FAN Bulletin 1065

April 16, 2009

Apologies

I got the day wrong for my interview on Giorgio Repeti’s “Talking Alternatives” radio show out of NYC. The interview is actually tonight at 7 pm (Thursday April 16). You can access this live at http://www.repetiwellness.com  as well as past interviews.  I will be discussing both the DVD and the book “Fluoride Wars.”

Book Review

Below I have printed my review of the new book: “Fluoride Wars: How a modest public health measure became America’s longest running political melodrama” by R. Allain Freeze and Jay H. Lehr and published by Wiley.

This review (or a shortened version) also appears on the web sites of:

Barnes and Noble
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Fluoride-Wars/R-Freeze/e/9780470463710

Borders.com
http://tinyurl.com/cnloar

Powells Books
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780470448335-1

Amazon (see review below)
http://www.amazon.com/Fluoride-Wars-Americas-Political-Melodrama/dp/0470448334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239890981&sr=1-1

More on the numbers

The number of viewers of the Osmunson video vignette has now gone over 150,000
http://www.youtube.com/user/fluoridealert

The number of signers of the Professionals’ Statement calling for an end to fluoridation worldwide has reached 2,412
http://fluoridealert.org/professionals.statement.html

The simplest and best way you can help this cause

Right now the best and simplest way you can help this cause is to get your friends and colleagues to visit our web site. Right at the top of our home page they will find our promotion of the 28-minute video ” Professional Perspectives on Water Fluoridation.” This includes three excerpts from the tape and easy ordering details. http://www.FluorideALERT.org

Simply put, the more people who watch this DVD the quicker will come the end of fluoridation. I shared it with my own dentist and he thought it was very good and said he was asking every one in his practice to watch it.

More deception

In my view, one of the things (in addition to the scientific literature!) which undermines the pro-fluoridation case, is the behavior of the promoters. If this was as good a policy, as they pretend it to be, they would be proud to engage opponents in public debate. They would not need the spin of big PR firms (as used in the push for mandatory fluoridation in Louisiana in 2008). They would not need to do things behind closed doors. They would not need to bully dentists who step out of line. They would not need to load review panels with yes men. They would not need to deceive anyone…

News of the latest deception ? in the long history of deception on this issue ? comes from New Zealand. Check out the press release from the Citizens Collective for Fluoride Free water, printed below (after the Amazon.com book review).

Perhaps it is fitting that this news comes from New Zealand since the whole promotion of fluoridation in that country was based on a rigged trial (Hastings-Napier). In this trial, the control town (Napier) was dropped after two years and then the method of recording tooth decay in Hastings was changed during the trial. It was less stringent at the end than at the beginning. This created an “artificial” reduction in tooth decay. This change in methodology was not acknowledged by the authors of the published report, so the public was fooled into believing that the trial had been a smashing success ? and fluoridation of many cities in NZ began. This fraud was made public by the late Dr. John Colquhoun in an article which appeared in the Ecologist and was further elaborated in his PhD thesis.

Colquhoun J, Mann R. 1986.  The Hastings fluoridation experiment: science or swindle? The Ecologist 16: 243-248
Colquhoun J, Mann R. 1987.  The Hastings fluoridation experiment: postscript. The Ecologist 17:125-6.
Colquhoun J. 1987. Education and fluoridation in New Zealand: an historical study. PhD thesis, University of Auckland, NZ.

Great photo

Also, while we are ‘down under” check out the home page of the Barwan Freedom from Fluoridation web site ( http://www.baff.org.au/ ) which contains a great photo of the launch of their new campaign to prevent the fluoridation of Geelong in the state of Victoria, Australia.

Paul Connett

Amazon.com Book Review

Fluoride Wars- polemics not science, April 14, 2009

By Paul Connett, PhD (Canton, NY 13617)

Fluoride Wars- polemics not science

Despite lofty claims of objectivity, and being published by a major Science publisher (Wiley), the book “Fluoride Wars” by Freeze and Lehr is not a scholarly work but rather a slanted polemical analysis which gives final victory - with a few caveats about some of their bullying tactics - to the status quo.

