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Thanks for writing _____, I appreciate your expression of concern about my raising the issue of the fluoridation of Duluth’s municipal water supply and how raising that old “dead” issue might possibly harm my credibility in this community.

We both realize how political the fluoridation debate has become. But we also recognize how much new scientific evidence there is that refutes the repeated assurances we have all heard over our lifetimes from the lobbyists and pro-fluoridation special interest folks about the safety of fluoride ingestion. We have all heard the “fluoride is good for you” myths. It has been going on for a couple of generations now, so most of us believe that it must be true. And many of these myths have been adopted as sacred truths by many well-meaning advocates of fluoridation. I was once one of those advocates. Below are some of the reasons I have changed my mind on the subject.

Actually, my motivation in recently raising the issue with policy-makers and opinion-leaders recently was honorable. I was simply accepting the role of temporary spokesperson for a number of concerned citizens here in Duluth, who wanted me to raise the issue with some local leaders. Most people have, up until now, assumed that the fluoridation issue was settled. But after looking at all the evidence, I am now convinced that the issue needs to be re-opened and that there is a need to have a legitimate debate about the safety of forced drinking water fluoridation.

It’s easy to understand why fluoridation here in Duluth has gone unexamined for so long. Duluth is no different than most other American cities that fluoridate their municipal water system. They simply want to be in compliance with the Minnesota state law mandating it. And even though our law-abiding city leaders are generally open-minded and well-meaning, they might have, over the years, been listening only to the pro-fluoridation factions and therefore may not be fully aware of some of the new science about this important public health issue that should be raising red flags.

Before reading on, I hope that folks will watch the informative short video about the politics of water fluoridation at: http://www.fluoridealert.org/fan-tv/politics/, and, while on that site, will sample some of the other videos as well.

The deeply flawed early research on fluoridation

America is now two generations into the forced water fluoridation issue, which was initiated by the phosphate fertilizer and aluminum industries, both of which produce, as by-products, toxic fluoride-containing waste materials, which were ultimately turned, by hook or by crook, into a very profitable sideline industry, by selling it to municipalities to add to the drinking water. Eventually the toothpaste companies, the American Medical Association and the American Dental Association also came on board to help promote the “fluoride-is-totally-safe” myth.

The flawed early “science” on water fluoridation began in the 1940s and 50s with anecdotal reports of lower rates of tooth cavities in a community that had higher than normal sodium fluoride levels in the water supply.

An experiment was then done in a single community in Michigan by adding fluoride to the water supply, reportedly resulting in lower rates of dental caries in the children. No investigation into the possible adverse effects was done. By today’s research standards, the study was primitive and deeply flawed. But ever since this “research” was done, the lobbyists of these special interest groups have been repeatedly overstating the evidence with periodic advertising campaigns from the ADA and the toothpaste companies that has convinced almost everybody that fluoride is safe and effective in reducing tooth decay.

<<<Re-examining the evidence>>>

But whenever there is a political or economic issue that might wind up re-shaping public opinion about something, we should immediately start “following the money”. Back in America’s enthusiastic but naïve post-war boom years when everything was coming up roses, it was hard for most of us to be alert to the ulterior motives of con artists and big business. But now that we should be less naïve, we shouldn’t be afraid of re-examining and re-interpreting historical events. Indeed, re-assessing history should be mandatory!

Indeed, the flawed fluoride research of the 1940s and 50s needs revision. The corporations behind the pro-fluoride propaganda have profited handsomely by using all their cunning to obfuscate, create doubt in people’s minds, generate pseudoscientific studies supporting the old myths and viciously and unfairly attack the opposition. It is not hard to see why the fluoridation issue has been made to appear controversial. There is a lot of money at stake.

Cognitive Dissonance and the difficulty in changing minds

Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort that is felt when a person’s deeply held belief system is de-stabilized by contradictory new information that refutes the old belief system. Consciously or unconsciously wanting to avoid the discomfort and the humiliation that might result if the person were forced to admit that the old beliefs were erroneous often results in fight, flight, fear, avoidance, denial (of the new truth), attempts to discredit the new science or, finally, attacking the bringer of the bad news. A good example might be the ADA’s adamant refusal to acknowledge the veracity of the overwhelming evidence that proves that the mercury (50% of the content) in traditional “silver” amalgam fillings is actually highly toxic to all human tissue, especially brain cells. Perhaps the resistance to new facts about the dangers of fluoride is another example.

