A
similar statement to that in the ADA News Bulletin was incorporated into a long
(10-page) misleading letter to members of the ACT Legislative Assembly and was
a factor in tricking some of them into reversing their vote and restoring
fluoridation to Canberra, without waiting for the finding of a five-member
Parliamentary Committee which the Assembly had set up to investigate this
matter. The report of this committee was published in February 1991 (See
Appendix II).
The
concept of fluoridation arose from the results reported from "naturally
fluoridated" areas of the U.S.A., during investigations into the cause of
the unsightly condition then called "mottling" of the teeth
("dental fluorosis"). The main investigator was Dr Trendley Dean
(1934), who became known as "the Father of Fluoridation".
In
1983, Dr Rudolph Ziegelbecker, of the Institute of Environmental Research,
Graz, Austria, commented on these studies. One of them showed that with a
fluoride concentration of 0.5 ppm in Wisconsin the DMF rate per 100 children
aged 12-14 years, was 710 - twice that of the DMF rate (342) in children of the
same age in Colorado, where the fluoride concentration in the drinking-water
was also 0.5 ppm. He found that:
"The
calculation shows that in Wisconsin, fluoride in the range from 0.12 to 0.5 ppm
was not correlated with caries incidence", and he stated that "This
study by Dean, used by the respondents [in a High Court case in Edinburgh] to
support the hypothesis that fluoride reduces the caries incidence, is clearly
unsound in its premises and conclusions and gives no one evidence that fluoride
reduces caries incidence."
Ziegelbecker
also considered the famous diagram showing the dental caries / fluoride
relationship in 21 cities in the U.S.A. This was prepared by Dean, Arnold and
Elvove in 1942 and was published in many text-books, having a marked influence
in promoting the idea that the prevalence of dental caries was inversely
related to the fluoride content of drinking-water.
Ziegelbecker
(1983) stated that this chart of the "inverse relationship" between
fluoride ingestion and dental caries prevalence was based on:
"...
an inexcusable illicit selection of data"
because
dental surveys from more than 650 counties and cities were known to Dean, but
that he had:
"...selected
21 cities in such a manner that the result supported the thesis of the
"inverse relationship" between the natural fluoride content of the
common water supply and the caries incidence in children."
(More
than forty years after its publication this false diagram was still used, being
tendered in evidence in 1981 by the pro-fluoridation respondents in that High
Court case in Edinburgh, who stated that it was a careful and important study.)
Contrary
to the contention of the editor of the Australian Dental Journal, there is no
doubt that the early results reported from the Grand Rapids trial brought about
the endorsement of fluoridation by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1950 (Lohr
and Love, 1954), and undoubtedly formed the basis of later proposals to
fluoridate drinking-water.
The
editor of the Australian Dental Journal did not make further comments on that
paper (Sutton and Amies, 1958a) after Associate-Professor Noel Martin, the main
advocate of fluoridation in Australia, had failed, in two long letters to the
Medical Journal of Australia on 22 February and 14 June 1958 (Martin, 1958a,
1958b) to point out any errors in the paper.
In a
reply to Martin's letters it was noted (Sutton and Amies, 1958b) that:
"Despite
the fact that the length of his [Martin's] criticisms considerably exceeded
that of the paper, he did not indicate even one error in the statements made in
demonstrating that there are disturbing features in the published reports of
fluoridation trials."
The
same Associate-Professor Martin was appointed on 12 November, 1959 by the
Dental Advisory Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council
of Australia to be the chairman of a committee of three - the other two members
were professors of statistics - to investigate the contents of the monograph
Fluoridation Errors and Omissions in Experimental Trials. Apparently, even with
their expert assistance, he was not able to criticize the book and hoped that
the matter would be forgotten, for more than three years later his report had
not been submitted. However, this was noticed, and he was then instructed (25
March, 1963) to present it at the next meeting of that Committee of the
NH&MRC. He did so, but his report was not released.
