14. Fluorine Lawyers and Government Dentists: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org

Fluorine Lawyers and 
Government Dentists 



"A Very Worthwhile Contribution" 



Although big corporations have long used the U.S. government's 
medical assurances about fluoride safety to defend themselves in 
fluoride-pollution cases, no collaboration between industry and the 
federal promotion of fluoride has ever been acknowledged. However, 
Robert Kehoe s papers show precisely such collusion, detailing how the 
fluoride research of the National Institute of Dental Research, ostensibly 
conducted to prove water fluoridation "safe," was covertly performed in 
concert with industry, which was aware that the medical data would help 
their Fluorine Lawyers battle American pollution victims and workers in 
court. 

THE REYNOLDS METALS Company employed a legal strategy 
during the Martin case that would become a staple in American 
courtrooms. Five years had elapsed since the Federal Security Agency 
administrator, Oscar Ewing, the former Alcoa lawyer, had endorsed 
public water fluoridation on behalf of the Public Health Service, which 
was under the FSA's jurisdiction. During the 1955 Martin trial in Portland, 
Reynolds reminded the court of fluoride's "beneficial" effects. 
Fluoride was being added to toothpaste, and 15,000,000 Americans 
now consumed more fluoride through their drinking water than the 
Martins had been exposed to, Reynolds's attorneys said. "This court has 
thus found to be "poisonous' an amount of fluorine 



FLUORINE LAWYERS AND GOVERNMENT DENTISTS 



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which scientific and judicial opinion has unanimously found harmless, 
Reynolds s lawyers argued. The only thing not explained is how the 
Martins could have suffered injury from something harmless to the rest of 
mankind," they added) 

Robert Kehoe also understood how public water fluoridation helped 
industry. His endorsement was featured in the profluorida-tion booklet, 
Our Children's Teeth. That booklet was simultaneously distributed to New 
York parents and to the judges on the Martin Appeals Court.' "The question 
of the public safety of fluoridation is non-existent from the viewpoint of 
medical science," he assured parents and judges alike.' 

Privately, however, Kehoe was not so sure. "It is possible that cer tain 
insidious and now unknown effects are induced by the absorption of 
fluorides in comparatively small amounts over long periods of time," he 
had told industry in 1956. 4 And in 1962 Kehoe told Reynolds s medical 
director, James McMillan, that there remained "a basic question 
concerning the non-specific effects of prolonged exposure to apparently 
harmless quantities of fluoride ( this by the way is the thing on which 
George Waldbott bases his entire campaign against fluoridation). 5 

Kehoe and his Kettering Laboratory continued to soldier for water 
fluoridation during the 1950s and 1960s, assailing fluorida-tion critics as 
windbags and windmills. Kettering toxicologists Francis Heyroth and 
Edward Largent were prominent members of National Academy of 
Sciences panels that endorsed fluoridation. And in 1963 the Kettering 
Laboratory published an influential bibliography of the medical literature 
favoring fluoridation, entitled The Role of Fluoride in Public Health: The 
Soundness of Fluoridation in Communal Water Supplies. 

Kehoe saw how fluoride safety studies performed by government dental 
researchers helped his industry patrons in court. Farmers and workers 
would have a much harder time successfully suing corporations for 
fluoride pollution if the U.S. Public Health Service had performed its own 
studies and then vouched for the chemical's safety. "The results of such 
[dental] investigations are highly advanta geous," Kehoe explained to the 
corporations sponsoring his fluoride work at Kettering, in that the 
problem [of proving fluoride safe] exists outside of industry, 
thereby involving situations in which the 



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economic factors tend to be of different type and significance than those 
which are often alleged to be active in the industrial world, and often 
involving investigators who are not subject to accusations of bias based on 
industrial associations.' 

Kehoe approached the Public Health Service in April 1952 on behalf of 
the industries sponsoring his fluoride research, to ask that the health agency 
perform additional fluoride safety studies.' I was requested by the group 
[of industries], for whom I have acted as a spokesperson and chairman, in 
the consideration of this work, to approach your division of the U.S. Public 
Health Service, with the idea of determining whether or not an investigation 
of that type might not be conduced by the Service, Kehoe wrote to Dr. 
Seward Miller.' 

Government proved cooperative. The top medical investigator at the 
National Institute of Dental Research, Dr. Nicholas Leone, was especially 
helpful. In August 1955, for example, during the Martin trial, the public 
servant Dr. Leone spoke with a senior attorney for Reynolds, Tobin 
Lennon, who also was a member of the Fluorine Lawyers Committee, 
directing Lennon to a federal safety study on fluoride that Leone had 
recently concluded in Texas. 

