The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson Forward and Introduction
from archive.org
Christopher Bryson with a foreword by Dr. Theo Colborn
"Christopher Bryson is an excellent
narrator, and he reports on recent
research previously not known to me. Especially I am intrigued by the
story about Phyllis Mullenix and her animal research on the influence of
fluoride on behavior and brain
development It is my sincere hope that his book will receive the attention it deserves and
that its implications will be seri-
ously considered." Dr.
Arvid Carlsson. 2000 Nobel Prize Laureate for Medicine "In much the same way biologist Rachel
Carson warned us over forty years ago in Silent Spring about the havoc and harm
being caused by the misuse of persistent
pesticides, journalist Christopher Bryson here lays bare the secret story and hidden dangers of
the introduction of fluoride chemicals
from the cold war era into our drinking water. The irrefutable evi- dence of duplicity and cover-up presented in
this book is hair-raising. The Fluoride
Deception presents a scorching indictment of how researchers and health care officials working closely
with government agencies, big industry,
and their attorneys have allowed themselves to surrender their responsibility for the medical well-being of
their fellow citizens." Dr. Albert W. Burgstahler. former president
of the https://www.blogger.com/null
International Society for Fluoride Research and
Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Kansas "Bryson is nght on in his emphasis on
the ineffectiveness of fluoridation of
water with industrial wastes, and its nsks of nerve and brain damage,
and cancer, coupled with the
long-standing industrial conspiracy to suppress
this information." Dr.
Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor Emeritus of Environmental and
Occupational Medicine, University of
Illinois School of Public Health
"The Fluoride Deception compellingly and inescapably exposes the
mur- derous fraud that heads of state
and industry have for decades perpe-
trated on an innocent public. Extremely well written and tightly
researched, The Fluoride Deception is
sure to become the 'must read' book in this
important and burgeoning field."
Derrick Jensen, author of The Culture of Make Believe and A Language Older Than Words Toute entreprise humaine, fut-elle
industrielle, est susceptible de
perfectionnement ! Inscription
on memorial to the sixty dead of the 1930 Meuse
Valley disaster It is not just
a mistake for public health agencies to cooperate and collaborate with industries investigating and
deciding whether public health is
endangered — it is a direct abrogation of the duties and responsibilities of those public health
organizations. Scientist Clair Patterson
to the U.S. Senate, If you aint
thinking about Man, God and Law, you aint thinking about nothin . Joe Strummer (1952-2002) Contents Foreword by Theo Colborn vii Note on Terminology x Acknowledgments xii Introduction xiv Major Figures in the Fluoride Story
xxii 1 Through the Looking Glass 1 2 Fireworks at Forsyth 1 1 3 Opposite Sides of the Atlantic 30 4 General Groves s Problem 45 5 General Groves s Solution: Dr. Harold
Hodge and the University of Rochester
65 6 How the Manhattan Project Sold Us
Fluoride: Newburgh, Harshaw, and Jim
Conants Ruse 78 7 A Subterranean
Channel of Secret-Keeping 91 8 Robert
Kehoe and The Kettering Laboratory 101
9 Donora: A Rich Mans Hocus Pocus 1 14
10 The Public Health Service Investigation 133 1 1 As Vital to Our National Life As a Spark
Plug to a Motor Car 148 12 Engineering
Consent 158 13 Showdown in the West:
Martin vs. Reynolds Metals 168 14
Fluorine Lawyers and Government Dentists: A Very Worthwhile Contribution 176 15 Buried Science, Buried Workers 184 16 Hurricane Creek: The People Rule
202 17 The Damage Is Done 217 Epilogue:
Blind to the Truth? 230 Postscript: Dr. Arvid Carlsson, 2000 Nobel
Laureate 240 Note on Sources 242 Notes
247 Index 359 Foreword THEO COLBORN THE QUESTION OF whether fluoride is or is
not an essential element is debatable.
In other words, is the element, fluorine, required for normal growth and reproduction? On one hand there
appears to be a narrow range of topical
exposure in which it might prevent cavities. But if exposure is too high, it causes serious health problems.
And could an individual who is totally
deprived of fluoride from conception through adulthood survive? Definitive research to resolve these
questions has never appeared in the
public record or in peer-reviewed journals. It is important to keep this
fact in mind as you read this book. Chris Bryson informs us that fluorine is,
indeed, an essential element in the
production of the atom bomb, and there is good reason to believe that fluoridated drinking water and toothpaste —
and the development of the atom bomb —
are closely related. This claim sounded pretty far-fetched to me, and consequently I was extremely
skeptical about the connection when I
started reading the book. Bryson writes with the skill of a top-selling novelist, but it was not his convincing
storytelling that made me finish the
book. It was the haunting message that possibly here again was
another therapeutic agent, fluoride,
that had not been thoroughly studied before it
was foisted on the public as a panacea to protect or improve health.
