FAN Bulletin 1086

August 7, 2009,

In 2006, realizing that our strongest weapon against fluoridation was our scientific integrity, FAN initiated an annual award entitled the “Albert Burgstahler Scientific Integrity Award” in honor of someone who for over 40 years has demonstrated that quality. There is no financial reward attached to this award but we feel it is a great honor to be selected for this special public recognition. Each recipient receives a plague.

In 2006, the winner was Albert Burgstahler himself.
In 2007, the winners were Bill Hirzy PhD and Robert Carton PhD, former employees of the US EPA.
In 2008 the winners were Bob Isaacson PhD, Hardy Limeback DDS, PhD, and Kathleen Thiessen PhD, three co-authors of the groundbreaking National Research Council Review (NRC, 2006).

We are happy to announce the 2009 winners ? there are four. Before we give their names we would like to explain why we have this number. We believe it is important to recognize that this battle is going on across the globe. To date all 6 winners have come from North America (5 from the the US and 1 from Canada). We do not believe that North America has the monopoly of scientific integrity among those doctors, dentists and other scientists fighting fluoridation ? and it is time that we recognized that fact. This year’s four winners come from Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. They include three dentists and one doctor. Here are the winners, in alphabetical order:

Andrew Harms, BDS
Jennifer Luke, BDS, PhD
Bill Osmunson, DDS, MPH
Bruce Spittle, MB, ChB, DPM, FRANZCP

Andrew Harms, BDS (Australia)

Andrew was the former President of the South Australian branch of the Australian Dental Association. In a trip to Australia in 2006 Andrew explained to me how it came about that he had reversed his position on fluoridation. It happened after he had suffered a life threatening battle with prostate cancer. He said that this gave him a lot of time to think and read. When he read BOTH sides of the literature on the fluoridation issue he realized that the practice was unacceptable. He added that what this life threatening event did was to put things in perspective. It doesn’t really allow one to accept anything but the truth and it gives you the courage to speak that truth no matter how unpopular it may make you with your colleagues. So he spoke up in public. After a TV appearance he was asked by the South Australian Dental Association not to use the fact that he had been a former president of the association. Andrew laughed and said how can he could not say that, as he was, and they can’t change history. “They can’t take that former position away from me, however embarrassing it may be for them today.” Andrew has continued to speak out and has been very helpful to communities fighting fluoridation throughout Australia particularly in South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

Jennifer Luke, BDS, PhD (UK)

Jennifer is a dentist, but a dentist who has actively pursued research. In 1997 she successfully defended her PhD thesis at the University of Surrey in Guildford. In her thesis she demonstrated two things:

1) Fluoride accumulated in the human pineal gland, which like the teeth and bones is a calcifying tissue. The calcium hydroxyapatite crystals attract the fluoride like a magnet.

2) She showed that animals exposed to high fluoride levels from birth (she gave the young pups fluoridated water with teat pipette to mimic the situation with bottle fed babies where the formula is made up with fluoridated tap water) produced lower levels of the hormone melatonin as well as showing signs that they reached puberty earlier.

Both findings are consistent since it is thought that as the young animal or human grows the melatonin levels fall and at a certain point the melatonin level triggers the production of sex hormones which then produce the changes associated with puberty. Melatonin acts like a biological clock. It controls all kinds of biological events including sleep patterns, jet lag, and possibly aging. Luke knew that when she published the first part of her work in a dental journal (Caries Research) she was not going to make many friends in the dental community. Incredibly, even though there is a huge amount of research going on examining the health consequences of melatonin imbalance, no fluoridating country has attempted to reproduce Luke’s work, which would not be an expensive or difficult thing to to do. In her own UK, even though she shared her results with the Ministry of Health, no action was taken to deflect their support for fluoridation. See further commentary on the response to Luke’s below.

Bill Osmunson, DDS, MPH (US)

