From F.A.N. How I ended up fighting fluoridation.
How I ended up fighting fluoridation.
By Chris Neurath
I was raised by my parents to believe fluoride and fluoridation were wonderful, progressive things. Before fluoridated toothpaste was available, and before our tap water was fluoridated, my father brought home bottles of fluoride drops from the pharmacy. My brothers and I were supposed to put it in orange juice every day. I remember wondering why we were given something from a bottle with a huge skull and crossbones on it. I don't remember my parent's explanations, but I'm sure I trusted them on this.
In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't like orange juice so I only occasionally took the fluoride. I had no cavities growing up, in contrast to the mouthfuls of both parents, and I always attributed this to the fluoride drops. Our family dentist encouraged this belief. Little did I know that in my generation we all had fewer cavities than our parents, irregardless of whether we ingested fluoride.
It wasn't until sometime in my 30s that I ever came across anyone who openly questioned fluoridation. He was a genial older man who suddenly became argumentative when the subject somehow arose and I claimed my lack of cavities was living proof that fluoride worked. I dismissed him as a crank. Not until years later did I realize I might have been the uninformed person.
When I first met Paul and Ellen Connett they were working on trash incinerators, not fluoride. I worked on this and several other environmental issues for many years with them. Paul and Ellen are both naturally talented at seeing through the lies and spin that poison so many environmental health issues. I was trained as a scientist, but it took me a while to realize how much science gets twisted when a vested interest is at stake. But even with my developing suspicion of manipulated science, I was stunned to read an investigative article on the dark history of fluoridation, first published by the Connetts in their tiny circulation environmental newsletter. The Christian Science Monitor had cancelled the story, and no mainstream media would touch it, so the authors Chris Bryson and Joel Griffiths gave it to the Connetts.
The Bryson/Griffith article tied the early promotion of fluoridation to promotion of atomic weapons. One memorable personal incident from my youth was probably what kept me from dismissing this as outrageous "conspiracy theory".
Back in high school, we got a reprieve from my chemistry class one day, to see a special presentation by a traveling "lecturer" from the Atomic Energy Commission, given to the entire school. He started out by tossing three whiffle balls into the audience, one of which chanced to go straight to me. He then asked the catchers of the balls to join him on stage. Once there, he announced that one of the balls was radioactive, whereupon the kid next to me dropped his like a hot potato. Being by nature more reserved, I just stood there waiting to find out what would happen next. The presenter singled me out to stay on stage as a "volunteer". He then offered a bottle of Coca-cola and asked me to drink some, after which he announced it had been spiked with radioactive iodine. He held his impressive looking Geiger counter at my neck, near my thyroid, and the clicking went crazy. This entire "stunt" was framed to demonstrate how harmless radiation really was. Although I was not at all happy with what went on, I came away, as did most of the kids in the audience, assuming that radiation really was something that could be "fun" to play with, and not that threatening.
That subliminal message stuck with me for years ... until I chanced to run into the brainiest kid from my high school, who was then studying physics at MIT. Somehow that presentation on atomic energy came up and he said he had been asked to help the presenter behind the scenes ... and he knew what had really gone on. The stunts with radioactivity were all faked. The presenter's Geiger counter had a tiny radioactive collar which he could slip back and forth over the detector to make it click at will. There was no radioactive whiffle ball, and no radioactive Coke. I was stunned to realize our government lies - intentionally - to deceive school children. In particular, about the safety of radiation and atomic energy.
The almost unbelievable revelations in the Bryson/Griffith article finally got me to seriously question my previous faith in fluoridation. But I can understand why most Americans still believe what they were told time and again as children ... that fluoridation is wonderful and anyone who questions it is crazy. For several more years I was still wary of joining the Connett's campaign on fluoridation. But then I started delving into the science itself.
The first dip I took was when Paul asked me to review the seminal reports of the first fluoridation "community trials" in the US, from the 1940s. I couldn't believe the shoddiness of these studies. They are truly "junk science".