Bryson reveals that the safety of
fluoride became a firmly established paradigm
based on incomplete knowledge. The correct questions were never
asked (or never answered when they were
asked), thus giving birth to false or
bottomless assumptions that fluoride was therapeutic and safe.
Certainly, the evidence Bryson unearthed
in this book begs for immediate attention by
those responsible for public health.
As the story unfolds, Bryson weaves pieces of what at first appears to
be totally unrelated evidence into a
tapestry of intrigue, greed,
FOREWORD collusion, personal
aggrandizement, corporate and government cover-up, and U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS)
mistakes. While reading the book, I kept
thinking back to 1950, three years after I got my BS degree in Pharmacy and the year I gave birth to my
first child. Fluoride came on the market
packaged in pediatric vitamin drops for infants. Mothers left the hospital with their new babies in their arms
and prescriptions in their hands from
their dismissing physicians for these fluoride-laced drops. About that time communities around the country began to
add fluoride to their drinking water. The
promised benefits of fluoride were so positive that my dentist friends began to wish that they had
chosen dermatology instead of dentistry.
At that same time pregnant women were being given a pharmaceutical, diethylstilbestrol (DES), to
prevent miscarriages, as well as
DES-laced prescription vitamins especially designed for pregnant women to produce big, fat, healthy babies. I
felt good when I dispensed the fluoride
and DES prescriptions — they were products designed to prevent health problems rather than treat them. Now I
can only wonder how many children were
harmed because I and others like me took the word of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the
USPHS, and the major pharmaceutical
companies producing these products. We were caught up in the spin. We were blind to the corporate
hubris and were swept along with the
blissful enthusiasm that accompanies every new advance in modern technology and medicine. The hazards posed by prenatal exposure to
DES surfaced a lot sooner than those
posed by fluoride. And although by 1958 it was discovered that DES caused a rare vaginal cancer that until
that time had been found only in
postmenopausal women, its use during pregnancy was not banned until 1971 — thirteen years later. Even this year,
2003, new discoveries are being reported
about the impact on health in the sons and daughters of the DES mothers, and now in their grandchildren. It
is estimated that in the United States
alone there are ten million daughters and sons. In comparison to DES, where exposure could be traced through
prescription records, the extent of
exposure to fluorides through drinking water, dental products, vitamins, and as Bryson points out, through
Teflon, Scotchgard, Stainmaster, and
other industrial and agricultural fluorinated products is practically unmeasurable. FOREWORD ix
Certainly the evidence Bryson presents in this book should cause those charged with protecting public health
to demand answers about the
developmental, reproductive, and functional role of fluorine in all living organisms. A lack of data on the
safety of a product is not proof of
safety. Evidence has only recently surfaced that prenatal exposure to certain fluorinated chemicals is
dangerous, often fatal at high doses, and
that — even at extremely low levels — such exposure can undermine the development of the brain, the
thyroid, and the metabolic system. This
evidence surfaced because industrial fluorine
chemicals were suddenly being discovered in human and wildlife tissue everywhere they were looked for on
earth. As a result, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) began to press the manufacturers of these products for data on
their safety. It is no wonder that such
chemicals never made it on the list of known
endocrine disrupters, chemicals that undermine development and function. The studies were never done, or if
they were, they were not available to
the public. It is time that these chemicals, at the cumulative concentrations they are found in
the environment, be tested thoroughly
for their developmental, reproductive, and endocrine effects.