After
the passing of the Freedom of Information Act, under the provisions of that Act,
the chairman of the Anti-Fluoridation Association of Victoria sought for two
years to see that report by Associate-Professor Martin. When the report was not
forthcoming the matter was taken to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (in
effect, a court) in July 1985, the respondent being the Secretary of the
Commonwealth Health Department. After a lengthy case in the Tribunal it was
announced that although the other records of the NH&MRC were available,
Associate-Professor Martin's report could not be found, and that no further
search would be undertaken by the government to locate this official report by
Martin and his committee.
(There
is no doubt that this report existed at one time for Sir Arthur Amies, who was
then a member of the Dental Advisory Committee of the NH&MRC, told the
present author that he had read it, but that it was merely fluoridation
propaganda and had not provided any valid criticism of the monograph.
Presumably it had been removed from the NH&MRC files and destroyed.)
Soon
after the first edition of the monograph was published, the stored printer's
type at the Melbourne University Press (which was usually held for at least six
months) was melted down without authority by an unknown person, thus almost
preventing the publication of a second edition. However, the type was re-set,
at considerable expense...
There
are accounts of similar attempts being made in other countries to prevent the
publication of books which criticize fluoridation. One well-known case was the
book The Toxicology of Fluoride, edited by Professor T. Gordonoff. According to
Professor Albert Schatz (1965), one publishing house set the type:
"But it was then warned that if it went ahead and published this particular book the dental community would stop patronizing it. In the face of this threatened economic boycott and enticed by an offer of compensation to cover all expenses incurred (approximately 10,000 Swiss franks), the publisher "dropped" the book."
"But it was then warned that if it went ahead and published this particular book the dental community would stop patronizing it. In the face of this threatened economic boycott and enticed by an offer of compensation to cover all expenses incurred (approximately 10,000 Swiss franks), the publisher "dropped" the book."
It was
published two years later by Schwab & Co.
As Schatz
said in 1965:
"There
are powerful forces which now have a vested interest in perpetuating
fluoridation because their reputations depend on its continuation."
Suppression of discussion regarding
fluoridation
The same vested
interests are promoting fluoridation today, in the 1990's using similar
techniques to prevent the spread of the knowledge that fluoridation has failed:
The repression and abuse of opponents of this process and the suppression of
published evidence against it, and making it difficult to publish new material
which those interests consider even questions fluoridation.
This
discouragement of the discussion on fluoridation is still pursued very
actively. The U.S. Public Health Service (U.S.PH.S.) - now the Department of
Health and Welfare - distributes enormous funds to its many agencies. It also
finances many research grants, both in the U.S.A. and in other countries. This
control of grants has a restricting effect on the scientific discussion of
fluoridation, for since 1950 it has been a process strongly promoted by the
U.S.PH.S. American professors have admitted that they have to think of their
grants and, therefore, avoid the subject of fluoridation. This is
understandable for, apart from the financial aspects, if they questioned
fluoridation there would be a distinct possibility that they would be added to
those who are abused and whose personal reputations are attacked.
The refusal
to consider any material which questions fluoridation is well illustrated by
the experience of Professor Albert Schatz. In 1976 he published reproductions
of photostat copies of three envelopes he had used in 1965, each containing the
same short article about increased death rates associated with fluoridation in
Chile. He had written previously to L.C. Henderson, the editor of the Journal
of the American Dental Association about this paper but had not received a
reply. The photographs show that the editor had refused to accept each of the
three envelopes, in succession, and that they had therefore been returned,
unopened, to Professor Schatz (his name was on the outside of each envelope).
In 1961, the
American Dental Association's Bureau of Public Information, in a re-issue of a
publication entitled Comments on the O12Donents of Fluoridation, grouped
several reputable scientists with alleged members of the John Birch Society,
the Ku Klux Klan, an escapee from a hospital for mental patients, and others,
in an obvious attempt to injure their reputations by "damning by association."
