FAN Bulletin 918
 
January 2, 2008
   
Dear All,
 
Our final totals in our end of the year fundraising effort, were $33,023 from 198 contributors.   

This was a magnificent response to our effort and we wish to thank all of you who donated so generously. Of course, our fundraising efforts for our 2008 campaign will not end here but the deadline for tax deductible contributions for the year 2007 has now ended. If you were out of town when we were making our appeals and you would still like to make a donation, please go to http://www.FluorideAlert.org and click on the Donate link at the top of the page. Alternatively, you may simply write out a check to AEHSP and send it to AEHSP, 82 Judson Street, Canton, NY 13617. Our overall goal for our 2008 campaign is $100,000.

Now on to 2008. The next few bulletins will deal with the task ahead: ending fluoridation worldwide. To accomplish this, we need to get away from attacking anonymous groups of letters whether they be CDC, EPA, FDA, WHO, MOH, DOH, MRC, NHMRC etc and start naming names. We need those who promote this so aggressively to show their faces. If they are proud of what they are doing let them defend their position openly, publicly and eventually under oath. If they are merely doing this because it is in their job description, then who hired them to do it and why? In each country, we must find where the buck stops. Who are the people who are pulling the strings of those who champion the cause in public? To find some clues we need to look and see what patterns in rhetoric, and tactics, repeat themselves in the various fluoridating countries.

Know thy enemy
The report from Ireland below, prepared by Robert Pocock, underlines some of the similarities between the forces which zealously promote fluoridation in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

Here are some of the similarities I can see, perhaps others can see more.

The similarities. In each fluoridation promoting country, we see:

1. Support from the highest levels of the Ministries and/or Departments of Health, with an emphasis on cost savings and addressing the inequities in the national dental services. These so-called cost savings evaporate when one factors in the costs of treating dental fluorosis. Moreover, their claim that they must do this to help “poor kids”  doesn’t hold much water. The York Review (McDonagh et al., 2000) could find very little evidence to support the notion that fluoridation reduces social inequities. Their argument is further undermined by their ignoring the inequity of forcing fluoridation on those who can’t afford to avoid it. Nor are they prepared to acknowledge that it is precisely among the poor that one is most likely to find poor nutrition which is well known to exacerbate fluoride’s toxicity.

2. This support is buttressed by “expert” or “consulting” bodies, very much aware of the outcome desired by the financing body:

   Australia: the NHMRC
   Ireland: Fluoridation Forum and the IEBFH
   New Zealand: ESR
   UK: MRC (2002) committee
   US: CDC appointed committees

What we see here again and again is a self-fulfilling prophesy; a mockery of honest science.

3. The support is also buttressed by the National Dental Associations and also National Medical Associations (or at least, the higher levels of their respective bureaucracies) but who provide little evidence of their conducting any independent review of the issue and who are incapable of fielding any individuals who are prepared to publicly debate the issue.

4. Sometimes further support is provided by people who make their reputations (and sometimes even their living) from vociferously attacking the credentials of opponents of fluoridation, e.g. Joe Mullen (Ireland); Michael Easley and Stephen Barrett (US); Terry Cuttress (NZ); Ted Kolchinsky (Israel) and more recently Jason Armfield (Australia) (see my comments on his recent attack).

5. New proposals are usually preceded with some survey, often appearing in a government published document which has not had external peer review. Typically these surveys purport to show that tooth decay in the newly threatened community is far worse than “comparable” fluoridated community. Such comparisons between two communities can show anything if the social economic status is not very carefully controlled. Moreover, the promoters seldom acknowledge the number of large studies and surveys carried out since 1982 which have failed to demonstrate convincingly that there is any difference in tooth decay (especially in  the permanent teeth) between fluoridated countries and non-fluoridated countries, or between fluoridated states and non-fluoridated states (Leverett, 1982; Colquhoun, 1984, ‘86, 87; Diesendorf, 1986; Gray, 1987; Yiamouyiannis, 1990; Brunelle and Carlos; 1990; Spencer, 1996; de Liefde, 1998; Locker, 1999; Spencer and Armfield, 2004 and Pizzo, 2007).

6.  In Australia, Ireland, Israel and New Zealand, NO health studies have been conducted on any tissue other than teeth. Even in those countries which have done a few studies (Canada, UK, and US), none has attempted any systematic or comprehensive review of the health of communities which are fluoridated for the many end points suspected to be caused by, or exacerbated by fluoride exposure: arthritic symptoms; lowered thyroid function; early onset of puberty. lowered IQ; abnormal mental development and behavior; Alzheimer’s diseases; gastro-intestinal problems; increased fracture rates in the young and osteosarcoma in young men.

