Aloha,
Recently, I submitted an article about fluoride that barely skimmed the surface of how disastrous this nightmare really is. My knowledge of fluoridation came from Dr. Paul Connett, PHd. This guy travels and testifies wherever and whenever to save people from fluoridation. Listening to him testify in Hawaii was amazing. To learn more, please go to www.fluoridealert.org. I encourage you all to make a copy of the following article Dr. Connett wrote and become a voice to save your community.
THE ARROGANCE OF FLUORIDATION
FAN Bulletin | May 5, 2014
By Paul Connett, PhD
Director, Fluoride Action Network
Co-author, The Case Against Fluoride (Chelsea Green, 2010)
Organized dentistry, which includes the American Dental Association [ADA], the Oral Health Division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [OHD] and state dental directors, is the only health profession that seeks to deliver its services via the public’s water supply.
The practice of artificial water fluoridation is the height of arrogance when one considers the following undisputed facts and scientifically supported arguments.
a) Fluoride is not a nutrient. Not one biochemical process in the human body has been shown to need fluoride.
b) The level of fluoride in mother’s milk is exceedingly low (0.004 ppm, NRC, 2006, p.40). Formula-fed infants receive up to 175 to 250 times more fluoride than a breast-fed infant if using water fluoridated with .7 or 1 ppm of fluoride. Does the dental community really know more than nature about what the baby needs?
c) Fluoride accumulates in the bone and in other calcified tissues over a lifetime. It is still not known what the true half-life of fluoride is in the human bone, but an estimate of 20 years has been made (NRC, 2006, p 92). This means that some of the fluoride absorbed by infants will be retained for a lifetime in their bones. Early symptoms of fluoride poisoning of the bones are identical to arthritis. Lifelong accumulation of fluoride in bones can also make them brittle and more prone to fracture.
d) Once fluoride is added to the water supply, there is no way of controlling the dose people get daily or over a lifetime and there is no way of controlling who gets the fluoride – it goes to everyone regardless of age, weight, health, need or nutritional status.
e) The addition of fluoride to the public water supply violates the individual’s right to informed consent to medical or human treatment. The community is doing to everyone what a doctor can do to no single patient. (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/patientinstructions/000445.htm).
f) Fluoride is known to have toxic properties at low doses (Barbier et al, 2010).
g) Children in fluoridated countries are being over-exposed to fluoride as demonstrated by the very high prevalence of dental fluorosis. According to the CDC (2010) 41% of American children aged 12-15 have some form of dental fluorosis. Black and Mexican American children have significantly higher rates (CDC, 2005, Table 23).
h) A 500-page review by the National Research Council in 2006 revealed that several subsets of the population (including bottle-fed babies) are exceeding the EPA’s safe reference dose (0.06 mg/kilogram bodyweight/day) when drinking fluoridated water at 1 ppm (NRC, 2006, p85). The NRC panel also indicated that fluoride causes many health problems at levels close to the exposure levels in fluoridated communities (NRC, 2006).
i) An un-refuted study conducted at Harvard University shows that fluoride may cause osteosarcoma (a frequently fatal bone cancer) in young men when boys are exposed to fluoridated water in their 6th, 7th and 8th years (Bassin et al., 2006). Despite promises by Bassin’s thesis advisor (Chester Douglass) a subsequent study by Kim et al. (2011) did not refute Bassin’s key finding of the age-window of vulnerability.
j) There are many animal and human studies, which indicate that fluoride is a neurotoxin and 37 studies that show an association between fairly modest exposure to fluoride and lowered IQ in children. Twenty-seven of these studies were reviewed by a team from Harvard University (Choi et al., 2012). In an article in Lancet Neurology, Grandjean and Landrigan (2014) have since classified fluoride as a developmental neurotoxicant. All these papers can be accessed at www.FluorideAlert.org/issues/health/brain
k) For many decades no health agency in any fluoridated country has made any serious attempt to monitor side effects (other than dental fluorosis). Nor have they investigated reports of citizens who claim to be sensitive to fluoride’s toxic effects at low doses.
l) No U.S. doctors are being trained to recognize fluoride’s toxic effects, including low dose-reversible effects in sensitive individuals.
m) Dental caries is a disease, according to the ADA, CDC’s OHD, and the American Association of Pediatric Dentistry, and others. Fluoridation is designed to treat this disease but it has never been approved by the FDA. The FDA has never performed any trial to ascertain the safety of fluoride. FDA classifies fluoride as an “unapproved drug.”
n) The effectiveness of swallowing fluoride to reduce tooth decay has never been demonstrated by a randomized control trial (RCT) the gold standard of epidemiology (McDonagh et al., 2000).
o) The evidence that fluoridation or swallowing fluoride reduces tooth decay is very weak (Brunelle and Carlos, 1990 and Warren et al., 2009).
p) The vast majority of countries neither fluoridate their water nor their salt. But, according to WHO figures, tooth decay in 12-year olds is coming down as fast –if not faster – in non-fluoridated countries as fluoridated ones (http://fluoridealert.org/issues/caries/who-data/ ).
q) Most dental authorities now agree that the predominant benefit of fluoride is TOPICAL not SYSTEMIC (CDC, 1999, 2001)– i.e. it works on the outside of the tooth not from inside the body, thus there is no need to swallow fluoride to achieve its claimed benefit and no justification for forcing it on people who do not want it.
r) Many countries (e.g. Scotland) have been able to reduce tooth decay in low-income families using cost-effective programs without forcing fluoride on people via the water supply (BBC Scotland, 2013).
s) While organized dentistry (i.e. the ADA/OHD) claims that fluoridation is designed to help low-income families, it is hard to take such sentiments seriously when,
i) 80% of American dentists refuse to treat children on Medicaid.
ii) The ADA opposes the use of dental therapists to provide some basic services in low-income areas.