Whether or not Bryson's nuclear-bomb connection is ever con- firmed without a doubt, this book
demonstrates that there is still much
that needs to be considered about the continued use of fluorine in future production and technology. The nuclear
product that required the use of
fluorine ultimately killed 65,000 people outright in one sortie over Japan. The actual number of
others since then and in generations to
come who will have had their health insidiously
undermined by artificial exposure to fluorides and other fluorine chemicals with half-lives estimated in
geologic time may well exceed that of
the atom bomb victims millions and millions of times over. Dr. Theo Colborn, coauthor of Our Stolen
Future: Are We Threatening Our
Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story (1996) Note on Terminology THE TERMS fluorine and fluoride should not
be confused in a book about chemical
toxicity. Fluorine is an element, one of our planets building blocks, an especially tiny atom that sits at
the summit of the periodic table. Its
lordly location denotes an unmatched chemical potency that is a consequence of its size and structure. The
nine positively charged protons at the
atoms core get little protection from a skimpy miniskirt of electrons. As a result, fluorine atoms are unbalanced
and dangerous predators, snatching
electrons from other elements to relieve their core tension. (A ravenous hunger for electrons explains why
fluorine cuts through steel like butter,
burns asbestos, and reacts violently with most organic material.)' Mercifully, Mother Nature keeps fluorine
under lock and key. Because of its
extreme reactivity, fluorine is usually bound with other elements. These compounds are known as salts, or
fluorides, the same stuff that they put
in toothpaste. Yet the chemical potency of fluorides is also dramatic. Armed with a captured electron, the toxicity
of the negatively charged fluoride ion
now comes, in part, from its tiny size. (Ionic means having captured or surrendered an electron). Like a
midget submarine in a harbor full of
battleships, fluoride ions can get close to big molecules — like proteins or DNA — where their negative charge
packs a mighty wallop that can wreak
havoc, forming powerful bonds with hydrogen, and interfering with the normal fabric of such
biological molecules.' However — and
please stay with me here, I promise it gets easier — somewhat confusingly, the words fluorine
and fluoride are some-times used
interchangeably. A fluoride compound is often referred to, generically, as fluorine. (For example, the Fluorine
Lawyers Committee was a group of
corporate attorneys concerned about the medical and legal dangers from
a great range of different industrial
"fluorides" spilling from company
smokestacks.) In these pages Ive
tried to be clear when Im referring to the element fluorine or to a compound, a fluoride. And
because different fluoride compounds
often have unique toxicities, where relevant or NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY Xi
possible, I have also given the compounds specific name. Mostly, however, for simplicity s sake, I have
followed convention and used the
shorthand fluoride when referring to the element and its multiple manifestations, a procedure approved and used
by the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences.' Acknowledgements This book owes a debt of gratitude to
many. First is my wife, Molly, whose
love and encouragement pushed me to the starting line and carried
me across the finish. My first encounter
with fluoride came as a BBC radio
journalist working in New York in 1993, when I was asked to find an "American angle" on water
fluoridation. Ralph Nader put me in touch with
scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who opposed fluoridation) As I followed that story, I met
the medical writer Joel Griffiths. His
investigative article "Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalist Ploy" in the fall 1992 issue of the
magazine Covert Action Information
Bulletin is a masterful and detailed account of how fluoride is
primarily an industrial and
environmental story. Griffiths reported how vested economic interests were behind the earliest
suggestions that fluoride be added to
water, while those same interests for decades had assiduously suppressed information about fluorides
destructive effects on health and
environment. Griffiths paradigm-shifting story was my starting gun and,
as my Manhattan neighbor, I leant
heavily on his reporting, interviews,
documents, interpretation and the gentle friendship of him and his
wife Barbara as I wrote this book.
Librarians are foot soldiers of democracy, and
a legion of them sacked archives for me from Tennessee to
Washington State and from Denmark to
London. Everywhere I was met with eager help
digging out dusty files and courteous answers to the most foolish of questions. Special thanks to my favorite
Metallica fan, Billie Broaddus, at the
University of Cincinnati Medical Heritage Center, Marjorie Ciarlante at the National Archives in Washington, DC,
and Donald Jerne at the Danish National
Library of Science and Medicine. The book's spine is the authority of the many workers, scientists,
and public officials who gave so freely
of their time. Particular gratitude to Albert Burgstahler of the University of Kansas, the EPA's J. William
Hirzy, Robert J. Carton, Phyllis J.
Mullenix, Kathleen M. Thiessen of SENES Oak Ridge Inc., and Robert F. Phalen of the University ACKNOWLEDGMENTS of California at Irvine, who each spent
long hours reviewing documents and
medical studies for me. I had the good
fortune to serve an apprenticeship in the 1980s with the late Jonathan Kwitny, one of the nations top
investigative reporters. From his
hospital bed, weak from radiation treatment, he encouraged me. This is your book, he said. I was helped with
financial support from the Fund for
Investigative Journalism, Inc., and the Institute for Public Affairs.
