The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our
Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics that Keep it
There
By Paul Connett, PhD, James Beck, MD, PhD, & H.S. Micklem, DPhil
Chelsea Green Publishing, 2010
On
the label of every tube of fluoride toothpaste is a statement which
reads, “Drug Facts: Active Ingredient—Sodium Fluoride … Keep out of
reach of children under six years of age. If more than used for brushing
is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control
Center right away.” The amount recommended for brushing is about the
size of a pea. This pea-sized dab contains about the same amount of
fluoride as one glass of water in areas that fluoridate the water. Do
you drink the recommended eight glasses of water per day? Do you call
the Poison Control Center when you do?
The insanity of
intentional water fluoridation is examined from every angle in this
book. International law forbids dumping fluoride waste into the sea but
it is accepted in American drinking water. As stated in the toothpaste
disclaimer above, the FDA officially considers fluoride to be a drug.
This drug has never been approved by the FDA. Contaminating drinking
water with fluoride can be most charitably characterized as an
experiment which violates the Nuremburg Code prohibiting experimental
human treatment without informed consent. China, India, Japan and most
of Europe do not fluoridate their water.
One
of the first studies claiming the safety of fluoride was done by Cox
and Hodge. Cox worked for the giant aluminum company Alcoa. At that time
fluoride was a major waste product of aluminum processing. It must have
seemed like a wondrous miracle when Cox discovered that this toxic
waste was safe and effective for preventing tooth decay when added to
the water supply. The real miracle is that so many people apparently
believe this. Hodge worked on the Manhattan Project supervising
experiments on unsuspecting patients who were injected with uranium and
plutonium. These guys have all the credibility of those famous leading
scholars named Larry, Curly and Moe. If you believe the studies and
health advice of Cox and Hodge, you might want to consider cutting back
on eating those old lead-based paint chips.
Many other studies
are reviewed, such as those of Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, who not only had no
conflict of interest with the commercial entities involved but in fact
suffered professionally for daring to suggest that fluoride might be
problematic.
John Colquhoun of New Zealand promoted fluoride
enthusiastically around the country for years. After traveling the world
to survey the effects of fluoride, he realized he was quite wrong.
Colquhoun was a man of rare courage and integrity, and spent the rest of
his life trying to undo the damage he had done.
When
the National Research Council came out with a report—over five hundred
pages long—unfavorable to fluoride, the American Dental Association took
less than one day to dismiss it. The Centers for Disease Control
rejected it six days later. The director of Quackwatch called fluoride
opponents “poison-mongers.” The irony piles pretty high when you
consider that most opponents are unpaid and do much of this on their own
dime, they have nothing to monger or sell, and are trying to remove the
poison, not add it.
Toward the end of the book the authors pull
out one of my all-time favorite quotes from the late Michael Crichton.
“Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of
scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is
already settled….The greatest scientists in history are great precisely
because they broke with the consensus. . . There is no such thing as
consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science,
it isn’t consensus.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2011.