There are many legitimate scientists and highly intelligent lay experts (listen to some of them testify at: http://www.fluoridealert.org/fan-tv/) who dispute the traditional notion that the supposed benefits of forced fluoridation (to children’s developing teeth) somehow outweighs the risks to the rest of the citizenry that are involuntarily swallowing uncertain amounts of a known toxin. These experts know what they are talking about and they are exhibiting great courage when faced with the cheap ad hominem attackers accusing them of being quacks.

Paying attention to the good science concerning the dangers of fluoride has convinced well-informed leaders in 95% of western European nations to refuse to fluoridate their drinking water. They happen to know that the incidence of dental caries in their children is no different from children growing up in the fluoridated United States!

The fluoridation debate is hot in Portland, Oregon

The residents of Portland, Oregon are currently debating the pros and cons of community fluoridation. There is a ballot initiative being voted on now that could cost the taxpayers $500,000 per year to fluoridate their water – after an initial taxpayer investment of 7.6 million dollars for the necessary equipment Some industries are going to make a lot of money on that deal. See why “200 Portland physicians are urging a NO vote” at: http://www.cleanwaterportland.org/?gclid=CNjag_bBpbcCFbFAMgodiEMAlw.

Many other enlightened leaders around the world have actually looked at the poor risk/benefit analyses, and they know that there is nothing but risk for most of the folks that are beyond the early age of adult tooth development.

Perhaps the most concerning reality for me is the fact that the fluoride compounds that are added to municipal water supplies are totally unlike the sodium fluoride (which does in fact have a very narrow therapeutic range of safety) that was found in some water supplies back in the 1940s.

The fluoride used by communities are actually hazardous chemical waste products that used to be a burden to the company that generated them, but they are now sold – very profitably – to municipalities (by legislative mandate in Minnesota), turning an economic liability into a profit center for the phosphate fertilizer and aluminum industries. The “fluoride” powder dumped into the water is actually a mix of sodium silicofluoride compounds, primarily hydrofluosilicic acid that can, in its concentrated form, actually etch glass – as can the highly corrosive acid, hydrofluoric acid, known for its amazing ability to rapidly dissolve many metals and glass. Sodium silicofluoride compounds have NEVER been tested for safety in any human study!

Fluorine is the most electronegative element in the periodic table, meaning that it binds very powerfully to many other elements and molecules, especially animal and vegetable tissue (ie, carbon-based substances). The fluorine in fluorinated compounds CANNOT easily be catabolized by liver enzymes, which help to explain why the so-called metabolic breakdown products of Prozac remain physiologically and neurologically active no matter how many times the synthetic chemical drug has passed through the liver. Fluorinated compounds such as psychoactive drugs attach themselves extremely tightly to synaptic organelles and other brain tissue structures and are only removed from the body by slow fecal or urinary excretion.

One frightening example of how prolonged are the effects (and half-lives) of fluorinated drugs is the methamphetamine-like drug fenfluramine (1/2 of the now-banned flash-in-the-pan Fen-Phen weight loss drug popularized in the mid-1990s) that caused, in addition to the fairly well advertised heart and lung toxicity, widespread permanent serotonin brain cell death in experimental animals.

Fenfluoramine, as is true with the “antidepressant” drugs Prozac and Luvox, has three fluoride atoms in every molecule (in the form of a trifluoromethane moeity). All three compounds accumulate in animal brains, with one study showing that, over a 6 week period of time, Prozac concentrated in brain tissue to a level 20 times the level in the blood! Talk about your brain-altering drugs. Prozac had such a long serum and brain tissue half-life that Eli Lilly actually tried to market a once a week dosing version of the drug. A single 90 mg capsule per week was considered by Lilly to be equivalent to a dose of 20 mg per day! It was never a marketing or economic success and was quickly and quietly withdrawn. To my knowledge, Lilly has never released data to the medical community about the adverse post-marketing consequences of that risky experiment.