Bill is a cosmetic dentist with practices in both Oregon and Washington State. For 25 years Bill went along with fluoridation, believing what he had been told by his professional bodies and what he believed he saw in his practice. He felt that he saw that kids coming from non-fluoridated areas had more tooth decay than kids coming from fluoridated ones. Then he read the literature carefully and did some of his own research. He showed for example, using questionnaires administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, that there is no correlation between tooth decay in the 50 states of America and the percentage of the population of each state drinking fluoridated water (Osmunson B. 2007. Water fluoridation intervention: dentistry’s crown jewel or dark hour? Fluoride 40(4):214-221. October-December. Available at http://www.fluorideresearch.org/404/files/FJ2007_v40_n4_p214-221.pdf ) Now he realizes that what he was observing in his practice was not the effect of ingested fluoride but the effect of lower family incomes. So Bill changed his mind on this issue and like other dentists before him (John Colquhoun, David Kennedy, Hardy Limeback and others) had the courage to speak out in public and try to right the wrong that he had once ? unwittingly - helped to perpetuate. What makes Bill special in this is his tenacity, his gentle approach to proponents (like John Colquhoun he does not attempt to rub their faces in it or play a guilt card) and his ability to communicate with the public in a very clear and compelling manner. For this we have clear evidence: over 170,000 people (increasing at about 100 a day) have watched his 5 minute videotaped vignette available on YouTube. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ys9q1cvKGk . To this we must now add his participation in the FAN DVD “Professional Perspectives on Water Fluoridation.” Bill has been unstinting in offering to help communities fighting this battle both at the local and state level. In addition to this visible activity, Bill is doing a great deal of work behind the scenes, which I am confident will expedite the end of this foolish practice. Bill, exemplifies the notion that the great moments in history do not occur when everyone jumps up and shouts “yes” but when a few people have the courage to say “no.”

Bruce Spittle, MB, ChB, DPM, FRANZCP (New Zealand)

A full account of Bruce’s qualifications, career and contributions to the fight against fluoridation can be read on page 76 of his recently published booklet “Fluoride Fatigue” now in its third printing. By bringing together the case studies and documenting the symptoms experienced by people who are particularly sensitive to fluoride’s toxicity, Bruce has performed a great service to humanity. Doctors are taught in medical school nothing about the symptoms of fluoride poisoning, thus many people go on experiencing health problems that no medicine can cure ? indeed may even make worse. If doctors were to read this book they might add to their diagnostic armory simple urine and blood tests for fluoride, with the promise that, if either is high, a cure for a whole series of common complaints may be as simple as avoiding fluoride! I first saw the name Spittle when I read his review of fluoride’s potential to damage the brain in a review article published in 1994 (Spittle B. 1994. Psychopharmacology of fluoride: a review. International Clinical Psychopharmacology 9(2):79-82). The date 1994 is important because it pre-dates the seminal animal study published by Phyllis Mullenix in 1995, and the appearance of the first Chinese IQ studies published in English. Thus Bruce was the first to raise this issue in the Western literature. Bruce’s last academic position was as Senior Lecturer in the department of Psychological Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, at Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand. This is also home of the only Dental School in New Zealand. This dental school is the breeding ground for generation after generation of fluoridation promoters (how many quietly disagree with this practice we shall probably never know). Thus, it is to Bruce’s enormous credit that he has conducted his efforts to end fluoridation right under the noses of the “enemy camp” as it were. It is also a testament to the quality of his arguments that none of the professors in the dental school will engage him in public debate. Moreover, when Bruce organized an international symposium on fluoride in January 2003, in Dunedin, none of these “distinguished” promoters of fluoridation were prepared to debate the issue or even deign to attend the symposium. Bruce was the co-editor of the journal Fluoride (the quarterly journal of the International for Society for Fluoride Research, ISFR) from 1994-1998 and managing editor from 1999 to the present. There is no more loyal member of the ISFR than Bruce. If ever the word ‘indefatigable” applied to any one it applies to Bruce. He simply grinds on year after year telling the truth as he sees it. Quietly, gently and with a twinkle in his eye. Among other things Bruce is a great lyricist and songster.

So a hearty congratulations to all our 2009 winners.

Paul Connett

The UK Medical Research Council committee and Luke’s work

A committee was set up in 2001 by the Medical Research Council to investigate what research gaps needed to be filled in the wake of the devastating findings of the York Review (McDonagh et al., 2000) that the research on both effectiveness and safety, were well below par. The committee (stuffed with pro-fluoridationists, including Professor Michael Lennon, chairman of the British Fluoridation Society) gave a higher priority for further studies on dental fluorosis than on studies on the brain or the endocrine system (which includes the pineal gland). The report, “Water fluoridation and health,” http://fluoridealert.org/mrc-2002.pdf, was published in 2002.

In section 5.3.8 titled “Miscellaneous effects”, they write that:

Several other health outcomes have been postulated as being connected with elevated fluoride intake:

Effects on the pineal gland
Senile dementia
Age at menarche
Anemia during pregnancy
Sudden Infant Death syndrome
Primary degenerative dementia

Available information on these outcomes is limited and inconclusive. Further targeted research may be warranted, but this is presently of low priority until critical literature reviews are undertaken that demonstrate specific research needs.

Thus the British policy of “if you don’t look, you don’t find” continues to dominate their self-serving thinking on this issue. It is precisely because politics clearly overrules science in fluoridating countries that we need scientists of the caliber of Jennifer Luke doing their independent research and having the courage to make it public. That is why we believe that these Scientific Integrity awards are vitally important. Not just in the battle against fluoridation but to try establish that we need honest science underpinning ALL public health issues.