Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a scene from the Wizard of Oz.  You know, the one in which Dorothy’s little dog Toto pulls aside the curtain to reveal a flustered white-haired old man.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” he pleads, while four sets of eyes bore straight into him.

By way of a refresher:  Dorothy and her companions, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion, have vanquished the Wicked Witch of the West, evaded monsters, and made their perilous way through dark forests to the Emerald City.  There dwells the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz—the only one in the kingdom who can grant them their heart’s desire.  The Wizard, however, refuses to see them.  “Come back tomorrow,” he thunders through loudspeakers. 

But the four friends have discovered new strength in themselves along the way.  Dorothy, a simple country girl, is unshakable in her determination to get home to Kansas.  The Scarecrow is neither as foolish nor the Lion as cowardly as first appeared.  And the Tin Woodman had a heart all along. 

Then Toto pulls the curtain and they get a glimpse of harsh reality.  But they’re ready for it now.  “You’re a humbug,” the Scarecrow tells the Wizard, who promptly admits it:  “Yes, yes, exactly so. I’m a humbug.”

That’s the fictional version.

In the real world, the “Wizards” pulling the levers - the 30 dentist-bureaucrats at the CDC’s Office of Oral Health and their counterparts at other federal, state and local agencies; at dental and medical societies; in academia and industry - will never confess that they are humbugs.  Too much is at stake:  money, power and prestige.  Too many ties, some stretching back over a half-century, would need to be broken. 

So they keep telling us (through their megaphone, Dr. Huang):  Pay no attention.  Pay no attention to all the kids with dental fluorosis, to the endemic  hypothyroidism, to the skyrocketing rates of diabetes, and kidney disease, and arthritis, and osteosarcoma, and hip fractures, and the dulling of intellect. . .Don't notice the alarming rise in dental disease among our lower-income population despite 40 years of fluoridation. Don’t look.  Don’t look.  Don’t look. 

But we are looking.  The cat is out of the bag:  water fluoridation is neither safe nor effective.  More and more people realize it all the time.  The days of these Wizards' fraud are numbered. 

Happy New Year!  We’ll be back with more in 2012.