Letter: Studies Point to the Dangers of fluoridation

uArticle courtesy of Gloucester Times | February 14, 2015 | Gloucester Times | Shared as educational material

A study published in 2007 sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control still seems to be accurate.

It found that over 80 percent of dentists don’t understand how fluoride works. They prefer to repeat the discredited 1940s mythology of the magic bullet than admit that any perceived benefits from fluoride are almost exclusively topical.

Dentists enjoying their mantle of authority tell anecdotal stories that are not substantiated by epidemiological evidence. They testify to seeing a worsening decay rate after fluoride is removed from the water. However, the studies done to evaluate the impact after a period of several years all found that the decay rate remained stable or continued to decrease after fluoridation ceased.

Although these results surprised the dental researchers conducting the studies, they were consistent with world studies using World Health Organization data that demonstrate both fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries had the same decrease in cavities over the same period of time.

Those results were not released to the public, until Dr. Yiamouyiannis filed a Freedom of Information Act to release that data. The data demonstrated essentially identical decay rates in fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities consistent with the results seen by Dr. John Colquhoun, chief dental officer of New Zealand, a former proponent of fluoridation who changed his mind when he looked at the data for the entire country.

Dentists trust the marketing materials from the ADA, whose own “evidence-based dentistry” 2011 meta-analysis only identified three out of 59 studies as useable. The authors also categorized those three studies as “low to moderate quality” and noted that a flaw in the studies was that they did not consider any adverse health effects other than dental fluorosis.

From this literature review of three poor-quality and “limited” trials, they concluded that fluoride causes fluorosis, and it “may” be beneficial in communities where “culturally acceptable.” From this, the ADA gets “safe and effective” and “thousands of studies.”

Personally, I trust the much more scientific and inclusive whole health studies conducted in the Netherlands that concluded, “As a summary of our research, we are now convinced that fluoridation of the water supplies causes a low-grade intoxication of the whole population, with only the approximately 5 percent most sensitive persons showing acute symptoms.The whole population being subjected to low-grade poisoning means that their immune systems are constantly overtaxed. With all the other poisonous influences in our environment, this can hasten health calamities” (Dr. Hans Moolenburgh, 1993).

I also trust the analysis of National Research Council scientist Dr. Kathleen Thiessen, whose affidavit is part of a 2015 legal suit in Canada protesting “gross disproportionality,” i.e., that the marginal benefit to some does not justify the risk of harm to others.

Dr. Thiessen has said, “The available data, responsibly interpreted, indicate little or no beneficial effect of water fluoridation on oral health.”

Karen Favazza Spencer