More journalism and pseudo history than science. Why on earth spend four pages discussing Jonestown? Freeze and Lehr provide their thesis in the subtitle: “How a modest public health measure became America’s longest running political melodrama.” However, you can only describe water fluoridation as a modest measure if you conveniently ignore - as these authors do - the fact that the level of fluoride added to water (i.e. 1 milligram per liter or 1 part per million or 1 ppm) which may seem small to some, is actually 250 times the level found in mothers milk (0.004 ppm). This means that a bottle fed baby in a fluoridated community gets 250 times more fluoride than nature intended.

To support their thesis of a “political melodrama” they focus their attention more on the extreme wings of the debate (Michael Easley, Stephen Barrett, Darlene Sherrell) than on the calmer scientific middle. They spend more time discussing and debunking conspiracy theories then on a careful balanced analysis of the scientific details.

The authors show little first hand knowledge of the primary literature and derive most of their conclusions from governmental reviews and review articles, sprinkled with self-serving commentary from the American Dental Association. Even this analysis is dated. Incredibly, while on page 250 they make it clear that they are aware of the massive 507-page groundbreaking review by the National Research Council (NRC) “Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Review of EPA Standards” published in 2006, apart from acknowledging that the authors called for a lowering of the EPA’s drinking water standard, Freeze and Lehr do not provide any commentary on the scientific findings of this important work. This despite the fact that this landmark NRC review cited 1100 references to the primary literature, and addressed two of the key questions Freeze and Leher raise: “What is the status of current medical research into the impact of fluoride on human health? What conclusions can be drawn on the basis of toxiciological and epidemiological evidence currently available with respect to each potential impact or disease?”( p.31).

If objectivity was their aim it is surprising that Freeze and Lehr completely ignore the NRC analysis, while spending considerable time on earlier reviews. An “inconvenient review” perhaps if one’s ultimate aim is to support the medical establishment’s continued promotion of this unacceptable medical practice. Unacceptable, because once fluoride is put in the water, you can neither control the dose nor who gets it (young or old, sick or healthy) as well as depriving the individual’s right to informed consent to what medication he or she takes. Throw in the fact that no one is monitoring side effects and we have a really horrible medical practice.

Had Freeze and Lehr studied the NRC (2006) review they would have realized that their own review of health effects was dated and limited. For example take fluoride’s potential to impact the brain. Instead of the few studies that they cite, they would have discovered that there have been many more studies published since the ones they addressed. In fact, if they had availed themselves of the health data base on the web site of the Fluoride Action Network they would have discovered that there are now over 50 animal studies which indicate that fluoride damages the brain and no less than 23 studies (from four different continents) which show that high fluoride exposure is associated with lowered IQ in children. Maybe nature had reasons for keeping fluoride so low in mothers milk.

While the book reveals some fascinating bits of history about some of the protagonists in this debate and acknowledges some of the shabby treatment they have received at the hands of pro-fluoridation sources, the book is not very helpful in drawing serious conclusions about the science of the debate over either effectiveness or the safety of this measure.

As a protagonist myself, I do not feel that my 13 years of painstaking review of this issue, first as a professor of chemistry, and then as executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, was served very well. While I was amused that they mentioned my classical music program on my local public radio station, I would have much preferred it if they had attempted a blow by blow critique of my “50 Reasons to Oppose Fluoridation.” If readers were to avail themselves of this documented argumentation they would get a better feel of just how much of the fluoridation debate was side-stepped by these authors.

Paul Connett, PhD,
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Chemistry,
St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY
and
Executive Director,
Fluoride Action Network,
http://www.FluorideALERT.org

———————————————————————————————————

Approval For Trial Obtained By False Claims
 ’Scoop’ Independent News

Wednesday, 15 April 2009, 4:16 pm
 
Press Release: Citizens Collective For Fluoride Free Water
Media release: Citizens Collective for Fluoride-Free Water

15 April 2009.

Ethics Committee Approval For Fluoridation Trial Obtained By False Claims

Ethics approval for the fluoridation trial, forced on the people of Kaitaia and Kaikohe from March 2007 to March 2009, was obtained by misrepresentations by the applicant, the Northland District Health Board (DHB), according to documents obtained under the Official Information Act.

