Something in the water: is fluoride actually good for cities?
As a public health researcher who examines sensitive subjects such as sexual health and teenage pregnancy, Stephen Peckham is used to robust debate.
But when his research questioned whether cities should be adding fluoride to their drinking water, Peckham, director of the Centre for Health Service Studies at the University of Kent and a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Toronto, wasn’t ready for the poisonous attacks that followed.
“Nothing prepared me for the ferocity around fluoridation,” says Peckham. Over a 25-year academic career he has written or co-authored more than 150 papers, chapters and books. His work is cited in another 1,300 papers. Yet his research on water fluoridation will not, he has been told, be published in the main dental health journals.
When Scientific World published his paper on ingested fluoride in 2014, the journal was dismissed as “shonky” and a “bottom-feeder”. When the more reputable peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemiological and Community Health published Peckham’s research on fluoride and hypothyroidism last year, one dental school professor said that it “beggars belief that they should be able to say that in a reputable publication”, while a professor of medicine said it was “irresponsible for the paper’s peer reviewers to not have asked the authors to tone down their conclusions”. Science blogs accused him of “statistics-hacking” and cited him as an example of “how to lie with statistics”.
“It’s very difficult,” Peckham says. “I’ve been hugely and personally attacked by scientific bloggers in different countries. But that’s the difficulty of trying to work in this area, so I just keep my head down.”......
...........A fluoride-free future?
As a young dentist, Lorna MacPherson had to extract the teeth of young children under general anaesthetic. “It was always difficult to see the pain they were experiencing,” she recalls.” She sees a different picture now when she visits nurseries in Glasgow to measure the oral health of three-year-olds. “Ten years ago the nursery teachers would show us children with black or no front teeth. Now we see rows of lovely white teeth. It makes our work so rewarding.” A decade ago, Scotland’s chief dental officer asked MacPherson, a professor of public dental health at the University of Glasgow, to pilot an alternative to water fluoridation. And since 2010, her Childsmile initiative has been rolled out across the country, giving young children free toothbrushes, toothpaste and two fluoride varnish applications per year. Children attending nursery, and those in primary schools in deprived areas, are offered daily supervised brushing. In addition to free dental treatments, the scheme gives parents and adult carers dietary advice to help them prevent tooth decay......................
But when his research questioned whether cities should be adding fluoride to their drinking water, Peckham, director of the Centre for Health Service Studies at the University of Kent and a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Toronto, wasn’t ready for the poisonous attacks that followed.
“Nothing prepared me for the ferocity around fluoridation,” says Peckham. Over a 25-year academic career he has written or co-authored more than 150 papers, chapters and books. His work is cited in another 1,300 papers. Yet his research on water fluoridation will not, he has been told, be published in the main dental health journals.
When Scientific World published his paper on ingested fluoride in 2014, the journal was dismissed as “shonky” and a “bottom-feeder”. When the more reputable peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemiological and Community Health published Peckham’s research on fluoride and hypothyroidism last year, one dental school professor said that it “beggars belief that they should be able to say that in a reputable publication”, while a professor of medicine said it was “irresponsible for the paper’s peer reviewers to not have asked the authors to tone down their conclusions”. Science blogs accused him of “statistics-hacking” and cited him as an example of “how to lie with statistics”.
“It’s very difficult,” Peckham says. “I’ve been hugely and personally attacked by scientific bloggers in different countries. But that’s the difficulty of trying to work in this area, so I just keep my head down.”......
...........A fluoride-free future?
As a young dentist, Lorna MacPherson had to extract the teeth of young children under general anaesthetic. “It was always difficult to see the pain they were experiencing,” she recalls.” She sees a different picture now when she visits nurseries in Glasgow to measure the oral health of three-year-olds. “Ten years ago the nursery teachers would show us children with black or no front teeth. Now we see rows of lovely white teeth. It makes our work so rewarding.” A decade ago, Scotland’s chief dental officer asked MacPherson, a professor of public dental health at the University of Glasgow, to pilot an alternative to water fluoridation. And since 2010, her Childsmile initiative has been rolled out across the country, giving young children free toothbrushes, toothpaste and two fluoride varnish applications per year. Children attending nursery, and those in primary schools in deprived areas, are offered daily supervised brushing. In addition to free dental treatments, the scheme gives parents and adult carers dietary advice to help them prevent tooth decay......................
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