No record could be found of anyone from this U.S. government agency 
ever helping the Martin family. 

Leone s study had examined people living in two Texas towns, where 
there were different amounts of natural fluoride in the water supply. The 
town of Bartlett had between 6 and 8 parts per million in its water, while 
nearby Cameron had 0.4 ppm. Dr. Leone had given both towns a clean bill 
of health, reporting in 1953 that no harmful significant differences were 
seen in the two populations. Although George Waldbott and others had 
vigorously attacked the study's scientific method and conclusions, the 
so-called Bartlett Cameron Study became, along with Harold Hodges 
Newburgh study, a lynch-pin of the government's case for water 
fluoridation — medical "proof" that adding fluoride to water would be 
harmless.' 

As the Martin trial hung in the balance, the governments Dr. Leone 
burned up the long-distance telephone lines to Oregon, answering 
questions from Reynolds's attorney Lennon on the findings of the Bartlett 
Cameron study. Dr. Capps had testified on Paul Martins behalf that 
fluoride had injured his clients liver, so Reynolds s lawyer wanted 
information about fluorides effects on such soft tissues." 



FLUORINE LAWYERS AND GOVERNMENT DENTISTS 



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Although the Bartlett Cameron study had not examined soft tissue, such 
data would soon be at hand, Leone reassured industry. New 
government-funded studies were in the pipeline. And they spelled good 
news for the Fluorine Lawyers. In the spring of 1957, as corporate America 
awaited the Martin Appeals Court verdict, Alcoa s Dr. Dudley Irwin 
traveled from Pittsburgh to the sparkling new campus of the National 
Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to meet directly with Dr. Leone 
and discuss the current status of the fluoride problem." Irwin was the 
medical coordinator for the Fluorine Lawyers Committee. 

Dr. Leone laid out the plans for the new fluoride safety studies that the 
federal dental agency was then readying. The two men then discussed how 
those studies could be presented to best suit our purpose," according to a 
March 5, 1957, letter Leone sent to Irwin to thank him for his visit. In 
particular Leone gave the Alcoa doctor details of a human autopsy study 
then being conducted in Provo, Utah, in which soft tissues were being 
analyzed. Leone was serving as a consultant to the Utah study, he wrote, 
and he had personally designed the autopsy protocol.' The interests of the 
Provo group, Leone explained in his letter, relate directly to atmospheric 
pollution of fluorides and its effects on humans. As you know, it has been 
proven beyond a question of a doubt that similar conditions have an effect 
upon animals. 

Irwin paid close attention. Provo was the site of perhaps the most serious 
litigation problem then facing the Fluorine Lawyers. Since World War II, 
when a mighty steel plant had been located in the Utah County valley, near 
the city of Provo — far from any threat from Japa nese bombers — local 
farmers had been in an uproar over pollution that they claimed had 
decimated their cattle. By 1957 the Columbia-Geneva Division of U.S. 
Steel had settled 880 damage claims totaling $4,450,234 with farmers in 
Utah County. An additional 305 claims for a further $25,000,000 were 
filed against the company. 13 

Nicholas Leone s researchers, working on a PHS grant, were studying 
the soft tissues and bones of Utah County residents, he told Irwin. Inmates 
of a mental institution close by comprise the study material," he added. 

The Bethesda meeting between Alcoa s fluoride doctor and the 
government scientist went well. They made plans for a future 



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rendezvous. In view of the vast amount of material soon to be avail -able 
for publication, Leone concluded in his letter to Irwin, we are all very 
enthused about a group presentation at some carefully selected meeting in 
the near future. I believe we discussed that briefly while you were here and 
I hope that you have had opportunity to give further thought to the type of 
meeting that would best suit our purpose. A one-shot presentation and 
publication in a single issue or monograph should be of more value than 
publication in a number of publications.... Again, it was a pleasure seeing 
you and I hope we have the opportunity for further discussions in the near 
future. Best personal regards. Sincerely Nicholas C. Leone, M.D. Chief, 
Medical Investigations, National Institute of Dental Research.' The 
government scientist enclosed a gift, a copy of a science-fiction novel 
called The Pallid Giant by Pierrepont B. Noyes. 