But I was still wary of getting involved in the issue. Then Paul asked me to look into some of the cancer studies. Having investigated other environmental causes of cancer I had a special interest in this field, so I accepted. The Yiamouyiannis/Burk work was intriguing, but not fully convincing to me. Then a member of the National Research Council (NRC) committee reviewing fluoride suggested I look at a much more recent case-control study on fluoride and bone cancer by Kitty Gelberg. I started wading through the 400 page dissertation and the published paper, and realized there were gross errors in both. For example, Gelberg had somehow confused the males with the females! She had never caught this error and neither had the peer reviewers or any readers. In several key tables, she confused cases with controls, which is an even more fundamental error than switching males with females. There were other errors and many questionable interpretations. Gelberg concluded there was no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma, but buried in her study I saw evidence that suggested otherwise. I called Gelberg to try to straighten out the errors and to ask about some of the interpretations. It was the first she had ever heard about the possibility of errors in the 10 years since her work had been published. After grudgingly admitting the errors, she broke off any communication. My respect for "fluoridation science" dropped to a new low. Gelberg works as an epidemiologist for the New York State Department of Health, which happens to be one of the leading promoters of fluoridation in the US. It was a disappointing revelation that public servants can stonewall and ignore inquiries from the public.
About the same time as this Gelberg experience, in 2005, FAN was tipped off to the existence of Elise Bassin's Harvard doctoral dissertation on fluoride and osteosarcoma. This study had been completed four years previously but had been so effectively buried that it was unknown even to the expert NRC panel doing an exhaustive review of fluoride toxicology. Michael Connett went to Harvard to read the only "public" copy available anywhere, but was only allowed to photocopy a limited portion of it. His initial impression was this was a very important study. I made an appointment to see it myself. I was stunned by what I read. Bassin's high quality study had found a very strong link between fluoride exposure during a certain period of life (6th - to 8th years), and later developing osteosarcoma. I was equally shocked by the fact that this work had been hidden from the public for four years while Bassin's faculty advisor, Chester Douglass, who ran the study, went around the world lying to people, saying his research had found no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma.
Reading the Bassin dissertation, deep in the bowels of Harvard's Medical Library, was the turning point for me on fluoride. Here was clear evidence that the fluoride added to 2/3rds of American's drinking water was causing a frequently fatal form of cancer. This study isn't enough to "prove" fluoride causes cancer, but the fact that it had been hidden from the public and scientific community oof that, in Chris Bryson's words: "fluoride science is tobacco science".
With pressure from FAN, and with the Environmental Working Group leading the demand for an investigation of the cover-up of the Bassin study, the Bassin study was eventually brought to the world's attention ... and has created a stir ever since. The NRC final report notes it as a crucial piece of evidence on the question of carcinogenicity. Later, Bassin finally published her work in a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, with three respected Harvard co-authors.
But the opening salvo of the "tobacco science" attack on Bassin's work appeared on the same day her paper was published, in the same journal! Douglass wrote a "letter to the editor" where he questions the repeatability of Bassin's findings, and announces he is analyzing additional data sets from his study and believes they will not confirm her findings. Douglass says he will publish his results within months. His letter is full of omissions and misleading claims, but will be used for the next five years to dismiss Bassin's paper. In those five years, Douglass kept promising to publish his results for all to see, but never did ... until this year (Kim et al 2011). The publication of what Douglass suggests is the "last word" on fluoride and osteosarcoma, took him nearly 20 years! The study was originally scheduled to be completed in about 5 years.
And what does his "final word" paper actually contain? No evidence able to refute Bassin's study, because Douglass never even addresses the key evidence in Bassin's study (i.e. the critical period when children were exposed` - their 6th to 8th years). Douglass' study was actually much smaller than Bassin's, especially in the age group of 0-20 years. Douglass' paper even states that he had insufficient number of subjects in this age range to derive any conclusions.
Douglass also ended up with a control group that was much older and had a much different sex ratio, than his case group. Such drastic differences mean his entire study is of questionable validity. He is essentially comparing apples to oranges.
Douglass claims his method of estimating fluoride exposure is superior to Bassin's. Douglass used bone fluoride levels, whereas Bassin used a careful history of drinking water and other fluoride sources. Douglass' method using bone fluoride is incapable of pinpointing when a child was exposed to fluoride, whereas Bassin's is the best available method for timing exposure. The timing of exposure turned out to be the critical risk factor in Bassin's study. Douglass' study can not even address this key factor.
