested the report, let alone its over 1,100 references” (140).

Ironically, in 1999, the CDC “finally conceded what many dental researchers had been reporting over the previous two decades:  Fluoride’s predominant mechanism of action was topical, not systemic.  In other words, if fluoride works at all, it does so via direct exposure to the outside of the tooth and not from inside the body” (13).  So, write Connett et al, to continue “the practice of forcing people to ingest fluoride has become even more absurd (269-270).

BUT, even the ADA, in fine print on its web site, warns against feeding baby with formula mixed with tap water because the fluoride levels are too high for infants.

YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE DOSE OF THIS TOXIC MATERIAL WHEN YOU PUT IT IN THE WATER–and that affects infants, the elderly, the infirm, and anyone who drinks a lot of water.

What is particularly GALLING to me is that putting fluoride into our water has always been a POLITICAL DECISION–not a scientific one–which is totally demonstrated by Connett et al in their book.

What is doubly particularly GALLING is that the most recent scientific review, as stated above, commissioned by the EPA and carried out by the National Research Council, raised at least a dozen red flags about the efficacy of fluoride at all and the use of fluoride in the water.  Yet our public health officials, who get their information from the big health organizations–most of whom have gotten themselves way out on a shaky legal limb with regard to fluoride–have clearly NOT READ for themselves recent information on fluoride, to include the recent NRC study.

So there’s a “kool aid” loop in place here that is not taking into account any current science.  So, here’s what gets sent home to parents via the school system:

IMG_0197

(Thanks niece Nancy Howser, herself the mother of two young boys, one of whom has already suffered a broken leg bone.)

AND, when a local jurisdiction gets a referendum on fluoride, the local public health officials, including MDs and dentists, come out of the woodwork supporting fluoride and throwing around their “health” credentials.  This behavior happened in Damariscotta a few years back–and it was clear that not one of these folks had read the most recent EPS/NRC report.  And we all must remember that doctors and dentists are PRACTITIONERS, not scientists, and public health officials know only what they have been taught and that if they deviate from what they have been taught, they can lose their jobs.

So, cheers to The Lancet!

Mainely Tipping Points 48: Is Dr. Russell Blaylock a Quack?

Mainely Tipping Points 48:  July 2, 2013 

 

Is Dr. Russell Blaylock a Quack?

 

 

Wikipedia says Dr. Blaylock is a quack because he does not follow “science based medicine.”

On the basis of a Wiki page, which is anonymously written, a Facebook page on my news feed discussing Dr. Blaylock was removed by a FB friend yesterday without allowing the benign discussion taking place to go forward to its conclusion—which amounts to silencing and censorship, which means a refusal to dig deeper into the issue at hand to see what science actually says, which means a policing of the status quo, which means fear is present.

Science based medicine…

Well, that’s something I’ve been researching and writing about for the past five years or so.  And, living, since my husband fell into the hands of “science-based” medicine practices during a time when the oversight boards for prostate cancer were saying that doing nothing was the best course to take since the treatments did not affect the outcome.  I will go to my grave believing that the treatments did affect the outcome in that they hastened John’s death.  How could they not since they assaulted his body in countless ways.  It never had a chance.

I am sympathetic with our local doctors, most of whom are caring people who wanted to make a difference for John.  The problem is that their tool box did not contain what John needed, so they just recommended the tools they had, regardless of the shift in the science.  These doctors built their careers on these tools—such a shift threatened their ability to support themselves.  That’s a grave place to be in.   

What do we know about Dr. Russell Blaylock?

His own web site details his medical credentials (http://www.russellblaylockmd.com/). I do not doubt them since they would have long since been debunked if he were not telling the truth.  You can go there for the whole list of his medical credentials.

The pertinent information is that Dr. Blaylock is a board certified neurosurgeon who practiced for 25 years before he retired.  He worked with the eminent neurosurgeon Dr. Ludwig Kempe.  Together they developed the transcallosal removal of intraventricular tumors, which he claims is still used today, and the ventriculolymphatic shunt in treatment of hydrocephalus.  Their personal relationship continues to this day.

A turning point for Dr. Blaylock came when he started using “high-intensity nutritional supplementation in craniocerebral trauma patients” which “met with great success.”  Eventually, Blaylock retired in order to spend more time studying and researching nutrition and healing with nutrition. 