Fluoride is a drug, not a nutrient

At any rate, fluoride is a drug – not a nutrient – and therefore adding fluoride in any form to community water supplies is medicating people involuntarily. Folks who may not need and don’t want to ingest the stuff are swallowing the drug against their wills. This is a civil liberty issue if there ever was one and an issue that should be worthy of re-examination and free discussion.

Like all my physician colleagues (and my dentist father-in-law), in the early days of big push by industry to fluoridate municipal water, I was the victim of a dis-information campaign. I was convinced by unproven claims of safety and efficacy from industry-propagated pseudoscience, and I was therefore duped into supporting a position that I can no longer uphold.

I found myself in favor of forced fluoridation, but it was partly because I refused to listen to the science presented by the anti-fluoridation experts. I now recall having twinges of conscience when I saw that nobody was actually doing fluoride assays of anybody’s home drinking water. And I also remember twinges of guilt whenever I was confronted by cases of dental fluorosis in my pediatric patients. I had nothing to say to them except to recommend stopping the fluoride vitamins.

So I stopped prescribing the AMA-mandated fluoride-laced liquid vitamins (for babies) and the fluoride tablets (for toddlers and young children) to any child, vitamins that my young patients were supposed to take in our particular region of northern Minnesota, because by that time I knew that I was overdosing some of them. But I didn’t know which ones were being poisoned by the fluoride. And so I didn’t warn anybody about the risks of iatrogenic dental fluorosis. In my defense, my AMA had not informed me about the iatrogenic disease of fluoride-induced skeletal fluorosis so, out of ignorance, I hadn’t warned anybody about that brittle bone problem.

Involuntary fluoridation has surely poisoned many unaware innocents, beyond just causing mottled teeth, brittle bones and lowered IQs. Children who may already be getting safe levels of fluoride in their drinking water (if there is indeed an actual safe level) may be ingesting other sources by just using fluoride toothpaste. Lots of children inadvertently swallow some of their candy flavored Crest or Colgate, the tubes of which have, by law, poison warning labels on them that most everybody ignores, especially toddlers, who can’t read the warnings. In the past year there were over 23,000 cases of possible fluoride toothpaste adverse reactions reported to Poison Control Centers across the US. Mild cases of fluoride poison usually manifests as stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, headache, dizziness, and flu-like symptoms. Serious poisoning can result in death.

FDA warnings are not given out willy-nilly. Some very serious poisonings of children from fluoridated toothpaste must have prompted this FDA-mandated warning, which says:

“WARNING: Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, seek professional help or contact a poison control center immediately.”

Besides the risks of swallowing toothpaste, what about the absorption of fluoride across the buccal mucosa? I would venture to guess that there are no good studies measuring the phenomenon of fluoride absorption across the buccal mucosa while brushing one’s teeth –  much less any study of the long-term consequences of such absorption.

Fluoride is a known thyrotoxin

Fluoride-containing compounds are known to be especially toxic to the thyroid gland and to the brain. Fluoride compounds are well known (along with bromide and chloride) to displace iodine from the thyroid hormones during the metabolic process! In the metabolism of the thyroid hormone, fluorinated (as well as chlorinated) compounds poison the enzyme deiodinase, which converts the far less active T4 hormone to the more active T3 that the body relies on for proper health and energy!

I read a study in an obscure toxicology journal a decade ago that looked at the adverse effects on thyroid function caused by the fluorinated “anti-depressant” drug Paxil. (Note that the study results can logically be extrapolated to virtually all of the fluorinated SSRIs [Zoloft is the only non-fluorinated naturally long-acting SSRI but it is a chlorinated compound with two chlorine atoms attached to its amphetamine-type base molecule]). The study showed that Paxil caused a significant decrease in both T4 and T3 over time. Of course, since the study was never published in any of the mainstream medical journals, very few prescribing physicians were aware of it. Mainstream medical journals, as you know, are heavily subsidized by Big Pharma. Whoever pays the piper, calls the tune.

