Research into Fluoride |
But have you read the research?
BFS suggested answer
One needs to be an expert in very specialised fields of medicine to be able to assess the validity of such papers. I know that scientists who are recognised experts in the relevant disciplines have reviewed these papers and found that they are not relevant to water fluoridation.
BFS suggested answer refuted
Most of what you think you know about fluoride just isn’t so. Consider the facts, check the references, and dare to think.
Darlene Sherrell, 1997
As I mentioned previously, my dentist, a university lecturer on dentistry, admitted knowing nothing about fluoride and relying entirely on other ‘experts’.
Throughout the history of fluoridation, there has been widespread reliance on the words of others and a failure to investigate reports of adverse effects of fluoride. This lack of willingness to investigate is not just a failure of individual scientists, doctors and dentists: it extends to the US public health service, which was involved in the early trials, accepted the findings of those trials unreservedly, and subsequently poured millions of dollars into promoting fluoridation; and to British and Irish government ‘health authorities’, whose brief is supposedly to protect the public health.
The second sentence of the BFS’s suggested answer is true – in a way. Much of the research done in the early days isn’t relevant to water fluoridation today – it was conducted using calcium fluoride or sodium fluoride, which bear little resemblance to the silicofluorides that are put in drinking water.
The first sentence of the BFS answer is just as worrying. I have no paper qualifications in either dentistry or chemistry, but I have no difficulty whatsoever understanding the findings of the hundreds of papers I have read. If I come across a word I don’t understand, I consult my medical dictionary. Surely dentists, whom we expect to know about such things, should understand them?
The last worry, which is an even bigger one, is that unelected health authorities currently make the decision on whether to fluoridate their respective areas, and if the New Labour government in the UK has its way, that responsibility will be devolved to local councils. This means that two bodies that are unlikely to have any first-hand knowledge whatsoever about the relative merits or dangers of fluoridation have the sole responsibility for mass medicating whole populations without their consent – something no doctor can legally do.
And it’s all based on what somebody else says, because nobody on the pro-fluoridation side seems willing to read the research, and, judging by the BFS answer, pro-fluoridationists do not feel that they are capable of understanding that research if they did read it.
A dentist finds out for himself
All dentists aren’t so medically illiterate. Here is a true story of one dentist who could understand the research, pursued it, and came out against fluoridation as a result.
Don MacAuley was a young dentist practising in Dublin, Ireland. Like most in his profession, he believed what he had been taught at college: that fluoride was a safe and effective defence against dental decay. His patients, however, voiced concerns. They asked him why, when the rest of Europe was so strongly opposed to fluoridation, Ireland was alone in endorsing it. Wanting to allay his patients’ concerns, he promised to make some investigations. When he studied the volume of international medical literature on fluoridation, he discovered that the fluoride story had a sinister side, of which he was unaware:
•Irish dentists told him that up to 40 per cent of Irish people suffered from dental fluorosis; that up to 80 per cent of children in fluoridated North America also had the condition.
•This mottling or staining of the teeth meant that too much of the chemical was present in the body; Canadian dental authorities conceded that fluoride could lead to bone and tooth destruction and could damage overall health; foreign research linked fluoride to hip fracture, bone disease, brain disorders and irritable bowel syndrome.
•Dr Hardy Limeback, professor of preventive dentistry at Toronto University and consultant to the Canadian Dental Authority, claimed that water fluoridation had actually contributed to the birth of the multimillion-pound cosmetic dentistry industry; that more money was being spent treating dental fluorosis than would be spent on dental caries if water were not fluoridated.
MacAuley found confirmation of these claims in his own knowledge, so he sought guidance, correctly, from the Irish Dental Association, his governing body.
‘To my surprise, I never received a reply’, he says.
I wrote two letters outlining the worries of my patients and stating I had a moral obligation to give them answers, but I heard nothing. I also wrote to the Chief Dental Officer at the Department of Health and was sent a fact sheet on Irish dental policy and the website address of the American Dental Association. This provided no information on the situation in Ireland.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, MacAuley requested details of research that had been done in Ireland on the effects of fluoride on public health, a stipulation under the Health (Fluoridation of Water Supplies) Act 1960. He also asked about the type and amount of fluoride used in Irish water, and where it came from.