In that regard Blaylock is part of the current and growing movement which seeks to understand the connections between foods and human health.  Some stars in this arena are Dr. Mary Enig (fats), Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride (GAPS), Dr. Joseph Mercola (amazing general blog), Dr. Kaayla T. Daniels (soy), Dr. William Davis (WHEAT BELLY), Dr. Chris Masterjohn (vitamins A, D, and K), Michael Pollen, Sally Fallon Morell, all the scientists now working on the integrity of the gut and gut health and its connections to behavior, and so forth.  Blaylock’s work in this arena led to The Weston A. Price Foundation giving him their Integrity in Science Award in 2004.

Blaylock is a member of the International and American Associations of Clinical Nutritionists, the American College of Nutrition, the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, and many other health-related organizations.  (Pottenger did the famous cat studies involving the generational effects of malnutrition.)     

Dr. Blaylock is on the editorial staffs of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and of the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association.  He is on the board of Fluoride.  He is, or was if he’s retired from there, a visiting professor in the department of biological sciences at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi—a conservative Christian college for those of you who think you are dealing with a liberal.

His web site lists his publications and his three books—the first being EXCITOTOXINS:  THE TASTE THAT KILLS.  (Aspartame is an excitotoxin.)  It makes sense to me that Blaylock’s interest in the impact of excitotoxins on the brain lines up with the fact that he was a practicing neurosurgeon.

Is this a “star” resume?

I do not know, medically speaking.  It is the resume of a working neurosurgeon of twenty-five years who got interested in the relationship of healing and food nutrition and acted on it.  It is the resume of someone who went on to study nutrition, to put himself in the nutritional arena with his associations, and to write about nutrition.

So, where does he begin to fall afoul of the Wiki author of his page?  The following list lies at the juncture of where many folks are asking “where’s the science?”—vaccines, aspartame, mercury in dental amalgams, fluoride, and aluminum cookware.

Which takes us back to “science-based” medicine…

Vaccines:  Would it surprise you to know that there have been NO LONG TERM gold-standard studies on the efficacy of vaccines?  That renders all we “know” about vaccines in the correlation camp.  There is not solid cause and effect scientific data in this country.  None.  Period.   

Would it surprise you to know that many scientists are now thinking that smallpox was tamed by sanitation and that polio may have been caused by DDT?

Would it surprise you to know that there is a government organization that pays off parents of children who have been harmed by vaccines?  Or that you can’t sue a vaccine maker if you or your child is harmed?

Recently, two young women died after a Gardasil vaccine.  Researchers examined their brain tissues and discovered that the vaccine had breached the blood-brain barrier, which in turn triggered the fatal autoimmune response that killed the girls—which vaccines are not supposed to do (Pharmaceut Reg Affairs 2012, S12:001).  What if other vaccines are making this leap? Could that account for the undeniable vaccine damage in children?  Leslie Mannookian’s documentary THE GREATER GOOD addresses the lack of science in the vaccine debates.  It is being shown all over the country in many venues, including to medical personnel.  I, for one, am going to see this film, which I think is available online, as soon as possible.

Fluoride:  I wrote three essays on this blog (Tipping Points Essays 34-36) that attempted to summarize the book THE CASE AGAINST FLUORIDE—written by three senior, well-established scientists with impeccable biographies in chemistry, toxicology, medical biophysics, and biological sciences.  There never was any science supporting putting fluoride in the water.  The most recent mandated government-sponsored assessment raised dozens of red flags about fluoride.  It was the first panel that contained nonbiased scientists.  The dose isn’t controllable, and even the American Dental Association warns not to feed infants formula made with fluoridated tap water.  Studies from all over the world show that fluoride is dangerous:  it harms bones and affects IQ in developing infants.  Countries that do not fluoridate do not have worse cavity rates than the U.S. does.  The stronger correlation with healthy teeth is good diet.

Mercury amalgams:  The mercury in your fillings off-gasses for the rest of your life and can make you sick.  Mercury is very, very toxic.  Europe is banning mercury fillings.  In our country dentists are quietly switching to non-mercury fillings.  I and many of my family members have had old mercury fillings removed.  (Be careful doing that and find a dentist who knows the danger of what s/he is doing.)