A bouquet to Dan Simon at Seven Stories
Press, who clapped his hands in glee
when told he'd be taking on the great industrial trusts of America. Special thanks to Lexy Bloom and Ruth Hein
for their critical and conscientious
editing; to George Miirer, Anna Lui, Chris Peterson, and India Amos for wrestling this octopus to the
printer; and to the entire staff at
Seven Stories Press for their passion and commitment. Many helped in myriad other ways. This book
is theirs, too. Gwen Jaworzyn, Janet
Michel, Bette Hileman, USA Today and Peter Eisler, George Mavridis, Felicity Bryson and Vincent
Gerin, Ruth Miller at the Donora
Historical Society, Anne-Lise Gotzsche, Barbara Griffiths, Anthony and Nancy Thompson and family, Basil
and Anne Henderson, Joan-Ellen and Alex
Zucker, Nina and David Altschil-ler, Bill and Janney Murtha, Tom Webster, Naomi Flack, Ken Case,
Bob Woffinden, Traude Sadtler, Gordon
Thompson, Clifford and Russ Honicker, Jacqueline O. Kittrell, Ellie Rudolph, Robert Hall, Martha
Bevis, John Marks, Chris Trepal, Carol
Patton, Gar Smith at Earth Island Journal, Lennart Krook, Danny Moses at Sierra Club Books, Andreas
Schuld, Erwin Rose and family, Roberta
Baskin, the Connett family, Colin Beavan, Sam Roe, Karin and Hans Hendrik Roholm, Eleanor Krinsky,
Allen Kline, Bill and Gladys Shempp (
who put me up in their home in Donora one night), Elizabeth Ramsay, Lynne Page Snyder, and Peter Meiers,
whom I never met nor spoke with but
whose splendid research led me to the papers of Charles F. Kettering.
Thank you all.
Introduction A Clear and
Present Danger Warning: Keep out of
reach of children under 6 years of age. If you
accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, get medical help
or contact a Poison Control Center right
away. NEXT TIME YOU confront yourself
in the bathroom mirror, mouth full of
foam, take another look at that toothpaste tube. Most of us associate fluoride with the humdrum issue of better
teeth and the promised fewer visits to
the dentist. Yet the story of how fluoride was added to our toothpaste and drinking water is an
extraordinary, almost fantastic tale.
The plot includes some of the most spec tacular events in human affairs — the explosion of the Hiroshima
atomic bomb, for example. Many of the
principal characters are larger than life, such as the "father of
public relations" Edward L.
Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, who was until
now more famous for his scheme to persuade women to smoke
cigarettes.' And the twists and turns of
the fluoride story are propelled by nothing less than the often grim requirements of
accumulating power in the industrial era
— the same raw power that is at the beating heart of the American Century.
Fluoride lies at the elemental core of some of the greatest fortunes
that the world has ever seen, the almost
unimaginable wealth of the Mellons of
Pittsburgh and the DuPonts of Delaware. And no wonder the warning on the toothpaste tube is so dramatic. The same
potent chemical that is used to enrich
uranium for nuclear weapons, to prepare Sarin nerve gas, and to wrestle molten steel and aluminum from the
earth's ore is what we give to our
children INTRODUCTION XV first thing in the morning and last thing
at night, flavored with peppermint,
strawberry, or bubble gum.
Fluoride is so muscular a chemical that it has become a lifeblood
of modern industry, pumped hotly each
day through innumerable factories,
refineries, and mills. Fluoride is used to produce high-octane gasoline;
to smelt such key metals as aluminum,
steel, and beryllium; to enrich uranium;
to make computer circuit boards, pesticides, ski wax, refrigerant gases, Teflon plastic, carpets, waterproof
clothing, etched glass, bricks and
ceramics, and numerous drugs, such as Prozac and Cipro. Fluoride's use in dentistry is a sideshow by
comparison. But its use in dentistry
helps industry, too. How does it work? Call it elemental public relations. Fluoride is so potent a chemical
that it's also a grave environmental
hazard and a potential workplace poison. So, for the industry-sponsored scientists who first
promoted fluoride's use in dentistry,
linking the chemical to better teeth and stoutly insisting that, in low
doses, it had no other health effect
helped to change fluorides image from poison
to panacea, deflecting attention from the injury that factory
fluoride pollution has long wreaked on
workers, citizens, and nature. Hard to
swallow? Maybe not. The face-lift performed on fluoride more than fifty years ago has fooled a lot of
people. Instead of conjuring up the
image of a crippled worker or a poisoned forest, we see smiling
children. Fluoride's ugly side has
almost entirely escaped the public gaze. Historians have failed to record that fluoride pollution
was the biggest single legal worry
facing the atomic-bomb program following World War II. Environmentalists are often unaware that
since World War II, fluoride has been
the most damaging poison spilling from factory smokestacks and was, at one point during the cold war, blamed for
more damage claims against industry than
