FAN Bulletin 942
   
March 18, 2008
 
Dear Supporter,
First of all, some good news about the FAN website. The site is back up and running again, although we are still working on fixing the latest news section.
The days of fluoridation are numbered
The days of fluoridation are numbered. Why do I say this? Simply, the proponents have no science to support their exaggerated claims of benefits and their dismissal of all health concerns, and every day, with the help of our website and the videos available on YouTube and Google, more and more intelligent people are discovering this fact. The more people read up on this issue the less likely they are to accept this foolish and reckless practice. 
 
To get away with their 60-year farce, fluoridation proponents have used two PR strategies: 1) Claiming “authority” based on a long list of endorsements and 2) denigrating opponents as a bunch of ill-informed “junk scientists” or worse.

This dual-pronged strategy is bound to fail in the long run because the real science is now readily available for any one who can read - or is prepared to read the information with an open mind. The internet has made this possible, that is why the ultimate defense of those promoting fluoridation is to dismiss anything on the internet, at the same time as they direct people to their own internet sites!
 
Promoters are making this situation even worse for themselves by their recent actions of forcing this measure on new and very large populations - including 18 million people in Southern California and the whole population (4 million) of Queensland, Australia (more about the disgusting bill past through the Queensland parliament in a later bulletin)-  with little genuine discussion and with little attempt to justify the practice, either scientifically or ethically. In doing this, they are making a lot more well qualified and influential people hopping mad. As a result every day we are getting more and more influential and highly qualified people joining the network to end this practice locally and globally. Over the last 11 years fighting this practice I have never seen so many energized, competent people determined and dedicated to ending this program.
 
Thus, as the promoters move forward with what might appear to them to be big victories they are actually sowing the seeds for the long term demise of this practice. They are living in a house of cards. But we have to get better at deconstructing their house of cards and make the deconstruction visible for even the laziest of investigative journalists.

Deconstructing the “house of cards”
 
We have to make sure that the public, the media and decision makers, see the following:
 
1)  There are only a very few key players actually controlling the promotion of this practice. These include 1) the top echelons of the ADA; 2) the Oral Health Division of the CDC (with little oversight from qualified toxicologists at the CDC); 3) the dental directors in each State Health Department (organized as the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors (ASTDD), and 4) a few rabid promoters like Michael Easley (and more recently Jason Armfield in Australia) who do their very best to intimidate dental and medical professionals from getting involved in this debate.

2) The actual number of “well informed” people on their side is dwarfed by the number on ours.

3)  However, their few players have many “yes persons” within their chains of command who they can count on to playback their mantra at public hearings. These “yes persons” include dentists who have little time to actually read the literature but who, either because of the one-sided training they received at dental school, or anecdotal observations or out of a misguided sense of duty to the ADA, turn out in their white coats whenever fluoridation is threatened or being promoted. So we have the dupers and the duped. How many of these people are true believers, and how many go along because of peer pressure, we will probably never know.

4) I believe that we have started an important process in establishing in the public mind that those opposed to fluoridation are not “junk scientists” but are thoughtful professionals who come from a broad range of public health, dental, medical, academic and environmental backgrounds. We are doing this in four different ways:
A) The Professionals’ Statement calling for an end to water fluoridation worldwide which has now been signed by over 1600 professionals.
B) The short personal statements that many of these professionals made when signing.
C) The videotaped vignettes being made by some of these professionals and made accessible on YouTube. The first with Dr. Bill Osmunson has exceeded our expectations, having been viewed in two months by over 31,000 people. There are many more of these vignettes in the pipeline.
D) The longer interviews with many of these professionals which we hope to make available on Google video and DVD.
5)  Now it is time to go on the offensive and show how little scientific analysis backs up the promoters’ exaggerated claims of safety and effectiveness. We need to do these at three different levels:
A) For those in charge (i.e. the CDC, State Health Departments etc ) we need to challenge them to provide written answers to written questions. Specifically they should be challenged to provide a written analysis which supports the CDC’s claim that “The findings of the NRC report are consistent with the CDC’s assessment that water is safe and healthy at the levels used for water fluoridation (0.7 - 1.2 mg/L).”
B) For those dentists and doctors who blindly follow we need to call their bluff and challenge their professionalism (see 6. below).
C) For the associations and agencies which endorse fluoridation, we need to get them to examine the current literature , especially the NRC (2006) review and encourage them to re-consider their support.
6) As far as A) is concerned, I provided a list of questions, which at my request, the Randolph (VT) council sent to the Vermont Department of Health (see FAN bulletin #936) and I will cover C) in a future bulletin. Here I will suggest ways that readers can help challenge the professionalism of those dentists and doctors who blindly follow their “leaders.” So, please the next time you encounter a dentist or a doctor, who either in a letter to the editor, or at a public meeting, speaks up loudly and confidently in favor of fluoridation, please invite them to sign the following statement: 
 ”It is my professional judgment that there is an adequate margin of safety to protect everyone in society - including the very young, the very old, those with impaired kidney function, those with poor diet and those with borderline iodine deficiency - from all the health effects discussed in the NRC (2006) review, no matter how much fluoridated water they drink and the typical fluoride doses they get from other sources.”
7) Please note, it will be much more difficult for a professional to sign this statement than a simple statement that they support fluoridation (remember the dozens of doctors and dentists in Burlington, Vermont who signed the statement “Got Teeth, Keep Fluoride!). In my view, if they sign this concrete and meaningful statement they are really putting their professional judgment on the line, and if they do not sign (probably because they have not even read the NRC report!) then they have to accept that they have no rational or scientific way of combating the ever growing number of professionals calling for an end to fluoridation worldwide, who site the NRC (2006) review as their number one reason for doing so.

8) Please keep a tally of refusals (and the excuse they offer) and those who accept the challenge. FAN will be delighted to make public on our web site the list of professionals who are willing to sign this statement. By so doing it will give us a meaningful comparison: those professionals who say end fluoridation worldwide and those who say keep it going. Without offering this challenge it makes it too easy for proponents to claim that the professionals who have signed our statement are in a minority. However, with a second statement in circulation it will become clear that we are in the majority!

Please let us know if you have any success in this.

Paul Connett