Douglass ignored a large portion of his data from a control group of people who did not have any cancer. Instead, he looked only at a control comparison group comprised of people who had types of bone cancer other than osteosarcoma. Bassin's controls did not have any type of cancer. Since fluoride concentrates so highly in bone tissue, there is a plausible mechanism for it to increase the risk of any type of bone cancer, not just osteosarcoma. Virtually no fluoride studies have ever looked for risks in anything but osteosarcoma, so it is disingenuous for Douglass to imply that there is no evidence linking these other types of bone cancer to fluoride. If fluoride does cause these other types of bone cancer, then his bone cancer controls are a terrible choice and invalidate his findings.
Given these three potentially fatal weaknesses of Douglass' much-heralded study, the fluoridationist spin machine had to go into overdrive to claim his work refuted Bassin's.
Perhaps because of the vulnerability of Douglass' final word on fluoride-osteosarcoma, there has been a recent flurry of low quality ecological studies from fluoridating countries, all claiming to find no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma. Or perhaps these studies were done because Douglass was so many years late in producing his promised work, that fluoridating countries decided they needed something to try to counter Bassin. I have carefully reviewed each of these studies, from Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They are all much weaker study designs than Bassin's case-control study. It is not surprising that these studies were unable to find a link.
So, on the final day of 2011, the issue of fluoride's carcinogenicity is still hot. It is a potential death knell for fluoridation, and the promoters know it and are scared. FAN will continue to use the best science to uncover the truth.
As Dr. John Colquon asked, is there any number of "prevented cavities" that can justify the life of one child who dies of bone cancer?
I've talked with parents of such children, and they are the most compelling reason for me to continue searching for the truth. I feel I owe my time and energy to them. You can be part of this effort through a donation to FAN ... and think of your support as potentially saving a child from getting bone cancer.
Chris Neurath is an invaluable member of our FAN team and Ellen and I cherish our 25 -year friendship with him (and now his wife Sara and young son Leo).
Here's wishing you all a Happy New Year and may we all achieve more successes battling fluoridation in our local communities and around the world.
Paul Connett,
By Chris Neurath
I was raised by my parents to believe fluoride and fluoridation were wonderful, progressive things. Before fluoridated toothpaste was available, and before our tap water was fluoridated, my father brought home bottles of fluoride drops from the pharmacy. My brothers and I were supposed to put it in orange juice every day. I remember wondering why we were given something from a bottle with a huge skull and crossbones on it. I don't remember my parent's explanations, but I'm sure I trusted them on this.
In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't like orange juice so I only occasionally took the fluoride. I had no cavities growing up, in contrast to the mouthfuls of both parents, and I always attributed this to the fluoride drops. Our family dentist encouraged this belief. Little did I know that in my generation we all had fewer cavities than our parents, irregardless of whether we ingested fluoride.
It wasn't until sometime in my 30s that I ever came across anyone who openly questioned fluoridation. He was a genial older man who suddenly became argumentative when the subject somehow arose and I claimed my lack of cavities was living proof that fluoride worked. I dismissed him as a crank. Not until years later did I realize I might have been the uninformed person.
When I first met Paul and Ellen Connett they were working on trash incinerators, not fluoride. I worked on this and several other environmental issues for many years with them. Paul and Ellen are both naturally talented at seeing through the lies and spin that poison so many environmental health issues. I was trained as a scientist, but it took me a while to realize how much science gets twisted when a vested interest is at stake. But even with my developing suspicion of manipulated science, I was stunned to read an investigative article on the dark history of fluoridation, first published by the Connetts in their tiny circulation environmental newsletter. The Christian Science Monitor had cancelled the story, and no mainstream media would touch it, so the authors Chris Bryson and Joel Griffiths gave it to the Connetts.
The Bryson/Griffith article tied the early promotion of fluoridation to promotion of atomic weapons. One memorable personal incident from my youth was probably what kept me from dismissing this as outrageous "conspiracy theory".