all twenty other major air pollutants combined. And it was fluoride that may have been primarily
responsible for the most notorious air
pollution disaster in U.S. history — the 1948 Halloween nightmare that devastated the mill town of Donora,
Pennsylvania — which jump-started the
U.S. environmental movement.' It's the
same story today: more happy faces. Yet we are exposed to fluoride from more sources than ever. We
consume the chemical from water and
toothpaste, as well as from processed foods made xvi
INTRODUCTION with fluoridated
water and fluoride-containing chemicals. We are exposed to fluorine chemicals from often-unrecognized
sources, such as agricultural
pesticides, stain-resistant carpets, fluorinated drugs, and such packaging as microwavable popcorn bags and
hamburger wrappers, in addition to
industrial air pollution and the fumes and dust inhaled by many workers inside their factories. Fluorides double-fisted trait of bringing
out the worst in other chemicals makes
it especially bad company. While a common air pollutant, hydrogen fluoride, is many times more toxic
than better-known air pollution
villains, such as sulfur dioxide or ozone, it "synergistically" boosts the toxicity of these pollutants as
well. Does fluoride added to our
drinking water similarly increase the toxicity of the lead, arsenic, and
other pollutants that are routinely
found in our water supply? As we shall see,
getting answers to such questions from the federal government, even
after fifty years of endorsing water
fluoridation, can prove impossible. By
the mid-193os European scientists had already linked fluoride to a range of illnesses, including breathing
problems, central-nervous-system
disorders, and especially an array of arthritis-like
musculoskeletal problems.' But during
the cold war, in one of the greatest medical vanishing acts of the twentieth century, fluoride was
systematically removed from public
association with ill health by researchers funded by the U.S. military and big corporations. In Europe excess
exposure to fluoride produced a medical
condition described as "poker back" or "crippling skeletal fluorosis" among fac tory workers. But
the chemical somehow behaved differently
when it crossed the Atlantic, the industry-funded researchers implied, failing to produce such disability
in the United States. It was a deceit,
as we shall see: scientific fraud on a grand and global scale; a lawyerly ruse to escape liability for
widespread worker injury; a courtroom
hustle made possible and perpetuated by the suppression of medical evidence and by occasional perjury. Your history is all mixed up, say supporters
of water fluorida-tion. The story of how
fluoride was added to our toothpaste and water is a separate history, unrelated to fluoride's use in
industry, they maintain. But there is
only one story, not two. The tale of the dental wonder chemical and
the mostly secret account of how
industry and the U.S. military helped to
create and polish that
INTRODUCTION xvn public image are braided too closely to
distinguish between them. The stories
merge completely in the conduct of two of the most senior American scientists who led the promotion of
water fluo-ridation in the 19405 and
1950S, Dr. Harold Carpenter Hodge and Dr. Robert Arthur Kehoe. Don't blame the dentists. They were taught
that fluoride is good for teeth. Few
realize that Dr. Hodge, the nation's leading fluoride researcher who trained a generation of dental
school deans in the 19506 and 1960S, was
the senior wartime toxicologist for the Man-
hattan Project. There he helped choreograph the notorious human radiation experiments in which hospital
patients were injected with plutonium
and uranium — without their knowledge or consent — in order to study the toxicity of those
chemicals in humans. Hodge was similarly
charged with studying fluoride toxicity. Building the worlds first atomic bomb had required gargantuan
amounts of fluoride. So, for example, on
behalf of the bomb makers he covertly monitored one of the nation's first public water
fluoridation experiments. While the
citizens of Newburgh, New York, were told that fluoride would
reduce cavities in their children,
secretly blood and tissue samples from
residents were sent to his atomic laboratory for study.' Some dentists are unaware that much of the
fluoride added to drinking water today
in the United States is actually an industrial
waste, "scrubbed" from the smokestacks of Florida phosphate
fer- tilizer mills to prevent it from
damaging livestock and crops in the
surrounding countryside. In a sweetheart deal these phosphate com- panies are spared the expense of disposing of
this "fluosilicic acid" in a
toxic waste dump. Instead, the acid is sold to municipalities,
shipped in rubber-lined tanker trucks to
reservoirs across North America and
injected into drinking water for the reduction of cavities in
children. (So toxic are the contents of
the fluoride trucks that in the aftermath of
the September II, zoos, terrorist attack, authorities were alerted to
keep a watchful eye on road shipments of
the children's tooth-decay reducer.)
