Dear All,

The following extraordinary letter appeared in today’s Rutland Herald. Needless to say I will be replying to it. Meanwhile, does anyone have any idea who Chuck Gregory is? The charges are so insulting I suspect the hand of Michael Easley. What I find fascinating is that this letter results from considerable research, but apparently Chuck Gregory’s research doesn’t seem to include the primary literature. One wonders if he has even read the 450 page NRC report - perhaps he thinks the NRC is merely a mouthpiece of the John Birch Society!

Paul Connett

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Letters

Fluoride tract a scare tactic

April 18, 2006

Bellows Falls Trustee Luise Light (”Distorted debate on fluoride,” Letters Apr. 10) has certainly done her share to distort the Bellows Falls hearings by preventing me from speaking, while allowing the few (and imported) opponents at the August and October hearings all the time they needed. Her own letter shows some of the movement’s fondness for distortion when she writes fluoride should be banned based on “some reports” and on research that “suggests” it. She also misleads the reader by implying that a study claiming a link between bone cancer and exposure to fluoridated water was peer-reviewed and thus valid, when actually the journal it appeared in, not the article itself, is identified as “peer-reviewed.” The article in question has not been.

Other points the public ought to be aware of are these:

1) The Fluoride Action Network, FAN, is a family business run by Paul Connett, Ph.D., whose son, Michael, made the initial pitch in Bellows Falls at Ms. Light’s behest;

2) As can be seen from Ms. Light’s citations, it appeals to the public’s fears by shading and warping the facts. Anti-fluoridation efforts began as part of the fear-mongering right-wing John Birch Society in the 1950s;

3) Connett’s chief work is not to promote the public’s health, but to provide illusory victories at no cost. He opposes fluoridation, and he also opposes trash burning for electrical generation. But he does not offer alternatives, nor does he fight for health improvements which would cost more - such as eliminating arsenic, lead or asbestos from public water supplies. These would make us safer, but Connett apparently does not want to pursue goals which would entail tangible sacrifices;

4) Perhaps in the name of fear-mongering, Connett is at best an unethical researcher. Australia’s preeminent dental researcher, John Spencer, chastised Connett for deliberately distorting Spencer’s research in order to promote an anti-fluoridation message;

5) A telling reminder of its inheritance from the paranoid right wing, one of the prominent FAN members, Martha Bevis, is listed as a resource of the Mind Control Forum, a Web site devoted to people suffering from surreptitious government brain implants;

6) Consistent with Connett’s questionable if not unethical scholarship, another prominent FAN activist, Richard Foulkes, has work cited by a questionably credentialed medicine man, Gary Null;

7) The FAN’s appeal to paranoia is evident in at least three of the 50 points listed in its seminal (and oft-revised) tract, “50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation.” In effect, #50 says it’s a government plot; #29 says the government is treating you, an upstanding American, like an insane criminal; and #30 says you are being ruled by jackbooted thugs;

8) Connett calls for a debate of the issue, but only because debates, unlike peer-reviewed studies, provide a forum for spectacular claims useful in media sound bites;

9) In fact, Ireland’s Department of Children and Families did an exhaustive review of FAN’s “50 Reasons” broadside and condemned it after 64 pages of analysis, saying, “No conclusion can or should be drawn from this poor quality document;”

10) Connett’s success in his enterprise depends entirely on creating fear and appealing to fearfulness.

The phenomenon of why apparently intelligent public servants like Ms. Light devote themselves with such apparent bias to such a fraudulent cause deserves a letter all its own.

CHUCK GREGORY

Springfield