Back in high school, we got a reprieve from my chemistry class one day, to see a special presentation by a traveling "lecturer" from the Atomic Energy Commission, given to the entire school. He started out by tossing three whiffle balls into the audience, one of which chanced to go straight to me. He then asked the catchers of the balls to join him on stage. Once there, he announced that one of the balls was radioactive, whereupon the kid next to me dropped his like a hot potato. Being by nature more reserved, I just stood there waiting to find out what would happen next. The presenter singled me out to stay on stage as a "volunteer". He then offered a bottle of Coca-cola and asked me to drink some, after which he announced it had been spiked with radioactive iodine. He held his impressive looking Geiger counter at my neck, near my thyroid, and the clicking went crazy. This entire "stunt" was framed to demonstrate how harmless radiation really was. Although I was not at all happy with what went on, I came away, as did most of the kids in the audience, assuming that radiation really was something that could be "fun" to play with, and not that threatening.
That subliminal message stuck with me for years ... until I chanced to run into the brainiest kid from my high school, who was then studying physics at MIT. Somehow that presentation on atomic energy came up and he said he had been asked to help the presenter behind the scenes ... and he knew what had really gone on. The stunts with radioactivity were all faked. The presenter's Geiger counter had a tiny radioactive collar which he could slip back and forth over the detector to make it click at will. There was no radioactive whiffle ball, and no radioactive Coke. I was stunned to realize our government lies - intentionally - to deceive school children. In particular, about the safety of radiation and atomic energy.
The almost unbelievable revelations in the Bryson/Griffith article finally got me to seriously question my previous faith in fluoridation. But I can understand why most Americans still believe what they were told time and again as children ... that fluoridation is wonderful and anyone who questions it is crazy. For several more years I was still wary of joining the Connett's campaign on fluoridation. But then I started delving into the science itself.
The first dip I took was when Paul asked me to review the seminal reports of the first fluoridation "community trials" in the US, from the 1940s. I couldn't believe the shoddiness of these studies. They are truly "junk science".
But I was still wary of getting involved in the issue. Then Paul asked me to look into some of the cancer studies. Having investigated other environmental causes of cancer I had a special interest in this field, so I accepted. The Yiamouyiannis/Burk work was intriguing, but not fully convincing to me. Then a member of the National Research Council (NRC) committee reviewing fluoride suggested I look at a much more recent case-control study on fluoride and bone cancer by Kitty Gelberg. I started wading through the 400 page dissertation and the published paper, and realized there were gross errors in both. For example, Gelberg had somehow confused the males with the females! She had never caught this error and neither had the peer reviewers or any readers. In several key tables, she confused cases with controls, which is an even more fundamental error than switching males with females. There were other errors and many questionable interpretations. Gelberg concluded there was no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma, but buried in her study I saw evidence that suggested otherwise. I called Gelberg to try to straighten out the errors and to ask about some of the interpretations. It was the first she had ever heard about the possibility of errors in the 10 years since her work had been published. After grudgingly admitting the errors, she broke off any communication. My respect for "fluoridation science" dropped to a new low. Gelberg works as an epidemiologist for the New York State Department of Health, which happens to be one of the leading promoters of fluoridation in the US. It was a disappointing revelation that public servants can stonewall and ignore inquiries from the public.
About the same time as this Gelberg experience, in 2005, FAN was tipped off to the existence of Elise Bassin's Harvard doctoral dissertation on fluoride and osteosarcoma. This study had been completed four years previously but had been so effectively buried that it was unknown even to the expert NRC panel doing an exhaustive review of fluoride toxicology. Michael Connett went to Harvard to read the only "public" copy available anywhere, but was only allowed to photocopy a limited portion of it. His initial impression was this was a very important study. I made an appointment to see it myself. I was stunned by what I read. Bassin's high quality study had found a very strong link between fluoride exposure during a certain period of life (6th - to 8th years), and later developing osteosarcoma. I was equally shocked by the fact that this work had been hidden from the public for four years while Bassin's faculty advisor, Chester Douglass, who ran the study, went around the world lying to people, saying his research had found no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma.
Reading the Bassin dissertation, deep in the bowels of Harvard's Medical Library, was the turning point for me on fluoride. Here was clear evidence that the fluoride added to 2/3rds of American's drinking water was causing a frequently fatal form of cancer. This study isn't enough to "prove" fluoride causes cancer, but the fact that it had been hidden from the public and scientific community oof that, in Chris Bryson's words: "fluoride science is tobacco science".