8 "I had no idea where the
fluoride was coming from until the
anti-fluoridationists pointed it out to me, Dr. Hardy Limeback, the head of Preventative Dentistry at the
University of Toronto, Canada, and a
former leading fluoridation supporter, told me. I said, You have got to be wrong. That is not possible! xviii
INTRODUCTION Those same
phosphate manufacturers were members of an influential group of industries that sponsored Dr. Robert
Kehoe s fluoride research at the
University of Cincinnati during the 1940s and 1950s. Kehoe is better known today for his career-long defense of
the safety of adding lead to gasoline
(now discredited). But he was also a leading figure reassuring citizens and scientists of the safety of
industrial fluoride and water
fluoridation, while burying information about the chemical s toxic
effects and privately sharing doubts
with his corporate sponsors about the safety of
even tiny amounts of the chemical. 9
Not surprisingly, peering behind the fifty-year-old facade of
smiling children with rows of
picket-fence-white teeth is difficult. Industry is reluctant to have its monument to fluoride
safety blackened or its role in dental
mythmaking explored. Several of the archives I visited had gaping holes or missing documents, and some were
closed entirely. And many scientists are
reluctant to speak critically about fluoride — mindful of the fate of researchers who have questioned the
government line. Scientists have been
fired for their refusal to back down from their questions about the safety of fluoride, blackballed by
industry, or smeared by propagandists
hired by the U.S. Public Health Service and the American Dental Asso-ciation. 10 "Bodies litter the
field," one senior dental researcher told
me when he learned that I was writing a book on fluoride. Myths are powerful things. Mention of
fluoride evokes a skeptically cocked
eyebrow from liberals and conservatives alike and an almost reflexive mention of the 1964 Stanley Kubrick
film Dr. Strangelove. The hilarious
portrayal of General Jack D. Ripper as a berserk militarist obsessed with Communists adding fluoride to
the nation's water became a cultural
icon of the cold war — and perhaps the movie's most famous scene. (Today Nile Southern, the son of Dr.
Strangelove's screenwriter, Terry
Southern, remarks that the news that U.S. military and industrial interests — not Communists — promoted water
fluoridation is "just shocking.
Terry and Stanley [ Kubrick] would have been horrified by it.")" The media caricature was largely false. The
national grassroots struggle against
water fluoridation was a precursor of todays environmental movement, with multicolored hues of political
affiliation. It was led by veteran
scientists with distinguished careers safeguard- INTRODUCTION xix
ing public health, including the doctor who warned the nation about the dangers of cigarette smoking and the risk
from allergic reaction to penicillin.
Yet instead of being seen as medical pioneers and minutemen, warning of the encroachment of
industrial poisons, antifluoridationists
are portrayed as unscientific and isolationist the modern equivalent of believing that the earth
is flat. It is the U.S. medical
establishment that is out on a limb, say crit ics. Adding to water a chemical so toxic that it
was once used as rat poison was a uniquely
American idea and is, increasingly, a lone American practice. Most European countries do not add
fluoride to their water. Several nations
have long since discontinued the practice,
doubting its safety and worth."
Fluoride may help teeth, but the evidence is not overwhelming. Although rates of dental decay have fallen
significantly in the United States since
the 194os, similar improvements have been seen in countries where fluoride is not added to the
water. Improved dental care, good nutrition,
and the use of antibiotics may explain the
parallel improvement. A largely sympathetic official review of fluoridation by the British government in
2000 found that most studies of the
effectiveness of fluoridated water were of moderate quality and that water fluoridation may be
responsible for 15 percent fewer
cavities." Thats a far cry from the 65 percent reductions promised by the early promoters of fluoride.
With revelations that such health
problems as central nervous system effects, arthritis, and the risk of bone cancer were minimized or
concealed entirely from the public by
early promoters of fluoride, the possible benefit of a handful of better teeth might not be worth
running the risk. How many cavities
would have to be saved to justify the death of one man from osteosarcoma?" asked the late Dr.
John Colquhoun, the former chief dental
officer of Auckland, New Zealand, and a fluoride promoter turned critic. "I did not realize the toxicity of
fluoride," said Dr. Limeback, the
Canadian. I had taken the word of the public health dentists, the public health physicians, the USPHS, the
USCDC, the ADA, the CDA [Canadian Dental
Association] that fluoride was safe and effective without actually investigating it
myself. Even the theory of how fluoride
works has changed. The CDC no longer
argues that fluoride absorbed from the stomach via XX INTRODUCTION drinking water helps teeth. Instead, the
argument goes, fluoride strikes at
dental decay from outside the tooth, or topically, where, among
other effects, it attacks the enzymes in
cavity-causing bacteria. Drinking
fluoridated water is still important, according to the CDC, because it
bathes the teeth in fluoride-enhanced
saliva — a cost-effective way of reaching
poorer families who may not have a balanced diet, access to a dentist,
or the regular habit of brushing with
fluoride toothpaste.' But swallowing
treated water allows fluoride into our bones and blood, where it may be harmful to other parts of the
body, say critics. If fluoride can kill
enzymes in tooth bacteria, its potentially crippling effects on other enzymes — the vital chemical catalysts that
regulate much biological activity — must
be considered.' When I investigated
[such questions] I said, "This is crazy." Lets take it out of the water because it is harming so
many people — [not] simply the dental
fluorosis [the white mottling on teeth caused by fluoride], but now we are seeing bone problems and possibly
cancer and thyroid problems. If you are
really targeting the poor people, lets give toothpaste out at the food banks. Do something other than fluoridate the
water supply," said Dr. Limeback.