Aspartame:  Aspartame has, famously, never undergone third-party independent and objective assessment.  Industry supplies the “proof” of safety and the government (with staff assessment by actual scientists saying no about aspartame) allowed its use.  That’s a nasty, nasty story—and I covered it in Tipping Points Essay No. 19 on this blog.  The approval was a political decision, not a scientific one.  If you go to www.snopes to check on claims that aspartame is dangerous, you will see that the story is “false” and you will see a letter written by a government staffer claiming it was tested.  Don’t you believe that because the studies were all industry produced.  That’s the kind of corrupt system our government is running now, and we have got to get the foxes out of the regulatory henhouses and put in some laws with teeth if we want our government to actually protect us. 

Aluminum cookware:  Aluminum is a toxic metal.  If you cook with it or use a lot of aluminum foil, it will reside in your body.  Our bodies have enough environmental burdens without having to cope with aluminum toxicity.  I don’t use it any more—either cookware or foil.  Parchment paper works just as well in most cases. 

So, you decide about Dr. Blaylock. 

He’s not a saint.  He’s got quirks—like most of us he is a complex figure, not a cartoon all bad/all good character.

He’s asking “where’s the science” behind a number of mainstream medical practices and recommendations that he (and I, after researching them) believe are quite dangerous.  He’s looking for ways to effect healing by giving the body the healthy nutrient dense food it requires.

The response from the mainstream—as it almost always is—is to demonize him as a quack.  Devra Davis, a premier scientist, described this industry-driven process brilliantly in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER.  And make no mistake about it, too much of science and medicine today is industry driven, with little relationship to actual science and a huge relationship to profit making. 

With demonization, Blaylock joins any number of folks who have said “where’s the science” and been attacked and smeared in an attempt to erase what he’s asking as it falls into the realm of “an inconvenient truth.”  Dr. Mary Enig, for instance, tried to tell us about the danger of trans fats and about the healthy nature of high-quality saturated fats.  She lost all her research money and was demonized and not published for years.  But, she was right all along.  

Follow the money.  Vaccines, aspartame, and fluoride are big, big money.  Under our economic system, it is entirely logical that industry would fight to continue making that money and that it enslaves us all to its purpose, doctors included.    

Demonization is how a system of cultural power maintains the status quo.  But that status quo is not ultimately healthy for you. Today, one in two people will get cancer.  That’s 50 percent.  That’s a plague.  So, think twice, investigate, learn how to find and read reputable sources, and choose not to participate in practices that will make you sick. 

Ultimately, this issue isn’t about Blaylock personally.  It’s about “where’s the science?”  It’s about your health.   

Interesting Information: Portland, Oregan, Citizens Reject Fluoride

Interesting Information:  May 23, 2013

Portland, Oregon, Citizens Reject Fluoride

For the FOURTH time since 1956 Portland, Oregon, citizens have rejected adding fluoride to their water supply.  This time, by a 60-40 percent margin.  And, despite “public health experts” support of the proposal to add fluoride to the water.

Who are these “public experts”?  Are they local doctors?  Are they public health officials?

One thing these “experts” are NOT is people who have read the most recent government report assessing the use of fluoride in the water.  That report raises all kinds of warning flags about putting fluoride in the public water systems.  And they are NOT people who are aware that even the American Dental Association is telling people not to use fluoridated public water in baby formula because the dose is much to great for infants.  There isn’t a geriatric association to warn senior citizens with health issues not to drink fluoridated public water as the dose is likely too great for them.

Let’s step back a moment and remember that “public health experts” who are MDs and those trained as public health officials are NOT scientists.  MDs and dentists are PRACTITIONERS, not scientists.  They are not trained to vet the array of scientific studies about fluoride (or lots of other thorny health issues, like, for instance, vaccines or what to eat).  They know only what they have been taught or have been told.  Give them wrong information, and they are, as much as you and I, caught in a bad information loop that is not based on any reputable science.  And like most people who are working long hours, they do not have time to do extensive, deep research anyway.

Let’s also note that it is absolutely irresponsible for these “public health experts” people to publicly support something like putting fluoride into the water–a dangerous chemical whose dosage cannot be controlled–without first doing RECENT research, which would include AT LEAST looking at the most recent government report, which was done by a panel with the kinds of credentials that ensure that panel members know how to vet the evidence.

SCIENTISTS are, thus, telling us that fluoride in the water is dangerous and that it does not prevent cavities.  The correlation between diet and cavities is stronger than the correlation between fluoride and cavity prevention.  Remember, anyway, that correlation is NOT CAUSATION.  Causation has to be proved, and with fluoride, it NEVER HAS BEEN PROVED.  If you have cavities, you are likely eating too much sugar or have other malabsorption issues going on.  (Remember that all those grains these same “public health experts” have us eating turn right into sugar in your body.)  And, I’m beginning to realize that cavities can actually be healed with a good diet of nutrient-dense foods.  How’s that for a surprise?