The Northland DHB filed false claims of support from iwi and others, who were in fact opposed to the trial. It also misrepresented the implementation of fluoridation, thereby downgrading the consultation and disclosure requirements. Approval by the Northern Regional Y Ethics Committee was only gained the year after the trial began.

The NDHB now faces the ire of those whose claimed endorsements were used falsely by the NDHB to gain approval for its trial.

The NDHB listed Te Runanga O Te Rarawa and Hone Harawira, Maori Party MP, as “forefronters” of the trial survey, when they were no such thing. Te Rarawa had opposed fluoridation. No supporting evidence was provided. The DHB also failed to provide evidence of support from other major Iwi, Nga Puhi, and Ngati Kahu, in spite of being specifically asked for it by the committee.

The NDHB also failed to mention the extensive opposition from within the communities to fluoridation, including a 2484-signature petition against the trial. It only presented its own, small, petition in support.

The NDHB stated that the research would incorporate the values and provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi and that the trial research process was culturally safe and acceptable to Maori and non-Maori participants. “How can poisoning the water, whenua and people, be culturally safe and acceptable for anyone? And without their consent, all for a trial?” says Jackie Pou of Rawene and of Te Rarawa, Te Roroa and Nga Puhi descent.

To add insult to injury, one of the key researchers also claimed extensive consultation with Iwi in a NZ Dental Journal article, as “best practice”. “What a joke!” says Jackie Pou. “They only ‘consulted’ with their own pro-fluoridation groups.”

The NDHB falsely claimed that the Far North District Council (FNDC) started fluoridation as a public health measure, and the NDHB was simply proposing to gather information after that decision had been made. The consultation and risk disclosure requirements are much higher for an ‘intervention study’ (what is actually happening) than for the claimed ‘observation study’ ? the basis of ethics approval.

The NDHB secretly lobbied the FNDC, then paid for the fluoridation equipment and the fluoride chemical for the 2 years of the trial. “Then the NDHB has the audacity to insist ‘we are not conducting a trial’!” exclaims Ms Pou.

This meant the researchers claimed they had no obligation to warn participants of any potential adverse effects from fluoridating the water; only from dental examinations.

For example the NDHB would have had to advise parents of the risks to infants fed milk formula made up with fluoridated water (issued by the US Public Health Service in 2006 and confirmed by the NZ Standard); the increased risk to diabetics and those with impaired kidney function, and to those drinking a lot of water in the heat of the Far North; and the increased risk of bone cancer to young men who drink fluoridated water between the ages of 5 and 10.

The fluoride dosing ceased on March 31st 2009. The NDHB is now seeking a further 2 year trial. It is on the Council’s agenda for their 30 April meeting. The FNDC continues to rate fluoridation as ‘low significance’, “so that they can slip it in under the radar again” says Ms Pou. “Who says it is low significance? Once again, the communities themselves are sidelined. This is outrageous” she proclaims. The original Commission of Enquiry into Fluoridation held it was ‘high significance’, requiring the ’special consultation procedures’ under the Act.

 ”Are the FNDC councillors representing the NDHB or the people in the communities?” asks Ms Pou. “Who will be leaving the FNDC councillors high and dry when it suits them? The FNDC councillors will be held accountable for any liability” she adds.

“The NDHB/FNDC’s ‘ consultation ‘ process is so great that the people of Kaikohe and Kaitaia didn’t even know that their water was now fluoride-free. When hearing this good news, some people have been so happy and they most definitely don’t want the fluoride dosing to continue, let alone for a further unwanted Health Board experiment. They’re still angry at the first trial going ahead, let alone a second one! ” proclaims Ms Pou.

Ms Pou concludes by advising Councillors “Represent your constituents. You were voted in because you were trusted. Don’t let the people down. The people vote you in - and out! Say ‘no’ to the NDHB. We, the people, have the right to say ‘no’.”

Public meetings will be held in Kaitaia and Kaikohe on 28th and 29th of April respectively.

Jill and Ross Forbes
81 Rangitane Loop Road
RD 1
KERIKERI  NZ  0294
Ph/Fax: 64 9 4078976
Email: forbes.j-r@xnet.co.nz