Then [the fluoride promoters] kept saying, Well, it is cost effective. That is a load of crap-it is cost effective
because they are using toxic waste, for
crying out loud! History tells us that
overturning myths is rarely easy. But we have been down this path before. The fluoride story is
similar to the fables about lead,
tobacco, and asbestos, in which medical accomplices helped industry
to hide the truth about these substances
for generations. Fluoride workers share
a tragic fate with the souls who breathed beryllium, uranium, and silica in the workplace. Endless studies that
assured workers that their factories and
mines were safe concealed the simple truth that thousands of people were being poisoned and dying painful
early deaths from these chemicals. So if
this tale of how fluorides public image was privately laundered sounds eerily familiar, maybe its
because the very same professionals and
institutions who told us that fluoride was safe said much the same about lead, asbestos, and DDT or
persuaded us to smoke more tobacco. INTRODUCTION XXI
Lulled by half a century of reassurances from supporters of
fluoride in the public health
establishment, many doctors today have no idea of the symptoms of fluoride poisoning. A silent
killer may stalk us in our ignorance.
There is a black hole out there, in terms of the public and scientific knowledge, says former industry
toxicologist Dr. Phyllis Mullenix. There
is really no public health issue that could impact a bigger population. I dont think there is an
element of this society that is not
impacted by fluoride. It is very far-reaching and it is very disturbing." Fifty years after the U.S. Public Health
Service abruptly reversed course during
the darkest days of the cold war — and endorsed artificial water fluoridation — it is time to recognize the
folly, hubris, and secret agendas that
have shackled us too long, poisoning our water, choking our air, and crippling workers. It is time, as the Quakers
ask in life, to speak truth to power.
Good science can sharpen the tools for change, but it will be public opinion and citizen action that strike those
shackles free. Major Figures On The
Fluoride Story edward L. bernays . A
propagandist and the self-styled father of public relations, Bernays was Sigmund Freud s
nephew. Among his clients were the U.S.
military, Alcoa, Procter and Gamble, and Allied Signal. On behalf of big tobacco companies he persuaded
American women to smoke cigarettes. He
also promoted water fluoridation, consulting on strategy for the National Institute of Dental
Research. Gerald judy COX. A researcher
at the Mellon Institute in the 1930s,
where he held a fellowship from the Aluminum Company of America. Following Frarys (see below) suggestion, Cox
reported that fluoride gave rats
cavity-resistant teeth and in 1939 made the first public proposal to add fluoride to public water supplies. henry trendley dean. The U.S. Public Health
Service researcher who studied dental
fluorosis in areas of the United States where fluoride occurred naturally in the water supply. His
fluorine-caries hypothesis suggested
that fluoride made teeth cavity-resistant but also caused unsightly dental mottling. Worried about
toxicity, Dean opposed adding fluoride
to water in Newburgh, New York, the site of the nations first-planned water fluoridation experiment.
In 1948 Dean became the first director
of the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) and, in 1953, a top official of the American Dental
Association. OSCAR R. ewing . A top
Wall Street lawyer for the Aluminum Company
of America. As Federal Security Agency administrator for the Truman administration with jurisdiction over the
Public Health Service, it was Ewing who,
in 1950, endorsed public water fluoridation for the United States.
MAJOR FIGURES FRANCIS COWLES
FRARY. As Director of Research at the Aluminum
Company of America from 1918, Frary was one of the most powerful science bureaucrats in the United States and
grappled with the issue of fluoride
emissions from aluminum smelters. It was Frary who made early suggestions to Gerald Cox, a researcher at
the Mellon Institute, that fluoride
might make strong teeth. GENERAL LESLIE
R. GROVES. Head of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers' Manhattan Project to build the world's first atomic
bomb. HAROLD CARPENTER HODGE. A
biochemist and toxicologist at the
University of Rochester who investigated fluoride for the U.S.
