When I first decided to write about fluoride, I immediately faced the question of focus.  The subject is so broad, so deep, so multifaceted.  No one person could possibly cover it all.

The case against water fluoridation is clear:  it causes extensive harm to the body and confers no benefit.  This conclusion rests on a mountain of scientific evidence accumulated over long yeas of laboratory research and clinical observation.  And, while the public remains largely unaware, much of the evidence is readily available today through that simplest of tools, the Internet.  Study upon study documenting the catalog of ills—brittle bones, brittle teeth, cancer, endocrine disruption, even reduced IQ’s— that long term fluoride ingestion causes; studies duly reported, then consigned to the trashbin when they clashed with the dogma set in place by pro-fluoridationists more than half a century ago:  many of these live today in cyberspace. 

Since 2000, the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) www.fluoridealert.org has done an excellent job of making the latest in scientific research available to the public.  Look for well-documented fluoride-related research through a search engine and chances are good you’ll find yourself on a FAN page.  FAN carefully sources all the information they report on back to the journal or website from which it was taken, including, ironically, the sites of such heavyweight fluoride cheerleaders as the American Dental Association (ADA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).  The organization also excels at tracking government agency actions that impact on the public’s exposure to fluoride. 

With no reason to duplicate what the Fluoride Action Network already does so splendidly, my blog will concentrate on the historical, political and psychological issues surrounding fluoridation.  My hope is that it will become a resource:  a collection of varied information useful to anti-fluoridation activists everywhere, whose value will steadily increase as time goes on. 

Thus pared down, the topic is still immense.  Two central questions loom:  Why does the dental-medical establishment cling so stubbornly to discredited pseudoscience?  And why do we continue to listen to them?  

The second question is more readily answered than the first. Most of us are, by both nature and training, inclined to place our trust in “experts.”  Dentists, after all, spend years studying a specialized curriculum at prestigious schools.  Likewise, the policymakers of our regulatory agencies and of academia are highly-educated professionals:  doctors, dentists, researchers.  And all are, seemingly, united behind water fluoridation.  Surely the collective verdict of so much expert brain power cannot be in error.

But it can be.  And often is.  Think smoking.  Think the addition of lead to gasoline.  Both were OK for decades until one day they weren’t.   So totally accepted were cigarettes at one time that images of doctors and dentists were often used to sell them.  

                                                                                    
                                        

The reasons for the massive deception regarding fluoride are complex:  a grab bag of liability fears, face-saving, ignorance and greed.  Not all supporters are equally complicit in the fraud.  Today’s average dentist is merely following what he or she was taught in dental school, where the myth of fluoride as a miracle cavity-fighter has been enshrined for many decades.  It’s a myth hatched during the 1950’s, in the fertile minds of advertising men on behalf of corporations.  The clients were industrialists whose workers had suffered grave health damage from exposure to fluorides used for smelting and uranium enrichment while employed in their wartime plants.  The creative transformation of fluoride from poison to panacea not only staved off a public relations nightmare for the factory owners, it provided them with a lucrative new market for their waste products.  Christopher Bryson tells the story well in The Fluoride Deception, a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the details of what happened during that tumultuous era, and why.

At present, the top echelons of the dental establishment—colleges, research laboratories, professional organizations—and those of the the health-related federal bureaucracies, are stacked with pro-fluoridationists, and it is impossible for anybody not towing the line to rise to a position of authority within their ranks.  These are the people who set the dental school curricula, who issue the guidelines that, carried far and wide by the mass media, become truth in the public mind.  Careers have been destroyed or seriously harmed in the attempt to challenge them.   The experiences of Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, a distinguished toxicology researcher, and Dr. William Marcus, chief toxicologist at EPA's Office of Drinking Water, are cases in point.   http://www.fluoridealert.org/mullenix-interview.htm 
http://www.nofluoride.com/three.htm

Despite their ferocious defense of their position, the fluoridationists have never provided any evidence that their pet remedy works, beyond the assertion that the incidence of tooth decay has declined in fluoridated areas.  That is true.  It’s equally true in non-fluoridated areas.

Many respected professionals continue to speak out against water fluoridation. But they are like voices crying in the wilderness, drowned out by the din of organized corporate promotion—the only side of the argument the mainstream media permits us to see.   In 1985, the EPA's 1,200-member scientific/technical workers’ union protested the raising of the allowable fluoride limit from 1 to 4 parts per million, a level that would clearly injure children’s teeth.  In 1999 the union, by then grown to 1,500, called for an end to all fluoridation of water supplies.  Both times, top level management ignored them.

It’s time to abandon our faith in such “experts” and place it instead in our own experience and powers of observation.  If you live in a fluoridated area, just look around you.  You’ll see both good teeth and bad teeth (as well as bad teeth disguised by artful cosmetic dentistry).  A healthy diet and good dental hygiene are the way to sound teeth, not toxins in the drinking water.  Consider the fact that fluorides were once widely used as rat poison and are now popular crop pesticides.  Investigate alternatives to tapwater:  fluoride-free bottled water and specialized filter systems.  Stop drinking the fluoride.  And tell your friends.