Moreover, such a practice can hardly be considered equitable when low-income families are less able to afford fluoride avoidance strategies and it is well-established that fluoride’s toxic effects are made worse by poor diet, which is more likely to occur in low-income families.
t) Compounding the arrogance of this practice, neither the ADA, nor the OHD will appear to defend their position in open public debate nor provide a scientific response in writing to science-based critiques (e.g. The Case Against Fluoride by Connett, Beck and Micklem).
Conclusion: It is time to get dentistry out of the public water supply and back into the dental office. It is also time the U.S. media did its homework on this issue instead of simply parroting the self-serving spin of the dental lobby.
Postscript.
“It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.” Henrik Ibsen, The Ghosts
Note: readers can view a videotape of a recent presentation Paul Connett gave on fluoridation in Seattle, Washington at http://youtu.be/ZEVLLTkxml0
References:
Barbier O, Arreola-Mendoza L, Del Razo LM. 2010. Molecular mechanisms of fluoride toxicity. Chem Biol Interact. 188(2):319-33. Abstract.
Bassin EB, Wypij D, Davis RB, Mittleman MA. 2006. Age-specific fluoride exposure in drinking water and osteosarcoma (United States). Cancer Causes and Control 17(4):421-8. Abstract.
BBC Scotland. 2013. Nursery toothbrushing saves £6m in dental costs. Nov 9. Online at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-24880356
Brunelle JA, Carlos JP. 1990. Recent trends in dental caries in U.S. children and the effect of water fluoridation. J. Dent. Res 69(Special edition):723-727. Abstract
CDC (1999). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1999. Achievements in public health, 1900- 1999: Fluoridation of drinking water to prevent dental caries. Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Review. (MMWR). 48(41):933-940 October 22, 1999. Online at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4841a1.htm
CDC (2001). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recommendations for using fluoride to prevent and control dental caries in the United States. Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Review. (MMWR). August 17. 50(RR14):1-42. Online at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5014a1.htm
CDC (2005). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2005. Surveillance for dental caries, dental sealants, tooth retention, edentulism, and enamel fluorosis–United States, 1988-1994 and 1999-2002. MMWR Surveill Summ 54(3):1-43. Online at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5403a1.htm
CDC (2010). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2010. Beltrán-Aguilar, et al. Prevalence and Severity of Dental Fluorosis in the United States. Online at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db53.htm
Choi AL, Sun G, Zhang Y, Grandjean P. 2012. Developmental fluoride neurotoxicity: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Environ Health Perspect 120:1362–1368. Online at http://fluoridealert.org/wp-content/uploads/choi-20121.pdf
Connett, P, Beck, J, Micklem HS. 2010. The Case Against Fluoride. Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vermont.
Grandjean P, Landrigan PJ. 2014. Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity. The Lancet Neurology 13(3):330–338. Abstract.
Kim FM, Hayes C, Williams PL, Whitford GM, Joshipura KJ, Hoover RN, Douglass CW. 2011. An assessment of bone fluoride and osteosarcoma. Journal of Dental Research 90(10):1171-76. Abstract.
McDonagh MS, Whiting PF, Wilson PM, et al. 2000. Systematic review of water fluoridation. British Medical Journal 321(7265):855–59. Study at http://www.bmj.com/content/321/7265/855. Note: The full report that this paper summarizes is commonly known as the York Review.
NRC (2006). National Research Council of the National Academies. Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards. Online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11571
Warren JJ, Levy SM, Broffitt B, et al. 2009. Considerations on optimal fluoride intake using dental fluorosis and dental caries outcomes – a longitudinal study. J Public Health Dent. 69(2):111-5. Abstract
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a “plastic” community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, ” let’s become vegetarians”. I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, “okay”! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $ 100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, “The Little Kitchen”.
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I’ll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to “The Little Kitchen”. Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, “Let’s make a deal. You do our tax return and we’ll feed you as well”. So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, “Hawaii”. Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called,” Mr. Natural’s”. I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at “Mr. Natural’s.” To make a long story short, that’s exactly what happened.
So, I’m working at “Mr. Natural’s” and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle – it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka’anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn’t really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that’s exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I’m asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn’t thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, “You expected anything less”? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, ‘enchilada’s at “Natural’s” tonight’. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That’s when they found out I was an accountant and “Down to Earth” was born. “Down to Earth” became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD’s that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii’s premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She said,” If you want to be with me you’ve got to stop working on naked women”. So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a “chicken” or “egg” or “fish” or “pig” or “cow” was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
