A Tooth for a Tooth

If the Letters to the Editor of my local Newspaper, The CHB Mail (Tuesday December 15, 2009) are anything to go by, the issue of fluoridation to our local public water supply is becoming an emotive topic. And it should be. However, I feel sometimes that emotion needs keeping a lid on when it side tracks people from the main issue.

You think it’s useless continuing on about this despite continued fluoridation to the town water supply already being a done deal? It isn’t. Whichever way you look at it, the side issue of the potential inactivity by the townsfolk of Waipukurau could become a very real threat to them and so too will ignorance if left to have free reign.

Medical Fluoride and Industrial Fluoride
“It’s thought that the story of medical fluoride and industrial fluoride have no parallels or any relationship to each other, and that the fluoridation of water supplies was just a concept that developed in an uninfluenced, unfettered way.” This is not so. “It can be demonstrated that the concept of fluoridating water supplies was motivated by industry forces such as Alcoa in the US (The Fluoride Deception, 2009).

The other industry that stood much to gain or lose was the sugar industry. Fearful that dental cavities could change consumer sentiment towards sugar intake, The Sugar Association began in 1943 as the Sugar Research Foundation, made up of 130 US sugar corporations, purposefully sought ways to stop dental caries while protecting their investment.

In 1950, one year before the US Public Health Service endorsed fluoride, the Sugar Research Foundation stated that its aim was “to discover effective means of controlling tooth decay by methods other than restricting carbohydrate intake” (Waldbott, 1965, p.131). Industry spin doctoring had begun.

One other industry that played a pivotal role in manipulating public opinion was the US Government itself. It used large amounts of fluoride in its nuclear bomb research programme, and with the aid of chief scientist Harold, H. Hodge, the public were led to believe fluoride was not as harmful as they suspected.”

Dr Gerald Cox and the Mellon Institute
“Discovered in correspondence, it could be read that Dr Gerald Cox was directed to research the fluoride issue, relative to dental health, by a Dr Francis Frary, Chief Scientist of the Alcoa laboratories. Dr Francis Frary was at that time very worried about the dangerous effects sodium fluorosilicate and fluorosilicic acid were having on the Alcoa employees and the environment around the Alcoa site, and the disposal problems of dangerous fluorides. This research eventually resulted in a statement from Cox that “the present trend toward complete removal of all fluoride from drinking water and food may need some reversal” (The Fluoride Deception, 2009).

To understand the motivations of Cox, the Mellon Institute, the influence of the Mellon family and Alcoa, the history, political influence and relationships of Alcoa must be understood in context. Alcoa and the Mellon Institute were also instrumental in producing fraudulent scientific data that negated the dangers of asbestos being causative of mesothelioma (Dodson & Hammar, 2006, p. 258).

At the same time the Mellon Institute founded the Industrial Hygiene Foundation (IHF) in which confidential correspondence between its industrial members demonstrated the link between asbestos and mesothelioma (Dodson & Hammar, 2006, p. 258). This history becomes meaningful as much of the fluoride science produced by the Mellon sponsored think-tanks are still used to this very day today without critical review.

In his letter to the Editor of The CHB Mail (Tuesday December 15, 2009) local, Richard Thomas wrote, “when the ‘collective wisdom’ of 60 percent of the respondents of a self-selecting survey on one side (technical depth notwithstanding) and the vast majority of 60+ years of scientific and medical research on the other, the sensible decision is to go with the research … ” I say, at what cost?

Information can and is presented by whoever with intent, for good or not or just plain mischief. Omission may be wielded with as much efficiency as the outright manipulation of the facts and in my opinion it’s more insidious and therefore far more lethal when it hits its mark. Perhaps the sparseness of information on the NZ Ministry of Health website relating to fluoridation is simply designed to not blind a person with science. In any case it’s information that tows a party line, no original thinking there.

Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies
The push to fluoridate public water supplies moved forward in the US so that eventually in 1945 a series of controlled studies (paired cities) were undertaken in Grand Rapids (Michigan) and Muskegon (Wisconsin); Newburgh and Kingston, (New York); Evanston and Oak Park, (Illinois); and Brantford and Sarnia, (Ontario, Canada). The studies introduced levels of calcium fluoride at 1.0-1.2 ppm into the water supplies.

It’s claimed that “after conducting sequential cross-sectional surveys in these communities over 13-15 years, caries were reduced 50%-70% among children in the communities with fluoridated water” (Burt & Eklund, 1999). However Grand Rapids Michigan, which was the first test community fluoridated, was designed to be compared with an unfluoridated city (Muskegon) for ten years.

But just after six and a half years, Muskegon was fluoridated and was no longer able to count as a control city. This decision has been forgotten by some in the pro-fluoridation community who, up till 1955, were claiming that Grand Rapids was still being compared to unfluoridated Muskegon (Sutton, 1996).

This fact was also overlooked by the authors of the study themselves when they wrote the abstract to their work in 1962. In their abstract the authors state that the caries rates from Grand Rapids had been “compared with the caries rates in the control group of children in Muskegon.” But in the paper, the authors acknowledge that Muskegon lost its unfluoridated status in 1951 and go on to say that “in subsequent analyses of Grand Rapids data, comparison has been made with those for Aurora, Michigan” ( Sutton 1996).

In the same year, 1962, the authors (Ast, & Fitzgerald) of the Newburgh and Kingston fluoridation trial, referred in their abstract to the Evanston, Illinois, and Grand Rapids, Michigan studies. According to their abstract, “among children 12 to 14 years old… reductions in the decayed, missing, filled teeth (DMFT) rates as compared to the rates in control cities ranged from 48 to 71 per cent.

In their own paper however, Ast & Fitzgerald state, “in the Grand Rapids and Evanston studies the control cities were lost before the study was completed, so that the current data have been compared with the base line data.” This means that, and as their paper’s data goes on to show, these 48 and 71% reductions were not comparisons with the control cities, as they said they were, but with the original decay rates (base line data) of the test cities before they started fluoridating.

Justification of Fluoridation
The collective weight of these poor studies have been used time and time again over the years to justify fluoridation of water supplies throughout the world. It should also be noted that the fluoride used in these original studies was pharmaceutical grade calcium fluoride.” Uninformed? We shouldn’t be and we ought to know how our belief systems have been shaped historically in order to appropriate them in a more meaningful way for ourselves! Ours would indeed be an informed consent then.

* This is 2 of a 7 part blog. The NEXT blog is entitled ‘Listening to the Juke Box’