7. In none of these countries has any government pursued scientifically the possibility that some people are particularly sensitive to fluoride, despite a number of published case studies that there are such people (see Bruce Spittle’s invaluable summary of the literature in his newly published 66-page book entitled “Fluoride Poisoning:  is fluoride in your drinking water–and from other sources–making you  sick?”*  

8. Instead of original studies, the promoting agencies rely on reviews of literature of varying quality, conducted by other agencies such as the WHO, or in-house bodies such as NHMRC and ESR. In citing such agencies the proponents downplay the reviews that don’t suit their purposes, e.g. York Review (2000) and the NRC (2006).

9. All the agencies have downplayed the significance of the ADA November 2006 recommendation that parents be advised not to use fluoridated water to make up baby formula.

10. While conceding that fluoridation has increased the risk of dental fluorosis among the population, this is downplayed as a minor aesthetic problem of no health consequence. They ignore the notion that dental fluorosis is an indicator of over-exposure to fluoride which may have other health consequences - consequences which they are not prepared to investigate. Unlike researchers in India, China and Mexico, no attempt is being made to use the severity of dental fluorosis as an important biomarker for epidemiological studies to investigate a possible connection between certain end points and early childhood fluoride exposure.

11. Promoters in these countries endlessly repeat that there have been no studies which indicate any health problems for people drinking fluoridated water at 1 ppm, without acknowledging that such studies have not been attempted in their own countries.

12. Government spokespersons fail to discuss the all-important difference between concentration and dose, a difference which negates the cavalier dismissal of the significance of studies at slightly higher concentrations than 1 ppm (e.g. 1.5 - 4.00 pm) where problems have been encountered in countries like India, China and other areas with “high” natural levels of fluoride.

13. These same spokespersons never enter into a discussion of the need for a Margin of Safety between the doses which have been shown to cause harm and the doses likely to be experienced by people consuming above average quantities of water and/or get fluoride from many other sources.

14. Nor is there a discussion for the need for a Margin of Safety which is normally applied by regulatory agencies (for other pollutants) to protect the WHOLE population, which includes the very young, the very old, those with poor kidney function, and those with poor diet, especially those with an inadequate iodine intake or even borderline iodine intake.

15. Not one of the promoting agencies has yet to acknowledge the importance of the NRC (2006) review. Instead, they propagate the inaccurate notion that the NRC authors only examined effects at 4 ppm and not 1 ppm. Such a conclusion is simplistic and falls into the traps indicated above. It also ignores the fact that the NRC panel recommended to the US EPA to lower the safe drinking water goal (MCLG) from the current 4 ppm.  Without waiting to see what that new MCLG will be or offering a preliminary health risk assessment of their own, such claims of irrelevance are simply self-serving. We have to wait and see whether these fluoridation promoters will cease dismissing the relevance of the NRC (2006) review in the light of chairman, Dr. John Doull’s comments in the January 2008, Scientific American article:

“What the committee found is that we’ve gone with the status quo regarding fluoride for many years—for too long, really—and now we need to take a fresh look,” Doull says. “In the scientific community, people tend to think this is settled. I mean, when the U.S. surgeon general comes out and says this is one of the 10 greatest achievements of the 20th century, that’s a hard hurdle to get over.  But when we looked at the studies that have been done, we found that many of these questions are unsettled and we have much less information than we should, considering how long this [fluoridation] has been going on. I think that’s why fluoridation is still being challenged so many years after it began. In the face of ignorance, controversy is rampant.”

16. For a citizen or a journalist reviewing the issue for the first time, such oversights might be understandable, but for public agencies charged with protecting the public health, this is inexcusable behavior.

17. No promoting agency has yet to give a convincing explanation as to why they largely ignore the concession by most dental researchers and even the CDC (1999, 2001) that the major benefits of fluoride (if any) come from topical - NOT systemic - exposure. Why force people to swallow this stuff if a) it works topically not systemically and b) topical applications are universally available in the form of fluoridated toothpaste?

18. No promoting agency has yet to do an honest risk-benefit analysis on this issue which takes into account the issues above. Their idea of a risk-benefit analysis, is to deny the risks and exaggerate the benefits!

Naming names

So faced with this irrational and indefensible endangerment of the public’s health (whatever the motivation) what can we do about the situation in 2008? I think the New Zealand team has shown the way.  We  must start naming names.

We have to identify which individuals are doing this to us. We most expose them; expose the things they say; expose the gross weaknesses of their arguments (as indicated above) and hope that we can find some more enterprising investigative journalists like Chris Bryson to pursue them relentlessly as to why they continue to promote this practice despite the demonstrable inadequacies of their arguments.

