DR PHYLLIS MULLENIX
January, 1998.
Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., formerly of Harvard University experienced the wrath of the industry when she walked blindly into the fluoride fray as part of her research program with Harvard's
Department of Neuropathology and Psychiatry.
While holding a dual appointment to Harvard and the Forsyth Dental Research
Institute, Dr. Mullenix established the Department of Toxicology at Forsyth for
the purpose of investigating the environmental impact of substances that were
used in dentistry. During that undertaking she was also directed by the
institute's head to investigate fluoride toxicity ......January, 1998.
Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., formerly of Harvard University experienced the wrath of the industry when she walked blindly into the fluoride fray as part of her research program with Harvard's
For her toxicology studies Dr. Mullenix designed a computer pattern recognition system that has been described by other scientists as nothing short of elegant in its ability to study fluoride's effects on the neuromotor functions of rats.
THE "MIRACLE OF FLUORIDE" -or- A DIRTY INDUSTRY?
"By about 1990 I had gathered enough data from the test and control animals," Mullenix continues, "to realize that fluoride doesn't look clean." When she reviewed that data she realized that something was seriously affecting her test animals. They had all (except the control group) been administered doses of fluoride sufficient to bring their blood levels up to the same as those that had caused dental fluorosis [a brittleness and staining of the teeth] in thousands of children. Up to this point, Mullenix explained, fluorosis was widely thought to be the only effect of excessive fluoridation.
The scientist's first hint that she may not be navigating friendly waters came when she was ordered to present her findings to the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) [a division of NIH, the National Institute of Health]. "That's when the 'fun' started," she said, "I had no idea what I was getting into. I walked into the main corridors there and all over the walls was 'The Miracle of Fluoride'. That was my first real kick-in-the-pants as to what was actually going on." The NIH display, she said, actually made fun of and ridiculed those that were against fluoridation. "I thought, 'Oh great!' Here's the main NIH hospital talking about the 'Miracle of Fluoride' and I'm giving a seminar to the NIDR telling them that fluoride is neurotoxic!"
What Dr. Mullenix presented at the seminar that, in reality, sounded the death knell of her career was that:
"The fluoride pattern of behavioral problems matches up with the same results of administering radiation and chemotherapy [to cancer patients]. All of these really nasty treatments that are used clinically in cancer therapy are well known to cause I.Q. deficits in children. That's one of the best studied effects they know of. The behavioral pattern that results from the use of fluoride matches that produced by cancer treatment that causes a reduction in intelligence."
At a meeting with dental industry representatives immediately following her presentation, Mullenix was bluntly asked if she was saying that their company's products were lowering the I.Q. of children? "And I told them, 'basically, yes.'"
The documents obtained by authors Griffiths and Bryson seem to add yet another voice of corroboration to the reduced intelligence effects of fluoride. "New epidemiological evidence from China adds support," the writers claim, "showing a correlation between low dose fluoride exposure and diminished I.Q. in children."
Then in 1994, after refining her research and findings, Dr. Mullenix presented her results to the Journal of Neurotoxicology and Teratology, considered probably the world's most respected publication in that field. Three days after she joyfully announced to the Forsyth Institute that she had been accepted for publication by the journal, she was dismissed from her position. What followed was a complete evaporation of all grants and funding for any of Mullenix's research. What that means in the left-brain world of scientific research, which is fueled by grants of government and corporate capital, is the equivalent to an academic burial. Her letter of dismissal from the Forsyth Institute stated as their reason for that action that her work was not "dentally related." [Fluoride research--not dentally related?] The institute's director stated, according to Mullenix, "they didn't consider the safety or the toxicity of fluoride as being their kind of science." Of course, a logical question begs itself at this last statement: why was Dr. Mullenix assigned the study of fluoride toxicity in the first place if it was not "their kind of science"?
Subsequently, she was continually hounded by both Forsyth and the NIH as to the identity of the journal in which her research was to be published. She told The WINDS that she refused to disclose that information because she knew the purpose of this continual interrogation was so that they could attempt to quash its publication.
Almost immediately following her dismissal, Dr. Mullenix said, the Forsyth Institute received a quarter-million dollar grant from the Colgate company. Coincidence or reward?
Her findings clearly detailed the developmental effects of fluoride, pre- and postnatal. Doses administered before birth produced marked hyperactivity in offspring. Postnatal administration caused the infant rats to exhibit what Dr. Mullenix calls the "couch potato syndrome"--a malaise or absence of initiative and activity. One need only observe the numerous children being dosed with Ritalin as treatment for their hyperactivity to draw logical correlations.
Following her dismissal, the scientist's equipment and computers, designed specifically for the studies, were mysteriously damaged and destroyed by water leakage before she could remove them from Forsyth. Coincidence?
Dr. Mullenix was then given an unfunded research position at Children's Hospital in Boston, but with no equipment and no money--what for? "The people at Children's Hospital, for heaven's sake, came right out and said they were scared because they knew how important the fluoride issue was," Mullenix said. "Even at Forsyth they told me I was endangering funds for the institution if I published that information." It has become clear to such as Dr. Mullenix et al, that money, not truth, drives science--even at the expense of the health and lives of the nation's citizens.
"I got into science because it was fun," she said, "and I would like to go back and do further studies, but I no longer have any faith in the integrity of the system. I find research is utterly controlled." If one harbors any doubt that large sums of corporate money and political clout can really provide sufficient influence to induce scientists and respected physicians to endorse potentially harmful treatment for their patients, consider the results published in a January 8th article of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The Journal revealed their survey of doctors in favor of, and against, a particular drug that has been proven harmful (in this case calcium blockers shown to significantly increase the risk of breast cancer in older women). "Our results," the Journal said, "demonstrate a strong association between authors' published positions on the safety of calcium-channel antagonists and their financial relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers."
When The WINDS asked Dr. Mullenix where she planned to take her research, she said that she is not hopeful that any place exists that isn't "afraid of fluoride or printing the truth."
The end result of the dark odyssey of Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., and her journey through the nightmare of the fluoride industry is, essentially, a ruined career of a brilliant scientist because hers was not "their kind of science".
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