The following is a section of the special supplement on fluoridation of the August, 1959 issue of The Canadian Intelligence Service, published in Flesherton, Ontario. It seems to us to sum up very efficiently some of the major points in the fluoridation problem. The forenote below is by the editor of The Canadian Intelligence Service.
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This service does not claim to be an authority on fluoridation. But we present in this report a digest of evidence drawn from a wide range of authoritative medical sources, prepared with the assistance of eminent Canadian dental and medical practitioners and officials. Editor C.I.S.
What is fluoridation?
Fluoridation means the adding of a powerful cumulative poison, usually sodium fluoride or sodium silico fluoride, to the water supplies of a community for the purpose of reducing tooth decay in children. The recommended dosage is one part fluoride to one million parts of water (1 ppm).
Where did it originate?
It seems to have originated as a result of a report by Dr George W. Heard, a dentist of Hereford, Texas, more than thirty years ago. He announced that the soil in the Deaf-Smith County was so rich in minerals that there was hardly a toothache in the county. Twenty-three years later other dentists investigated and concluded that it might be due to the fluoride in the water.
Dr. Heard himself says: "With this (conclusion) I do not concur. Fluorine in water is a deadly poison, inorganic, and cannot be properly assimilated by the human organs. It is purely an inorganic drug. Fluorine in soil and water is not a food, but plant life grown in this soil converts this mineral, which is a poison, into food values which prevent disease." (U.S. 83rd Congress hearing on H. R. 2341, page 50).
What is fluorine?
Fluorine is one of the most active elements known to man so active that it is never found in nature, and can be produced only with great difficulty in a laboratory because it explodes with great violence upon contact with air or water.
What are fluorides?
Fluorides are the salts of fluorine. They occur as a by-product in two large industries; the aluminum and chemical fertilizer industries. They have been used for many years as rat and roach poison, being tasteless and odorless.
The most poisonous of these fluorine salts is sodium fluoride, used in water fluoridation. Less poisonous is the more stable calcium fluoride found in nature; and the least poisonous are the organic calcium-phosphorous fluorides found in foods.
Whence the promotion?
In 1944, Oscar Ewing was put on the payroll of the Aluminum Company of America, the law firm with which he was associated being retained at $750,000 a year. A few months thereafter, Mr. Ewing was made Federal Security Administrator, with the announcement that he was taking a big salary cut in order to serve his country. (Federal Security Agency, now Department of Health Education and Welfare.)
The period of his administration was years of huge budgets, with untold millions being doled out through grants to medical and dental colleges and state departments of health, for research and welfare projects. There was plenty of money, too, for 'educational' projects, and in 1951, Mr. Ewing asked for TWO MILLION dollars for fluoridation propaganda.
Naturally, grants were awarded to those organizations and institutions sympathetic to the policies and pronouncements of the U. S. Public Health Service, which had become a powerful bureaucracy. These grants were powerful weapons.
The U. S. Public Health Service, with millions at its command for 'education', thus becomes a huge propaganda machine, with movies and expensive brochures, lectures, radio, and generous expense accounts for officials. Every aid was employed to boost fluoridation, with a concentration on parent-teacher associations, to convert them into enthusiastic if misinformed, promoters of fluoridation. For all practical purposes, the U. S. Public Health Service became a huge advertising agency in the service of several affluent corporations.
What is claimed for Fluoridation?
That it will reduce tooth decay (dental caries) in children by 66%.
Was fluoridation tried experimentally?
Yes; in Newburgh, N.Y., and Grand Rapids, Michigan, starting in 1945.
What were the results?
According to the U. S. Public Health Service (chief agency promoting fluoridation), Newburgh and Grand Rapids had 66% fewer decayed, filled, or missing teeth than similar, unfluoridated 'control' centres.
However, dental teams from New York State Department of Education found the opposite -- 50% more dental defects in the fluoridated city of Newburgh than in the unfluoridated 'control' city of Kingston, N.Y.
The independent New York State survey included gingivitis, pyorrhea, and malposition of teeth as defects.
Do fluorides cause gum disease?
Many authorities, such as Dr. H. K. Box of the University of Toronto, and Dr. G. C. Geiger, Florida State Dental Officer, have observed a marked increase in peridontal (gum) disease from protracted intake of minute amounts of fluoride in water. This disease, considered more serious than tooth decay, causes loss of teeth at an early age.
Another long-recognized effect of fluoride is a tendency to cause teeth to come in crooked.
Does fluoride help children's teeth?
It would seem to delay decay a year or so. Dr. Chas. Dillon, using the official Newburgh figures, shows that the actual increase in sound teeth was 7%.
