Fluoride does no good, only harm

To the editor:

All dentists have been to dental school and basically followed the same curricula. One subject conspicuously absent from our training has been that of water fluoridation. The result is that dentists have neither a historical nor a scientific understanding of it. Furthermore, the ADA does not want us to learn about it in any depth, because if we did, we’d realize what an unscientific and tragic mistake it has been.

There’s no course called Fluoridation 101 in dental school. We were taught only a smidgen about fluoridation, mostly the early skewed and flawed reports from the late 1940s and beyond. Any fluoride science before 1940 was omitted. However, I’ve found that when dentists learn the historical fluoride science from 1900 to 1940, they usually cease their support of water fluoridation.

Why? Fluoride is a protoplasmic poison, in the same category as arsenic and lead. It can cause symptoms of toxicity in minute doses. It interferes with enzymatic processes associated with normal bone and tooth formation. Even in small amounts, over time it will cause numerous adverse health effects such as depressed thyroid function, bone abnormalities, joint deterioration, arthritic symptoms, neurological deficits and more.

From 1900 to the 1940s, the American Dental Association, American Medical Association and the Public Health Service told the truth about fluoridation and opposed it. However, these groups developed a huge vested interest in fluoridation. Now they dogmatically support it, for reasons having nothing to do with public health, too numerous to go into here in one short letter.

The ADA omitted hard facts about fluoridation from our dental educations because it does not want us to know the truth, as dentists would abandon blind loyalty to the ADA’s fluoridation policy if they did. Instead, there’s been this illusion created that dentists are somehow experts on fluoridation, even though most dentists know next to nothing about it, and what little they do know tends to be wrong.

Compared to dentists, a growing and well-informed public is far more educated about the scientific facts of fluoride and fluoridation. These knowledgeable folks are the same ones the ADA instructs its dentists to denigrate. When a knowledgeable opponent speaks out against fluoridation, dentists go straight into their knee-jerk reaction. Yet denigrate is all they can do, since science clearly rests on the side of the fluoridation opponents.

I too at one time supported fluoridation, based on what I was taught — and not taught. Fluoridation’s history and scientific facts were uncomfortable for me to accept. Yet having studied them, I had to admit the truth that fluoride is a poison, and it does no good but harm to swallow it. I hope that the good citizens of Newburyport will do the right thing, and put an end to the fluoridation of their water supplies.

Jim Maxey, DDS