There is a good book about fluoride from three scientists who know how to vet the evidence.

Tim Boyd reviewed THE CASE AGAINST FLUORIDE:  HOW HAZARDOUS WASTE ENDED UP IN OUR DRINKING WATER AND THE BAD SCIENCE AND POWERFUL POLITICS THAT KEEP IT THERE, by Paul Connett, PhD, James Beck, MD, PhD, and H.S. Micklem, DPhil, in the spring 2011  WAPF journal, “Wise Traditions.”  Boyd noted the authors’ statement that the pea-sized dab of toothpaste contains as much fluoride as one glass of fluoridated water.  Boyd asked if adults call the Poison Control Center after drinking the recommended eight glasses of
water per day since they would have exceeded EPA’s daily safety dose for fluoride.

Don’t have time to read the book?  That’s ok, because I read it for you.  I have three essays on this blog summarizing the main evidence and the authors’ arguments:  Mainely Tipping Points Essays, Nos. 34, 35, 36.

Here’s the url for the NY Times article about the Portland vote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/oregon-fluoride-measure-in-portland-is-defeated.html?_r=1&

GO PORTLAND!!!

Mainely Tipping Points 34: Part 1: THE CASE AGAINST FLUORIDE

PART 1:  THE CASE AGAINST FLUORIDE

 

Like many of you, I suspect, until very recently I never questioned the safety of fluoridating the general water supply.  Fluoride makes teeth stronger, right?  The government and many health organizations–like the American Dental Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association–have scientific studies showing fluoridation is safe, right?  We’ve been fluoridating water for sixty years now with no ill effects, right?

My awareness of the toxicity and danger of fluoride and of the practice of fluoridation came slowly.  In 2006 when I started seriously researching food and health issues, information about fluoride toxicity emerged slowly.  There were some disturbing assessments in the Weston A. Price Foundation’s (WAPF) materials.  A local activist asked me to look deeper because she believed broken bones in children were much more common today due to fluoridation.  The fact that one of my grandchildren had already, at age two, fallen off the back of a sofa onto a thick carpet and broken his arm began to echo in my head.   I agreed fluoride was likely a problem, but I had other research and essays lined up to do first. 

In late June, I started getting ready for my family’s  annual summer visits by stockpiling food and household supplies.  Only, I couldn’t find a toothpaste for the children that didn’t contain fluoride.  Standing in the toothpaste aisles of various local stores, I remembered seeing recent email alerts concerning new information about fluoridation and brain damage in children. 

Because the FDA classifies fluoride as a drug, the FDA requires adult toothpastes to carry the following dire warning:  “Keep out of the reach of children under 6 years of age.  If you swallow more than used for brushing, get medical help or contact a poison control center right away.”  A dose is the size of a pea.      

Toothpastes, including children’s toothpastes, warn users not to swallow.  Have you tried, lately, telling children who are two, three, and four years old not to swallow when the color is luscious and the flavor delicious?

About this time, Tim Boyd reviewed THE CASE AGAINST FLUORIDE:  HOW HAZARDOUS WASTE ENDED UP IN OUR DRINKING WATER AND THE BAD SCIENCE AND POWERFUL POLITICS THAT KEEP IT THERE, by Paul Connett, PhD, James Beck, MD, PhD, and H.S. Micklem, DPhil, in the spring 2011 WAPF’S journal, WISE TRADITIONS (59).  Boyd noted the authors’ statement that the pea-sized dab of toothpaste contains as much fluoride as one glass of fluoridated water.  Boyd asked if adults call the Poison Control Center after drinking the recommended eight glasses of water per day since they would have exceeded EPA’s daily safety dose for fluoride.

Connett et al explain that controlling the concentration of fluoride is not the same thing as controlling the dose of fluoride, which includes not just drinking fluoridated water but the total dose from other sources, like toothpaste, tea, wine, pesticide residues on food, mechanically deboned meat, and food and beverages processed with fluorideated water (207).  With water, the “dose gets larger the more water is drunk; and the larger the dose, the more likely it will cause harm” since fluoride “is…highly toxic” (8-9).  Further, the kidneys only excrete 50 percent of the fluoride ingested; the rest moves mostly into calcifying tissues like the bones and the brain’s pineal gland and concentrates in the kidneys (123).    

