Now Dr. Oz is Against Fluoride Too?

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich promo for The Dr. Oz Show

Brother John Birch and anti-science activists have a new friend — in Dr. Oz.

Well, anti-science activists always had him. But John Birchers, that may seem new. The good doctor has often garnered ratings by embracing wacky beliefs. Now he does so by again suggesting fluoride in water is hurting us, and for supporting evidence he put world-renowned epidemiologist Erin Brockovich on his show to advance her perspective on dental health.

Wait, Erin Brockovich is an epidemiologist? Of course not, she is an environmental activist; Julia Roberts played her in a movie. Yet for Dr. Oz, who has also trotted out a yogic flying instructor and the lawyer who raises dark money for SourceWatch as science experts, being portrayed by a Hollywood actress is the ultimate credential.

She is promoting doubt about fluoride in water, and so is he, or she wouldn’t be on the show.

Fluoridated water is common in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends it because 70 years of data show it has resulted in substantially improved dental health, so much that the CDC — actual experts, mind you — named it one of the greatest public health accomplishments of the 20th century.

What do Dr. Oz and Erin Brockovich know about fluoride that epidemiologists, hydrologists, the Institute of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Dental Association and the entire CDC do not? Nothing.

It is just the latest salvo in Oz’s war on accepted science. His only concession to actual evidence about fluoride is to put a link to decades of established facts in an obscure place on his website, while giving Erin Brockovich a platform for millions to create worry about a water problem that does not exist. It is shockingly bad false equivalence.

It isn’t the first time he has promoted fear and doubt about fluoride, but back in 2011 much of America still had not caught on to his fifth columnist efforts to undermine evidence-based health. He says he removes fluoride from his family’s water and that same year he put up pictures of severe fluorosis, without telling the audience that it happens in just 0.3% of cases among susceptible kids — a tiny few — and is just as likely to happen among children living in areas with low fluoride concentrations in the drinking water...............................