Alcoa s doctor was jubilant at the letter. The government studies would 
show no harm from fluoride, he had learned (almost certainly from Leone 
himself). Irwin immediately contacted the Fluorine Lawyers Committee 
boss, Frank Seamans in Pittsburgh, forwarding to him a copy of the letter 
he had received from the NIDRs Dr. Leone. Thrilled at the news from 
Washington, Alcoa s top doctor explained to Seamans, in a letter dated 
March 13, 1957, exactly how the nations water fluoridation program, and 
accompanying health studies, might help American industry: These 
clinical investigations pertain to basic studies of individuals residing in 
areas where the fluoride content of the drinking water varies from 0.04 ppm 
F. to 8.o ppm F. You will appreciate that this range of fluoride exposure 
brackets the range in which a number of us are interested. I have reason to 
believe the results of these investigations will show no evidence of 
deleterious effects due to fluoride absorption. The publication of these 
results will be a very worthwhile contribution," 
wrote Irwin. 15 

The obliging government dental researcher, Dr. Leone, wanted to share 
the good news — with a restricted group of industry friends, Dr. Irwin told 
Alcoa s lawyer. Dr. Leone has given me his permission to supply copies of 
this letter to you for distribution to your group of "fluorine lawyers' on a 
confidential basis," he wrote Seamans. 

Any jubilation in the ranks of the Fluorine Lawyers Committee, 
however, quickly turned to fresh panic. The following month, on 



FLUORINE LAWYERS AND GOVERNMENT DENTISTS 181 

April 24, 1957, Judges Denman, Pope, and Chambers of the Federal 
Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco upheld the lower 
District court ruling in the Martin trial. Their verdict was that Reynolds 
Metals was guilty of negligence and of poisoning the Martins with fluoride. 
In a gesture even more frightening for industry, Judge Denman cited a legal 
principle known as absolute liability. It meant that industry was 
responsible for resulting injury, whether accidentally caused or not. "The 
manufacturer must learn of dangers that lurk in his processes and his 
products, wrote Judge Denman in his opinion upholding the District Court. 
It was the duty of the one in the position of the defendant to know of the 
dangers incident to the aluminum reduction process," the opinion added. 16 

Frantic, industry scrambled back to the courts. The entire 9th Circuit 
Appeals court en banc (all judges on the Appeals bench, not just a 
three-person panel) now confronted a stunning spectacle, as six top U.S. 
corporations paraded before them, pleading for relief. Alcoa, Monsanto, 
Kaiser Aluminum, Harvey Aluminum, the Olin Mathieson Chemical 
Corporation, and a division of the Food Machinery and Chemical 
Corporation, each joined Reynolds in attacking the Martin verdict, filing an 
impassioned amicus curiae friends of the court brief. 

One hundred thousand workers were employed in the U.S. aluminum 
industry alone, industry told the court, while seven aluminum smelters in 
the Northwest were located in inhabited areas similar to the Troutdale plant. 
Judge Denman s ruling had impossibly tightened the screws on the 
economy and jeopardized the nations cold war military strength, the 
corporations argued. The necessity of a strong aluminum industry to 
national defense is known to all," their appeal noted. Judge Denman had 
reached out and with one swift stroke branded the aluminum industry and 
all industries involving the use of fluorides, ultrahazardous," it added. The 
industry attorneys warned of "the tremendous impact of this decision," and 
argued that "if Judge Denman's opinion placing absolute liability on these 
industries is to stand, the financial handicap so imposed may well impair 
their financial stability. ' 

As industry s lawyers scrambled back to the courts, the governments Dr. 
Nicholas Leone (from the National Institutes of Health) hurried for an 
emergency meeting with industry officials 



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at the Kettering Laboratory. He was accompanied by no less than the 
Director of the National Institute of Dental Research, Dr. Francis Arnold. 

On May 20, 1957-a month after the Martin verdict — the public servants 
met for a relatively confidential discussion of the issues with Dr. Kehoe 
and a Medical Advisory Committee of officials from the industrial 
corporations sponsoring the Kettering Laboratory s fluoride research. (This 
Medical Advisory Committee had been established on behalf of the 
Fluorine Lawyers Committee by Alcoa attorney Frank Seamans.)" 

Alcoa's Dudley Irwin opened the meeting. He began by reiterating news 
of the Martin verdict. The U.S. dental investigators and the company 
officials reviewed the "weakness" of industry's position, according to notes 
taken by Dr. Kehoe. The group then discussed "the Martin case in relation 
to the community problems of air pollution, water pollution and food 
contamination and the position occupied by industry in creating a new 
environment characterized by potential hazard to the public health, 
according to Kehoe. 

Industry was vulnerable, Kehoe emphasized to the dental researchers. 
He summarized the Kettering investigation of the Alcoa plant at Massena, 
New York, where fluoride had disabled workers. (The results of this study 
had — and still have — never been published.) There was a need, Kehoe told 
the NIDR's Nicholas Leone and Francis Arnold, "for research of a basic 
type to establish the facts on which medical opinion can be based so that 
irresponsible medical testimony will be discouraged." 

