Friday, November 24, 2023

The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson Forward and Introduction from archive.org

 

The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson Forward and Introduction from archive.org

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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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