FAN Bulletin 2025

July 20, 2010

Before we get to the Florida deception, some good news. We have reached another important milestone. Today, we recorded our 3,000 signer of the Professionals’ Statement calling for an end to fluoridation.

Background to the Florida deception.

The Florida Dental Association (FDA) is worried about the number of communities that are questioning fluoridation in that state. This has partly come about because the cost of fluoridating chemicals is rising at the same time that financially strapped councils are looking for ways to save money.

The FDA’s publicity campaign on fluoridation

The FDA (not to be confused with the Food and Drug Administration) has set in motion a publicity campaign on the fluoridation issue. The FDA has spelled out exactly what they are doing, down to the coalitions they wish to form; the local groups they wish to co-opt; the letters they want dentists to sign; a power point presentation they want them to use and a short video they want the public to watch.

Fortunately for us and the citizens of Florida, we can read or watch this material as well (see the links below).

What we have found - and you will find - is that both the citizens of Florida and their dentists are being grossly deceived. This FDA material is full of mistakes and half-truths and some outright falsehoods. Worse still one of the letters dentists are being encouraged to sign contains a phrase that could well trigger a slander action against any unwitting signer.

If the dentists sign some of these letters without carefully reading what they say they could be heading for huge embarrassment or worse. They might have got away with this a few years ago when there was not a ready source of accurate information on this topic, but today that is no longer the case. With our website readily available to all (www.FluorideAlert.org); with the 2006 NRC report accessible online (ref 1 below, also accessible from the FAN website); with the Professional Perspectives video available online (also accessible from the FAN website), there is absolutely no excuse for these kind of errors for any one exercising due diligence on the matter. Moreover, with the new book (The Case Against Fluoride) due to come out in the Fall, there will be even less excuse for this kind of misleading and false information to be broadcast to a largely unsuspecting public.

Spot the errors competition

I will be going into chapter and verse on the errors and falsehoods in this FDA material in part 2 in this series. But before I do so you might wish to test your own knowledge on this subject and examine this material for yourselves and see how many errors and falsehoods you can find in the letters they want dentists and others to sign.

I will send a free copy of the book (in early October) to the reader who spots the most mistakes (with relevant explanations) in the sample letters (see links below). Please email your entries to me by midnight Wednesday July 21.

We will have a separate competition for their power point and video presentations. Here are the links to their sample letters. –Original links at http://floridadental.org/pro/members/resources/fluoride/

• Letter to City Officials - http://fluoridealert.org/floridadental/sample.county-city.official.pdf 

• FDA President Letter to City - http://fluoridealert.org/floridadental/letter-to-officials.pdf 

• Letter from Medical Society - http://fluoridealert.org/floridadental/support.letter.to.officials.pdf 

• “No Prior Fluoride?” Letter - http://fluoridealert.org/floridadental/no.prior-fluoridation.letter.pdf 

• Letter to Media Editors - http://fluoridealert.org/floridadental/letter-to-press.pdf 

• Sample News-Media Column - http://fluoridealert.org/floridadental/sample.op-ed.pdf

The overall strategy of fluoridation promotion

The FDA campaign fits very well into one of the key strategies of those who have promoted fluoridation for over 60 years. This is their effort to keep doctors, dentists, scientists, the media and decision makers away from the scientific literature. They have done this for obvious reasons. The scientific literature (even some of the articles by prominent promoters themselves) simply does not support their exaggerated claims of benefit or the notion that there are NO potential dangers to health for anyone (including vulnerable subsets of the population) drinking uncontrolled amounts of fluoridated water, in addition to getting fluoride from many other sources.

Promoters have used two main tactics to keep people away from the scientific literature: 1) their appeal to the “authority” of endorsements, rather than careful presentation of the evidence and 2) their denigration of opponents as being “junk scientists” or worse.

Both tactics are clearly visible in these FDA sample letters.

The ADA’s unprofessionalism

The American Dental Association (ADA) made it very clear in a 1979 White Paper that their leadership has a very peculiar notion of what it means to be a professional, when they wrote:

“Individual dentists must be convinced that they need not be familiar with scientific reports and field investigations on fluoridation to be effective participants and that non-participation is overt neglect of professional responsibility.” (ref. 2)

Sadly, the medical and scientific worlds are so busy on other things that they continue to allow dentists to call the shots on the safety of fluoridation even though they have no professional right to make declarations on health beyond the area of expertise (the teeth). They also continue to treat the ADA with respect even though it has been discredited by independent observers for its unprofessional conduct in this and other areas. The most glaring example being the ADA’s continued defense of the use of mercury amalgams for fillings (despite the documented dangers of this practice) even to the point of lobbying hard to retain the false and misleading name of “silver” fillings.

Another more recent example of the ADA’s irresponsible and unprofessional behavior was the ADA’s grant of $200,000 to the Californian Dental Association to support their effort to prevent the classification of “fluoride and its salts” as a carcinogen under California’s Proposition 65 (ref 3). In essence this means that the ADA is prepared to do its best to muddy the waters on the issue of a possible relationship between young boys drinking fluoridated water and succumbing to osteosarcoma (a frequently fatal bone cancer).

Evidence for this possible relationship between fluoridation and osteosarcoma was published in 2006 by Bassin et al. (ref 4). The study promised by Professor Chester Douglass for the Summer of 2006 (ref 5), that would supposedly refute these findings, has failed to materialize. Rather than acknowledge these shocking facts, the ADA is clearly more interested in protecting the practice of water fluoridation (and the liabilities they have accrued from endorsing dental products containing fluoride) than protecting those from a disease that might kill them.

Betraying the public’s trust

The sad part about orchestrated efforts like the one we are seeing in Florida is that they take advantage of otherwise decent dentists and in turn those citizens who put their trust in them. Most dentists don’t have much time to study the literature on fluoridation. Thus when these men and women are encouraged to parrot the words or write the letters penned by their state dental association (and the ADA), they probably have little idea that they are misleading the public with half truths and false information. It’s a bit like Solzenitzin’s novel - First Circle - they are betraying the public’s trust because they in turn have been betrayed by those above them in the “chain of command.”

Paul Connett

References:

1. National Research Council of the National Academies. 2006. Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards. Online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11571

2. American Dental Association (ADA). 1979. White paper on fluoridation. Council on Dental Health and Health Planning. Online at http://fluoridealert.org/ada.white.paper.1979.html

3. California Dental Association. 2010. CDA receives ADA State Public Affairs Program Grants. Executive bulletin from the desk of Executive Director Peter DuBois. January 12. (This bulletin was online for a short time before it was removed.)

4. Bassin EB, Wypij D, Davis RB, Mittleman MA. 2006. Age-specific fluoride exposure in drinking water and osteosarcoma (United States). Cancer Causes & Control, May;17(4):421-8.

5. Douglass CW, Joshipura K. 2006. Caution needed in fluoride and osteosarcoma study. Letter. Cancer Causes & Control, May;17(4):421-8.