The government men took their cue. Drs. Leone and Arnold again laid 
out for industry the several pending studies the NIDR was con -ducting. 
The science was ostensibly being performed to demonstrate to the 
public the safety of water fluoridation, yet for the anxious men at the 
Kettering Laboratory that spring day, there was a clear understanding that 
such medical studies could help polluters. 19 The conference concluded with 
plans for an ambitious strategy to shape the national scientific debate on 
fluoride by hosting "conferences, symposia," compiling new medical 
research "for dissemination or publication," and arranging working 
sessions "to decide what to do and in what sequence," according to Kehoe' 
s notes. 



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183 



On June 5, 1958, the full Appeals Court in the Martin case gave some 
ground. It upheld the verdict that the Martins had been poisoned and that 
Reynolds was negligent, but it withdrew the earlier opinion that the legal 
theory of absolute liability applied. The final decision was still 

distressing, the Fluorine Lawyers Committee head, Frank Seamans, 
wrote to Kehoe in a melancholy note eight days later. In an enclosed legal 
summary of the ruling, dated June 12, 1958, he concluded that the verdict 

will doubtless have great significance in the further development of the 
fluorine problem." 20 There was, however, a solitary ray of sunshine: 
perhaps the rollback of the absolute liability verdict would help industry 
in the coming decades. We can now argue that the Martin case went off 
on its own particular facts and that it is not a ruling that an aluminum 
smelter is liable for damage regardless of negligence," 
Seamans wrote. 21 

Seamans believed that it was the visit and testimony of the English 
expert, Donald Hunter, that had delivered the knockout blow. The English 
doctor had left a perhaps disfiguring scar upon corporate America. "The 
court quoted from the testimony of Dr. Hunter," Seamans wrote to Kehoe, 
"and said that his testimony was worthy of credit and, in fact, outstanding. 
These quotations from the testimony of Dr. Hunter about the effects of 
fluorine on human beings are very unfortunate and may serve to give such 
claims a push. 

Kehoe was bitter about the whole affair. "I have rarely found myself in 
a more embarrassing situation than I was in the Martin case," he told one of 
Reynolds's other witnesses. And he complained to a friend, Philip Drinker 
of Harvard s School of Public Health, about the cleverness and histrionic 
character of Donald Hunters testimony. 22 The professor commiserated. 
Hunters exhibition was cheap cockney showmanship at a pretty low 
point, Drinker said. " Numerous friends in England have told me he was 
for sale and he certainly sold himself for this," he added. 

Dr. Kehoe would have his revenge. In the days after the Martin verdict 
worried industry its officials turned again to his Kettering Laboratory for 
help. Industry stood on a precipice. The danger was clear — and so was the 
solution. A powerful new scientific orthodoxy must be forged to defeat 
workers and farmers like Paul Martin and remove the threat from 
independently minded medical experts such as Donald Hunter and 
Richard Capps. 



Buried Science, Buried Workers 



THE IMPLICATIONS OF the Martin verdict were frightening. Like that 
Oregon farming family who had been poisoned by Reyn-olds s fluoride, 
tens of thousands of U.S. citizens breathed fluoride fumes from nearby 
steel, aluminum, and coal-fired power plants. A million more would soon 
live within eight kilometers of eleven hydrogen fluoride manufacturing 
plants.' And hundreds of thousands of American men and women inhaled 
fluoride dust and gases each day at work.' 

Industry's response to the Martin verdict was explained by Robert 
Kehoe to the medical director of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TV A) in 
January 1956. You will remember our recent talk about the concern of 
representatives of the aluminum and steel companies, over the outcome of 
the Reynolds Metals suit, Kehoe wrote to Dr. O. M. Derryberry on 
January 9, 1956. That concern included "perturbation of certain of the 
sponsors over the medico-legal situation," he wrote. "A group was 
assembled for a meeting with me early in December," Kehoe told 
Derryberry, "out of which came their request that ... I advise them 
concerning a program of investigation which might be enlarged in scope 
and accelerated in tempo so as to provide them with adequate ammunition 
for handling similar situations, as well as those that might arise from 
apprehension among their employees. " ; Kehoe's goal was to "bring to an 
end the litigation which threatens to occupy the time, attention, and 
economy of industry without benefit to the health and welfare of their 
employees or the public," he told his sponsors.' 



BURIED SCIENCE, BURIED WORKERS 



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