The Grand Rapids and Newburgh studies have been severely criticized for bad statistical work by four different sets of statisticians: K. K. Paleuv, General Electric engineer and statistician; Standard Audits and Measurements Inc.; Melbourne University's statisticians with Sir Arthur P. Amies, Dean of the Dental School; and the Institute of Hygiene in Paris. The consensus of their opinion seems to be that the Newburgh-Grand Rapids studies don't mean too much.
What do the Newburgh dentists say? None confirmed the 66% reduction in tooth decay claim. Some noted a slight improvement. All agreed that 30% of the children born since fluoridation started had mottled teeth (Newburgh News, Dec. 14/55, after ten years of fluoridation).
Do fluorides disfigure teeth?
Yes. Mottling, or chalky spots, appear on the permanent teeth of about one child in four brought up on fluoridated water. These chalky spots turn brown or black later on, are sometimes pitted, and cannot be repaired. The upper front teeth are most often mottled.
Is sodium fluoride a natural product?
No. There are places where fluoride does occur in water naturally (Stratford, Ontario, for example). But the fluorides found naturally are usually organic calcium fluorides which are in combination with other natural elements serving to inhibit and neutralize the toxic effects of the fluorine, and which can be assimilated by the body; whereas the artificially fluoridated water is obtained with sodium fluoride, which is an inorganic cumulative poison eighty-five times more poisonous than natural fluoride.
Is fluorine a "cumulative" poison?
Yes. Any good medical reference book will confirm this. Radio-active tracer studies by Dr. Wallace-Durbin at California University proved that no matter how small the amount swallowed, some of it always retained in the body. Bones of old animals always contain more fluorine than bones of young animals.
Do all store fluorine at the same rate?
No. Most elimination occurs through the kidneys, and persons with impaired kidneys will naturally eliminate less and store more fluoride. The rate of storage varies with the individual.
Can fluoride dosage be controlled?
No. The case for fluoridation is based upon the premise that everyone drinks about four glasses of water daily, which at 1 ppm contains 1 mg of fluorine. Smelter workers and diabetics drink many times the so-called average amount of water. They may get ten times the recommended dosage. The child who drinks mostly fruit juice or milk may get almost none.
Do we get fluorine in any other way?
Yes. Seafoods, peas and tea are rich in fluorine. Foods and beverages processed with fluoridated water contain fluorides. Meat from animals pastured near smelters may contain a high concentration of fluoride. Many people take in enough fluoride to give them chronic fluorine poisoning even without drinking fluoridated water.
Is fluoridation like chlorination?
Only in the sense that a chemical is added to the water. Chlorine is added to bring about the destruction of disease germs in water. It acts on the water. But fluorides are added to change the composition of the teeth. They act on the person as medication.
Is fluoridation scientific?
No, it is not. Science implies accuracy and precision, and a measure of economy. But just consider the hit-and-miss procedures of artificial fluoridation.
(1) Instead of scientifically prescribing it (at a few cents a year) for use in tablet or in milk, it is added indiscriminately to the whole water supply, despite the fact that it is adults who drink beverages made with water, while young children drink milk. Also an estimated 99% of all water used, is used for watering lawns, washing clothes, cars and streets, bathing... with but one percent or less actually consumed (and only a tiny fraction of that 1% consumed by young children). Could a more wasteful and costly procedure be devised by man?
(2) Even with adults, water (and fluoride-rich food) consumption varies greatly..
(3) Water Commissioner Ford of New York City, in a brief presented on March 6, 1957, to the mayor and council, stated: "Fluoride chemical, when uniformly injected in a water supply at source, becomes unevenly distributed in the system." He went on to point out that samples taken from the taps in several fluoridated cities showed a variation in fluoride concentration (in same city) of more than five hundred percent.
A commercial factor?
Some who have examined this question closely suggest another factor a big business-finance factor behind fluoridation promotion. Fluoridation, they say, would:
(1) Leave the sugar industry a free hand to continue overselling its products. It is now known that good teeth, like good bodies, are built by good diet. But our present diet for children, including soft drinks and an endless variety of candy, is anything but healthy. It has resulted in a level of sugar consumption in many cases as high as 300% that required for healthy diet. This means millions of dollars to big business, thousands more union members for labour bosses and bad teeth for our young people.
Fluoridation treats the sympton (tooth decay) rather than getting at the cause.
The same economic factors and greed apply to some of those engaged in the manufacture of equipment involved in 'fluoridation'. Especially is this liable to be true of the aluminum, steel and fertilizer industries, which see in 'fluoridation' a vast new market for waste by-products. It might be noted that Oscar Ewing, the big promoter of 'fluoridation' came from the Aluminum Company.
(2) Provides a new and profitable market in time for drugs and patent medicines to relieve the symptons of the wide-spread ill-effects of artifical fluoridation. It would be interesting to know how extensive and influential is this big business-finance hand behind today's mounting torrent of pro-fluoridation propaganda!