Dear All,

Hopefully by now most of you have gone to fluoridealert conference to see the gold mine of information that was produced at the Second Citizens’ Conference on Fluoride (July 28 - August 1, 2006, Canton, NY) and with more still to come. For example take a look at Michael’s power point presentation on sulfuryl fluoride.

Meanwhile, we need help on two fronts.

First, many people who attended the conference were snapping away with their digital cameras. It would be great if you were to send us a selection of your best shots (using jpeg files) so that we could prepare a collection for the site. I think many people enjoy seeing what people actually look like. Some enterprising attendee might earn a fortune from Crystal Harvey, just by keeping a picture of her with her “terrible” teeth, out of the catalogue! And another fortune from Hardy to keep the photo documenting Crystal’s advances on him - armed with those teeth! Please send jpeg files to

Second, we would like to hear from any Harvard University graduate who is willing to help on resolving the Douglass integrity issue. I think it would be powerful for a group of Harvard graduates to write to their Alma Mater (motto = Veritas = truth) enquiring as to when Harvard’s investigation of Professor Chester Douglass will be complete. It has now been over a year since the University announced this investigation, and several months since Douglass waved a draft copy of their report in front of FOX-TV news cameras.

Why is this investigation taking so long? Does Harvard think we have fogotten all about it? Do they think the press has forgotten all about it? Why haven’t those who brought the charge, and brought the issue before the public, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and FAN respectively, not been contacted by Harvard to present the full details of their concerns?

The charge made by the EWG was very simple and clear cut. After Elise Bassin had successfully defended her PhD thesis in 2001, (for which Douglass was her advisor), Douglass had several opportunities to present (or even mention) her findings to his peers, his funders and to a public audience, but failed to do so, even while he was claiming the very opposite to what Bassin had found. Bassin found a robust association between young boys being exposed to fluoridated water in their 6th, 7th and 8th years and an increased risk of developing osteosarcoma by the age of 20. If this finding had occurred with an industrial product, an industrial scientist, who failed to report such a relationship within days, would be in very serious trouble.

How long does it take for Harvard to check on the 2002 meeting in the UK where Douglass assured the audience (the British Fluoridation Society) that his work showed NO association between fluoridation and osteosarcoma, but FAILED to mention Bassin’s thesis? The abstract of Douglass’s paper is available and it makes no mention of Bassin’s thesis. The British Fluoridation Society in its promotion material reports on Douglass’s presentation without mentioning Bassin’s thesis. This report was still on its web site in 2006. How can Douglass wriggle out of such a blatant violation of academic ethics?

How long does it take Harvard to read the two sides of an 8 by 11 sheet which Douglass submitted to his funders at NIH, a copy of which he also sent to the NRC. This paper states that his work finds no association between fluoridation and osteosarcoma. In this he provides Bassin’s thesis as a footnote, without making it clear that this thesis completely contradicted what he was telling his funders, and then later the NRC.

On the face of it there is nothing that could possibly exonerate Douglass of such blatant misrepresentations. All hope seems to be being placed on obfuscating this basic violation of scientific ethics and integrity by “reframing” the issue as a scientific debate between Douglass and Bassin. Whether or not the long-promised paper by Douglass, Hoover and Whitford is going to “neutralize” Bassin’s findings (we don’t think so because from we have seen from their preliminary comments is that there are very serious flaws in their methodology), is beside the point. It is not a question of who is right or wrong about this relationship - however important that matter is, and it is very important because osteosarcoma is frquently fatal, which means a practice extolled to the heavans by the US Public Health Service, may actually be killing people - but whether Douglass deliberately withheld his student’s findings from his peers when he was claiming the very opposite. That is a very serious scientific offence and Harvard needs either to refute the charge or take the necessary disciplinary action.

We know that the Harvard authorities are probably reluctant to act because Douglass brings millions of dollars of public and private money into their coffers. They might also think that one former graduate student’s reputation is expendable. It is not.

Thus we need Harvard graduates to contact us, so that we can work on a joint letter on this matter. Please contact me at

Paul Connett