“Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have had to face?”
— Gen. Jack D. Ripper from the film, Dr. Strangelove
It was a line in a scene from the Stanley Kubrick comedy with Sterling Hayden as the hyper-paranoid General Jack D. Ripper. By means of satire, this film reflects the public attitude of the mid-60s: that anyone, who was against fluoridation, was looked on as a McCarthyesque nut case.
The pro-fluoridation attitude was the culmination of a decades-long PR campaign where government and industry colluded to perpetrate upon the American public one of the most sinister frauds in U.S. history. It was a silent War on Public Health.
But it was brilliantly executed. Led by the great propaganda expert and “father of public relations,” Edward L. Bernays, an army of mind-molders mesmerized the nation into believing the unbelievable; that fluoride, which had once been widely sold as rat and bug poison, was now a decay preventive super-compound. By the 50s and 60s, flouride was a medical rock star. Dental Miracle formerly known as Toxic Waste Product was all the rage.
But then as now it was — and still is —a toxic waste product. As an erstwhile chemist for a mining company in the 90s, I was aware then that fluoride was a harmful by-product of that industry as well. But most of the fluoride that is dumped into the public water supply is the unwanted and highly toxic effluence from fertilizer manufacturing.
So why mass-medicate drinking water with toxic waste? One reason is profit. In an article entitled Fluoride: Industry’s Toxic Coup by Joel Griffiths, the author writes:
“As early as 1850, fluoride emissions from the iron and copper industries poisoned crops, livestock, and people. By the turn of the century, lawsuits and burdensome regulations threatened the existence of these industries in Germany and England.
“In 1933, the world's first major air pollution disaster struck Belgium's Meuse Valley. Several thousand people became violently ill and 60 died. Kaj Roholm, the world's leading authority on fluoride hazards, placed the blame on airborne fluoride emissions.
“It was abundantly clear to both industry and government that U.S. industrial expansion would necessitate releasing millions of tons of waste fluoride into the environment. It was equally clear that U.S. industrial expansion would be accompanied by complaints and lawsuits over fluoride damage on an unprecedented scale.”
But what if you could convince municipalities to dump it in the water supply? After all, the solution to pollution is dilution. Right? Better yet, what if you could persuade them to pay you for your poisonous waste?
Griffiths further writes:
“In 1931, a PHS dentist named H. Trendley Dean was dispatched to remote towns in the West where drinking water wells contained high concentrations of natural fluoride. His mission: to determine how much fluoride people could tolerate without sustaining obvious damage to their teeth. Dean found that teeth in these high-fluoride towns were often discolored and eroded, but he also reported that they appeared to have fewer cavities than average.”
After finding that fluoride reduced cavities in lab rats, an Alcoa-funded scientist, Gerald J. Cox, concluded that the same should be true for children. Huh? And so in 1945, with government approval, municipalities around the country began fluoridating the public water supplies with the toxic industrial pollutant. Granted, it was diluted enough to prevent short-term negative effects. More or less.
But the long-term effects are a different story. Once it’s in the human body, fluoride likes to stay there — and accumulate. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of. One reason is because fluoride is strongly attracted to calcium. Like an ex-lover whom you’ve repeatedly kicked to the curb, but who keeps showing up on your doorstep, fluoride is tenacious. And because much of the body’s calcium is in the bones, ligaments, and cartilage — that’s where fluoride likes to live and accumulate. Result: crippling arthritis, bone spurs, and brittle bones.
In addition, research confirms that the pineal gland is a major fluoride collector and that fluoride has been proven to calcify it. This all-important little gland, located in the middle of the brain, “is responsible for the synthesis and secretion of the hormone melatonin.Melatonin maintains the body’s circadian rhythm (sleep-wake cycle), regulates the onset of puberty in females, and helps protect the body from cell damage caused by free radicals.” And some researchers suggest a connection between pineal calcification and the current epidemic of early puberty in young girls.
In fact, Charles E. Perkins, a research chemist, went so far as to say more generally:
“Any person who drinks artificially fluoridated water for a period of one year or more, will never be the same person mentally or physically.”
Dr. Robert Carton, Ph.D, former US EPA scientist:
“Fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century if not, of all time.”
Still in Denial
Yet Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy supports water fluoridation as a safe and beneficial public health measure to prevent tooth decay. Ditto for the American Dental Association and the CDC.
In his book The Fluoride Deception, Christopher Bryson states: “Fluoride science is corporate science. Fluoride science is DDT science. It’s asbestos science, it’s tobacco science.” Bryson cites numerous experts from around the world whose findings fly in the face of our own government researchers.
So is this a case where the U.S. Surgeon General is right and most of the rest the world is wrong? Ninety-nine percent of western continental Europe has rejected, banned, or stopped fluoridation due to environmental, health, legal, or ethical concerns. Only about 5% of the world population is fluoridated and more than 50% of these people live in North America.
But at least the FDA requires fluoridated toothpaste to have a warning label. Why? Because fluoride is a known poison. “Small type on all brands warns that if children under six swallow as much as a pea-sized amount of fluoridated paste, parents should contact the nearest poison control center.”
If the government were really concerned for our health, why doesn’t it mandate magnesium in our water to help prevent heart attacks? Or zinc to boost our immune system? Or selenium to help prevent cancer? Most Americans are deficient in all three of those important minerals. But no one is deficient in fluoride. It’s not even an essential nutrient. Yet it’s the one that gets added to our drinking water.
Follow the Money
Carol Kopf, Media Director, of the Fluoride Action Network has said:
“Multi-billion dollar international conglomerates, which benefit from tooth decay and fluoride sales, pour money into organized dentistry, which is behind virtually every fluoridation initiative.
“The American Dental Association (ADA), and many of its over 250 constituent state and city associations, are benefactors along with other fluoridation-promoting dental groups and schools.
“Dentists, inside and outside of government and industry, seem to have vast amounts of money and influence to promote fluoridation. Where does it come from?
Fluoride for tooth decay prevention? Really?
Not all the experts agree:
“Numerous top scientists over the past 60 years have discarded the theory that fluoride helps teeth, or is a nutrient helpful to man.”—Dr. Gerald Judd
“Here in Toronto we’ve been fluoridating for 36 years. Yet Vancouver– which has never fluoridated — has a cavity rate lower than Toronto’s.”—Dr. Hardy Limeback, B.Sc. Ph.D.
“In Japan, fluoridation has been virtually nonexistent since the 1970s, yet rates of dental caries have declined since that time – in spite of their increased sugar consumption.” -— M. Marimoto, European Journal of Oral Science
In Canada, "the prevalence of caries decreased over time in the fluoridation-ended community while remaining unchanged in the fluoridated community." Maupome G, Clark DC, Levy SM, Berkowitz J. (2001).
Conclusion
Notwithstanding our good friend Jack D. Ripper, this tine we can’t blame it on the “hardcore commies.” Instead, it looks like yet another example of special interests profiting at the expense of the public good. With “friends” like that, who needs your hardcore commies anyhow?
TO BE CONTINUED. PART 2: “THE SHOCKING REBUTTAL” COMING SOON.
STAY TUNED...