With pressure from FAN, and with the Environmental Working Group leading the demand for an investigation of the cover-up of the Bassin study, the Bassin study was eventually brought to the world's attention ... and has created a stir ever since. The NRC final report notes it as a crucial piece of evidence on the question of carcinogenicity. Later, Bassin finally published her work in a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, with three respected Harvard co-authors.
But the opening salvo of the "tobacco science" attack on Bassin's work appeared on the same day her paper was published, in the same journal! Douglass wrote a "letter to the editor" where he questions the repeatability of Bassin's findings, and announces he is analyzing additional data sets from his study and believes they will not confirm her findings. Douglass says he will publish his results within months. His letter is full of omissions and misleading claims, but will be used for the next five years to dismiss Bassin's paper. In those five years, Douglass kept promising to publish his results for all to see, but never did ... until this year (Kim et al 2011). The publication of what Douglass suggests is the "last word" on fluoride and osteosarcoma, took him nearly 20 years! The study was originally scheduled to be completed in about 5 years.
And what does his "final word" paper actually contain? No evidence able to refute Bassin's study, because Douglass never even addresses the key evidence in Bassin's study (i.e. the critical period when children were exposed` - their 6th to 8th years). Douglass' study was actually much smaller than Bassin's, especially in the age group of 0-20 years. Douglass' paper even states that he had insufficient number of subjects in this age range to derive any conclusions.
Douglass also ended up with a control group that was much older and had a much different sex ratio, than his case group. Such drastic differences mean his entire study is of questionable validity. He is essentially comparing apples to oranges.
Douglass claims his method of estimating fluoride exposure is superior to Bassin's. Douglass used bone fluoride levels, whereas Bassin used a careful history of drinking water and other fluoride sources. Douglass' method using bone fluoride is incapable of pinpointing when a child was exposed to fluoride, whereas Bassin's is the best available method for timing exposure. The timing of exposure turned out to be the critical risk factor in Bassin's study. Douglass' study can not even address this key factor.
Douglass ignored a large portion of his data from a control group of people who did not have any cancer. Instead, he looked only at a control comparison group comprised of people who had types of bone cancer other than osteosarcoma. Bassin's controls did not have any type of cancer. Since fluoride concentrates so highly in bone tissue, there is a plausible mechanism for it to increase the risk of any type of bone cancer, not just osteosarcoma. Virtually no fluoride studies have ever looked for risks in anything but osteosarcoma, so it is disingenuous for Douglass to imply that there is no evidence linking these other types of bone cancer to fluoride. If fluoride does cause these other types of bone cancer, then his bone cancer controls are a terrible choice and invalidate his findings.
Given these three potentially fatal weaknesses of Douglass' much-heralded study, the fluoridationist spin machine had to go into overdrive to claim his work refuted Bassin's.
Perhaps because of the vulnerability of Douglass' final word on fluoride-osteosarcoma, there has been a recent flurry of low quality ecological studies from fluoridating countries, all claiming to find no link between fluoride and osteosarcoma. Or perhaps these studies were done because Douglass was so many years late in producing his promised work, that fluoridating countries decided they needed something to try to counter Bassin. I have carefully reviewed each of these studies, from Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They are all much weaker study designs than Bassin's case-control study. It is not surprising that these studies were unable to find a link.
So, on the final day of 2011, the issue of fluoride's carcinogenicity is still hot. It is a potential death knell for fluoridation, and the promoters know it and are scared. FAN will continue to use the best science to uncover the truth.
As Dr. John Colquon asked, is there any number of "prevented cavities" that can justify the life of one child who dies of bone cancer?
I've talked with parents of such children, and they are the most compelling reason for me to continue searching for the truth. I feel I owe my time and energy to them. You can be part of this effort through a donation to FAN ... and think of your support as potentially saving a child from getting bone cancer.
Chris Neurath is an invaluable member of our FAN team and Ellen and I cherish our 25 -year friendship with him (and now his wife Sara and young son Leo).
Here's wishing you all a Happy New Year and may we all achieve more successes battling fluoridation in our local communities and around the world.
Paul Connett,
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