The Irish Department of Health referred him to the regional health boards. He wrote to all eight. The next week, MacAuley received a telephone call from a senior dental surgeon at a health board outside his locality. The surgeon asked the reason for his questions, whether he planned to publish the results – and what his political affiliations were! He received telephone calls from other health board officials urging him to withdraw his Freedom of Information request and conform to Irish Dental Association policy. He says: ‘I was completely amazed. I couldn’t believe that the details of what I thought was a confidential request had been revealed. I contacted my solicitor who advised me to persevere with my enquiries.’
Four weeks later, he received guarded replies from several health boards. The Southern Health Board told him to look for answers he wanted in the library. ‘I felt there was an increasing resistance from officialdom to respond to my questions, but I was determined to get to the bottom of it.’
Eventually, MacAuley appealed to the Information Commissioner. After waiting almost a year, he finally received answers that confirmed his fears. He learned:
•that the fluoridating agent used in drinking water in Ireland, hydrofluorosilicic acid, was a non-biodegradable, highly corrosive substance, contaminated with a number of toxic substances, including arsenic;
•that according to reports by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1997, 9 per cent of all water supplies in Ireland exceeded the recommended levels of 1 mg fluoride per litre of water – which is illegal and impermissible;
•that in thirty-five years of fluoridation, no Irish government had ever carried out a public health survey on its effects.
By now, MacAuley was convinced that the Irish public was being denied the truth; that there was a hidden agenda to reveal as little as possible about fluoridation.
At dental school, you are taught only one side of the story, and if dentists don’t know the full story, how can our patients be expected to. Water fluoridation is sold as the greatest preventive oral health measure ever devised, but the story is biased and the indoctrination manipulative. In my view, many dentists continue to endorse fluoridation simply because they do not know the truth. They are not told that the fluoride used here is toxic waste contaminated with arsenic and lead. They are not told there is enough fluoride in a tube of toothpaste to kill a small child or that, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, it is more poisonous than lead. Yet we are expected to accept that a toxic waste diluted in our drinking water is safe.
The whole episode has been both shocking and emotionally draining. It is amazing the lengths to which proponents of fluoridation will go to protect this pollutant. If the government continues to mass medicate the Irish public without its consent, it will inevitably have to face up to the consequences. When it does, it is my belief that the bill to the taxpayer will dwarf the army deafness claims.
Don MacAuley is now firmly against fluoride. He now has a private practice and acts as advisor to the Irish Fluoride Free Water campaign. He is determined to educate his patients and colleagues about the truth behind fluoridation.
The Irish government breaks its own law
In a recent interview, the Irish Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, said that the reason the Irish government had never carried out a public health survey on the effects of fluoridation that its own law, the Health (Fluoridation of Water Supplies) Act 1960, requires, was that the population of Ireland was ‘too small’.1
Dentists obviously are not experts
In Britain, frustrated by the apparent lack of progress in getting more water fluoridated, the British Fluoridation Society and NHS started promoting the supply of fluoridated milk early in 2001.2
This action is a prime illustration of the BFS’s lack of understanding of the science of fluoridation:
•Because fluoride is a cumulative poison, the WHO website states very clearly that analysis of children’s urine should be considered mandatory for safety reasons when programmes to fluoridate school milk are introduced. They say, ‘Dental and public health administrators should be aware of the total fluoride exposure in the population before introducing any additional fluoride programme for caries prevention.’3 The BFS seems unaware of such warnings or, indeed, of the need for them.
•But — and this is the telling part — they do not realise that when sodium fluoride is added to milk it reacts with the calcium and precipitates out calcium fluoride, which sinks to the bottom of the glass within one hour. They do not know that if the milk has been stored for any length of time children will absorb very little, if any, of it. They also appear not to appreciate that calcium fluoride is not easily absorbed from the gut. Or that, according to the US Academy of Sciences, ‘Calcium rich foods cause elimination of systemic fluoride in faeces equal to or greater than the fluoride intake’.4 It is for these reasons that instructions on fluoride supplements state that the supplements should not be taken with milk. They also explain why toxicologists recommend milk in order to minimise the effects of fluoride poisoning. So, if you want children to absorb fluoride, the last thing you should put it in is milk.
Conclusion
If dentists declare they know of nothing adverse about the effects of fluoride, this is a reflection not of the state of science on the matter, but of their own arrogant indolence.
1.Fluoride in our water: are we brushing with danger? Irish Independent, 29 March 2000.
2.Children to get fluoride in school milk, The Independent, 21 January 2001.
3.WHO Geneva: World Health Organization, Fluorides and dental health, 1994.
4.Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes, Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine Dietary reference intakes for calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, vitamin D and fluoride, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999.