Armys Manhattan Project, where he also
supervised experiments in which
unsuspecting hospital patients were injected with uranium and
plutonium. After the war Hodge chaired
the National Research Council s Committee
on Toxicology and became the leading scientific promoter of water fluoridation in the United States during the
cold war. DUDLEY A. IRWIN. Alcoa s
medical director who helped oversee Robert
Kehoes fluoride research at the Kettering Laboratory, and who met personally with top fluoride researchers at
the National Institute of Dental
Research (NIDR) following the verdict in the Martin air-pollution
trial. ROBERT A. KEHOE . As the
Director of the Kettering Laboratory of
Applied Physiology at the University of Cincinnati, Kehoe was the leading defender in the United States of the
safety of leaded gasoline. Guided by a
group of corporate attorneys known as the Fluorine Lawyers Committee, Kehoe similarly defended fluoride
on behalf of a group of corporations
that included DuPont, Alcoa, and U.S. Steel, all of which faced lawsuits for industrial fluoride
pollution. EDWARD J. L ARGENT. A
researcher at the Kettering Laboratory who
defended corporations accused of fluoride pollution and spent a
career negating the fluoride warnings of
the Danish scientist Kaj xxiv MAJOR FIGURES Roholm. Largent exposed his wife and son
to hydrogen fluoride in a laboratory gas
chamber. NICHOLAS C. LEONE. The head of
medical investigations at the federal
governments NIDR who was in close communication with industry s Fluorine Lawyers and who, following the 1955
Martin verdict, met with Alcoa s Dudley
Irwin and the Kettering Laboratory s Robert Kehoe to discuss how government water fluoridation
safety studies could help industry. WILLIAM J. MARCUS . A senior toxicologist in
the EPAs Office of Drinking Water. In
1992, after he protested what he described as the systematic downgrading of the results of the
government's study of cancer and
fluoride, he was fired. A federal judge later ruled that he had been fired because of his scientific opinions on
fluoride and ordered him reinstated.
PAUL AND VERLA MARTIN. Oregon farmers who were poisoned by fluoride from a Reynolds Metals aluminum
plant. Their precedent-setting court
victory in 1955 sparked emergency meetings between fluoride industry representatives and senior officials
from the National Institute of Dental
Research and launched a crash program of laboratory experiments at the Kettering Laboratory to prove
industrial fluoride pollution "safe." PHYLLIS J. MULLENIX. A leading
neurotoxicologist hired by the Forsyth
Dental Center in Boston to investigate the toxicity of materials used in dentistry. In i 994i after her
research indicated that fluoride was
neurotoxic, she was fired. KAJ
ELI ROHOLM. The Danish scientist who in 1937 published the book Fluorine Intoxication, an encyclopedic study
of fluoride pollution and poisoning. He
opposed giving fluoride to children.
PHILIP SADTLER. The third-generation son of a venerable
Philadelphia family of chemists, Sadtler
gave expert testimony during the 1940s and
1950s on behalf of farmers and citizens who claimed that they had
been poisoned by industrial fluoride
pollution. He MAJOR FIGURES XXV
blamed fluoride for the most notorious air pollution disaster in U.S.
history, during which two dozen people
were killed and several thousand were
injured in Donora, Pennsylvania, over the Halloween weekend in
1948. FRANK L. SEAMANS. A top lawyer
for Alcoa, Seamans was also head of the
group of senior attorneys known as the Fluorine Lawyers Committee, which represented big corporations
in cases of alleged industrial fluoride
pollution. GEORGE L. WALDBOTT. A doctor
and scientist and a leading expert on
the health effects of environmental pollutants, Waldbott's research in the 19505 and 196os on his own
patients indicated that many people were
uniquely sensitive to very small doses of fluoride. He founded the International Society for
Fluoride Research and was a leader of
the international and domestic opposition to water fluoridation. COLONEL STAFFORD L. WARREN. Head of the
Manhattan Projects Medical Section. EDWARD RAY WEIDLEIN. Director of the Mellon
Institute, where Cox carried out his
studies. 1 Through the Looking Glass At the children's entrance to the
prestigious Forsyth Dental Center in Boston,
there is a bronze mural from a scene in Alice in Wonderland. The
mural makes scientist Phyllis Mullenix
laugh. One spring morning, when she was
the head of the toxicology department at Forsyth, she walked into the
ornate and marbled building and, like
Alice, stepped through the looking glass.
That same day in her Forsyth laboratory she made a startling
discovery and tumbled into a bizarre
wonderland where almost no one was who they
had once appeared to be and nothing in the scientists life would ever be
the same again. AS SHE DROVE alongside the Charles River in
the bright August sunshine of 1982 for
her first day of work at the Forsyth Dental Center in Boston, toxicologist Phyllis Mullenix was
smiling. She and her husband Rick had
recently had their second daughter. Her new job promised career stability and with it, the realization
of a professional dream. Since her days
as a graduate student Mullenix had been exploring new methods for studying the possible harmful
effects of small doses of chemicals. By
1982 Dr. Mullenix was a national leader in the young science of neurotoxicology, measuring how
such chemicals affected the brain and
central nervous system. She and a team of researchers were developing a bold new technology to perform those
difficult measurements more accurately
and more quickly than ever before. The
system was called the Computer Pattern Recognition System. 
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