The list below includes other common prescription drugs that are fluorinated and therefore may be toxic to the thyroid gland, brain and other body tissues: 1) antidepressants like Prozac, Luvox, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro, 2) antipsychotics like Risperdal and Haldol, 3) all the fluoroquinolone antibiotics like Cipro and Levaquin (and the lethal and now-off-the-market Trovan, 4) the statin drugs Crestor and Baycol (the latter was particularly lethal and is now banned), 5) the Vioxx look-alike anti-inflammatory drug Celebrex, 6) the antifungal drug Diflucan, 7) the antimalarial drug Lariam, 8) the now-banned anti-reflux drug Propulsid, 9) the inhalant  general anesthetic Halothane (which is bristling with chloride, bromide as well as fluoride atoms).

It needs to be noted that fluorination (and chlorination) of any drug dramatically increases the serum half-life of the drug (as well as the brain half-life in the case of psychoactive drugs) by inhibiting the metabolic degradation by the P-450 liver enzyme systems. Therefore the excretion of the drug is impaired and the duration of action of the “long-acting” drug is increased.

This intended consequence of fluorination therefore allows the drug to be marketed as a once-a-day long-acting dosing formulation, a highly desirable trait, because the drug industry knows that patients often forget to take two or three times a day drugs.  But the downside for patients is the fact that these synthetic fluorinated drugs may multiply the toxic effects of any other source of fluoride (or chloride or bromide)! Check out the sobering pharmaceutical journal article on the fluorination of drugs at: http://www.iptonline.com/articles/public/IPTFOUR74NP.pdf

Well that should be enough of a justification for somebody to urge our community leaders to inform themselves about an issue that has likely been sickening folks, lowering our children’s IQs, adversely affecting everybody’s physical and mental health and putting us all at risk for borderline hypothyroidism and brain dysfunction.

The Precautionary Principle

The Precautionary Principle is the precept that an action should not be taken if the consequences of that action are uncertain and potentially dangerous The PP demands that society thoroughly looks at all potential sources of toxicity and pollution and demands that the producers of those potentially toxic substances prove them to be safe both short and long-term before they are released onto the environment.

Tragically, contrary to corporate entities in the European Union, polluting American industries (particularly the defense, chemical, oil, pipeline, mining, transportation and pharmaceutical industries) never apply that protective principle in their business models! Hence thousands of polluting US entities such as Monsanto, Dow Chemical, BP, Exxon-Mobil, Alcoa, the Pentagon, etc, etc are either personas non grata in Europe or they behave themselves there, while at the same time legally operating with impunity in the US – with the blessing of their co-conspirators on Wall Street and in the US Congress.

Polluting US industries, eager to pad next quarter’s earnings reports (and therefore their share price), have their bloated stable of cunning lawyers and lobbyists search for legal ways to screw the planet and its people by dumping unregulated, untested and toxic substances into the public’s water, air and soil before knowing everything we need to know about the long-term health consequences of their poison products. The PP is bad for business because it’s bad for profits. It almost seems like the CEO industrialists of the 1% that head up polluting companies are saying, in effect, “you people and your planet can go to hell for all we care. We’ll risk the extinction of mankind if we want to. We don’t need you useless eaters because we have our fortunes, our gated communities, our body guards and the police and military to protect our luxury wealth from you.” Say it isn’t true.

I encourage all concerned citizens to re-educate themselves on this and other important issues and add your public voices to the cause if and when the opportunity arises (and, at the least, try to avoid unnecessary exposure to potential toxins, not just in the water we all drink, but also in the food supply and in the air we all breathe.

There are many good websites to start the consciousness-raising process concerning forced fluoridation. A good place to start is the website of a group of concerned parents from Canada that call themselves Parents of Fluoride Poisoned Children (www.PFPC.com). Another is the Fluoride Action Network (www.fluoridealert.org). (Interestingly, when I accidentally typed in the .com address rather than the .org address I was immediately linked to the American Dental Association’s pro-fluoridation website. Go figure.)