From where do these promoters get their information and the confidence to use it publicly? I predict this answer: “I was hired to promote this, it is not my job to examine the science of the matter.” Which of course, leads us to the $64,000 question, “then who hired you to do it and what is their motivation?”  

We need to find out exactly where the buck stops. The spotlight must be focused on them.

Can citizens force these questions? How?
Are there investigative journalists who can pursue these questions?
Do we have parliamentarians or Members of Congress who will pursue these questions for us?

In 2008 FAN, with your help, will be doing everything we can to push all three avenues along.

But let’s start. Will you help us with naming the names? Please send us the local, state, provincial, federal and international bureaucrats who you believe are the key promoters of this practice in your area. Whose calling the shots?  Please provide us with us with any quotes (especially those which are embarrassingly ill-informed) which fall into line with the above analysis.

Tomorrow, I will be outlining some more steps we need to take.

Paul Connett

Bruce Spittle’s book is available to FAN readers for a reduced price. Including postage, it can be obtained for  NZ$11.99, A$10.99 or US$9.99 from B Spittle, 727 Brighton Road, Dunedin  9035, New Zealand (E-mail spittle@es.co.nz), cash or cheque made out to B. Spittle, or pay by PayPal to spittle@es.co.nz, after registering first with  PayPal at  www.PayPal.com
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Report for 2007 from Ireland, by Robert Pocock.

Health Committee gagged.

In Ireland, 2007 was another year of fluoride deception, Ireland’s government being no different from the few, mainly English-speaking administrations who still shamelessly push fluoridation despite the evidence. Here the truth about the negative effects of fluoridation was contained in a draft report presented to the parliamentary health committee in December 2006. The product of six years investigation of evidence, much of it painstakingly researched and presented by Dr  Paul Connett of FAN, the report was however opposed by government party members. When asked for amendments to the report, these same members offered the lame reply that they did not ‘like the report’. Such mindlessness is characteristic of all fluoridating governments, as the activity reports from US, Australia/NZ and the UK confirm.
 
Bottle-fed babies still at risk.
In Ireland no action was taken to warn Irish parents of bottle-fed babies* about the advice of the American Dental Association in November 2006 to use no fluoride or low fluoride water to make up formula. Since then some 70,000 babies have been born, the majority of whom (over 40,000) will have received only infant formula. Their parents have been told to continue using boiled tap water because to do otherwise would question the sacred cow of fluoridation. (*In October 2007 VOICE alerted all Irish maternity hospitals to the ADA advisory since the Irish Dental Association declined to do so).
 
Source of this advice to parents is the self-styled ‘Irish Expert’ Body on Fluorides and Health (IEBFH) , a ministerial creation dating back to 2004. Not only does this body have the ear of the Health Minister, Mary Harney, but it also seems to enjoy the complete support of the country’s leading paper of record, The Irish Times. This broadsheet carries Izvestia-type pro-fluoridation coverage based on statements by this quango but omits to publish any balancing viewpoint even when these have flooded into its letters editor.
 
When for instance the IEBFH declared that the fluoride concentration would be reduced to 0.7 ppm to counter the huge increase in dental fluorosis in Irish children, it was not reported that this concentration would still result in 42% of the population being affected by fluorosis as opposed to 48% previously. While the media spun the IEBFH message of an allegedly proportionate and progressive policy change, the effect is in reality almost negligible. What makes this sort of reporting all the more indefensible is that the UK National Health Service’s York Review had already revealed these findings seven years ago (in September 2000).
 
70% in fluoridated Ireland getting above safe amounts of fluoride.

While bottle-fed babies in Ireland continue to be at greatest risk of fluorosis, older people are also at risk from Irish fluoridation policy. Following a survey in summer 2007, residents of three fluoridated areas in County Donegal were shown to be at serious risk: seven in ten among working-age people(19-64 yrs) tested above the safe fluoride intake, as set by the UK Food Standards Agency. If exposed to a lifetime of of fluoride intake at the levels found in the survey, many thousands of people in Ireland are at risk of skeletal fluorosis and its early manifestations.

This finding has added more weight to calls to disband the IEBFH. Despite assurances in early 2006 that it would investigate total fluoride intake in the population, the Expert Body has remained inactive, thus failing in its primary duty which is to alert people and the government to the risks of fluoridation.

Faced with the evidence that tens of thousands of babies as well as many older people in Ireland are possibly exposed to seriously unsafe amounts of fluoride, the government can no longer perpetuate the cover-up. There is a however silver lining to this cloud of deception — the recent announcement by Health Minister Harney of a new oral health policy to which public comment has been invited ! With the fluoridation cover-up now internationally exposed and the growing weight of evidence of fluoride risk here in Ireland now plain for all to see, perhaps 2008 will be the year when ‘the truth will out’.