Since scientific credentials are hugely important in the debate about fluoridation, do Connett et al have the kind of knowledge needed to assess the toxicity of fluoride? Connett’s PhD is in chemistry from Dartmouth.  He specializes in environmental chemistry and toxicology.  Until his retirement in 2006, he was a full professor at St. Lawrence University.  Additionally, for twenty-five years he’s worked in waste management.  He currently directs the Fluoride Action Network, whose website is a source of valuable information. 

Beck holds two doctorates:  Medicine from the Washington University School of Medicine and Biophysics from the University of California.  He is currently professor emeritus of medical biophysics at the University of Calgary, Canada. 

Micklem’s doctorate is from the University of Oxford.  He publishes mainly in the fields of stem cell biology and immunology.  He is an emeritus professor in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK, and has held visiting research fellowships at l’Institut Pasteur in Paris, Stanford University, and New York University School of Medicine.   

Connett et al’s fluoridation history follows the pattern I’ve seen in my research where a handful of determined men with cultural and political power successfully institute a problematic health practice.  Among the most effective men in 1950, when the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) endorsed fluoridation, were Gerald Cox, a researcher at the Mellon Institute whose research was funded by Alcoa aluminum, and Harold Hodge, the chief toxicologist for the U.S. Army’s Manhattan Project, who supervised experiments where uranium and plutonium were injected into unsuspecting hospital patients (80-81).

Connett et al show that in 1950 there were many scientists with grave concerns about putting an untested drug into the public water supply.  From the 1930s onward there was “a considerable amount of scientific literature, particularly from Europe and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture,  that fluoride posed problems to the bone and to the thyroid (83).  These studies were ignored or dismissed. 

The PHS made its momentous decision to validate fluoridation based on two flawed studies, an article by Cox and Hodge, and two ongoing studies whose results were unpublished, so had not yet been subject to peer review (82-83).  It was a rigged process.          

So, once again, industry benefit is part of this history.   At first, the metal industry benefitted, and, now, the phosphate fertilizer industry benefits.  But also there were then and are now many people who believed/believe that fluoridation would help children, especially poor children, have better dental health and who trusted that the organizations to which they looked for scientific truth had actually researched fluoride objectively. 

Astonishingly, Connett et al report that no federal agency accepts responsibility for the safety of fluoridation.   

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved fluoride for ingestion and rates fluoride as an “unapproved drug”—which is why it can mandate the toothpaste warning.  Nor has the FDA subjected fluoride to rigorous randomized clinical trials for either its effectiveness or its long-term safety (270). 

At the Center for Disease Control (CDC), only the Oral Health Division (OHD) is involved with fluoridation, and the OHD is staffed largely by dental personnel.  In 2008, Connett et al note, not one of the 29 staff members had scientific degrees qualifying them to assess the toxicity of fluoride, yet this division aggressively promotes fluoridation throughout the United States (23-24). 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an indirect role in that it regulates safe standards for all “contaminants” in drinking water.  In 2002, as it is legally required to do every 10 years, the EPA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to review the current 4 ppm (parts per million) Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) standard.  The NRC appointed a 12-member panel that, the authors state, was “the most balanced ever appointed in the United States to do any kind of review on fluoride” 137).  This panel issued its 507-page report in March 2006, in which it declared that the seemingly low-level 4 ppm maximum standard was not protective of health (25).

The ADA declared the NRC report irrelevant to water fluoridation on the day it was released—claiming erroneously that the panel only reviewed water fluoridation of 4 ppm.  The panel, in fact, “examined several studies that found adverse effects at levels less than 2 ppm” (138). 

The CDC followed six days later with the same conclusion.  To date, write the authors, the CDC has produced “no comprehensive analysis to support its claim.”  And “it’s hard to believe that in six days Oral Health Division personnel could have read and digested the report, let alone its over 1,100 references” (140).  

Ironically, in 1999, the CDC “finally conceded what many dental researchers had been reporting over the previous two decades:  Fluoride’s predominant mechanism of action was topical, not systemic.  In other words, if fluoride works at all, it does so via direct exposure to the outside of the tooth and not from inside the body” (13).  So, write Connett et al, to continue “the practice of forcing people to ingest fluoride has become even more absurd (269-270).

Part 2 will address fluoride’s specific toxicity in the body and claims of its efficacy.