That dossier condemned the 300 members of the Medical-Dental Committee on the
Evaluation of Fluoridation, solely because they were such a small proportion of
the 300,000 physicians and dentists in the U.S.A.
Mr Ralph
Nader, the consumer advocate, said in 1971:
"... you
just don't expect to be treated well by H.E.W. [a branch of the U.S.PH.S.] in
its massive research granting if you come out against this kind of thing
[fluoridation]. It's a matter of professional intimidation here."
In 1988 Bette
Hileman, an associate editor of Chemical & Engineering News, stated that
John S. Small, information specialist at the U.S. National Institute of Dental
Research, had admitted that he keeps files on anti-fluoridation organizations
and their leaders, and she said that Ralph Nader had branded such activities as
an "institutionalized witch-hunt".
An
attempt was made to prevent the distribution of the monograph Fluoridation:
Errors and Omissions in Experimental Trials (Sutton, 1959) in the U.S.A. by,
amongst others, the Nutrition Foundation Inc., which wrote to the distributors,
Cambridge University Press, New York, on 20 January, 1960, declaring that:
"The
professional standing of the Cambridge University Press among scientists and
educators would seem to preclude publication of such a book by Cambridge
University Press."
In his
reply (25 Jan., 1960) the manager of the Cambridge University Press said;
"...
if you find inaccuracies in Dr Sutton's book, we should be most grateful if you
will point them out to enable us to make changes in any future printing."
He did
not receive a reply to his letter.
When
this attempt to suppress the monograph failed, the Journal of the American
Dental Association published an extensive criticism of it. That influential
journal, in July 1960, devoted a three-page editorial to attacking the monograph.
It stated:
"Last
year the Melbourne University Press of Australia published an 83 page booklet
by Mr P.R.N. Sutton entitled Fluoridation Errors and Omissions in Experimental
Trials. It is now being circulated to a limited extent in the United States.
The
following review prepared by J. Ferris Fuller for the New Zealand Dental
Journal is herewith republished in full as it skillfully points out many of the
errors and omissions in reporting which Mr P.R.N. Sutton has less skilfully
employed in compiling his observations on the errors and omissions in
fluoridation."
By
twice incorrectly using the term "Mr ", the editor of the J.A.D.A.
conveyed to readers, particularly to American ones, that the author of the
monograph was a layman, for all dentists and medical practitioners in America
are given the title of "Dr" If the editor of J.A.D.A. had read even
the title page of the monograph he must have known that the author had received
the postgraduate degree of Doctor of Dental Science from the University of Melbourne.
Therefore it appears that this "mistake" was made deliberately to
deceive his readers.
Then
followed the criticism by J. Ferris Fuller shown on pages 327 to 330.
However,
the editor of the Journal of the American Dental Association was so keen to
denigrate the monograph that he failed to check the claims made in the
"book review" which he re-published. Apparently he did not realize
that the criticism by Colonel Fuller, although superficially
"skillful", was based on misquotations - that this critic condemned
statements which the author of the monograph had not made, nor did he realize
that Colonel Fuller had concocted many false and misleading comments of his
own.
The
most important publication which enables a reader to locate articles and books
on dental subjects is the annual Index to Dental Literature published by the
American Dental Association. This lists not only all articles and letters, but
also all books and pamphlets published during the year, and has the reputation
for being a comprehensive list. The Indexes for the years 1960 and 196 1, which
should have listed the first and second editions of the monograph did not do
so, nor did they mention the favourable reviews.
However,
they indexed the unfavourable ones, so that these omissions were obviously made
intentionally by staff of the American Dental Association to suppress this
criticism of fluoridation trials, which were the foundation for the endorsement
of this process by that Association.
The
following pages are a reprint of the second edition of that monograph:
Fluoridation: Errors and Omissions in Experimental Trials, 1960, Melbourne
University Press, which has been out of print for many years.
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