We're Not Harmed by a Lack of Fluorine/Fluoride, Part 1 of 3

ARTICLE IN 3 PARTS

Recently Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand, has seen some passionate reporting due to the fluoridation equipment not working. Wellington has been effectively not fluoridated since March of this year.

In this article and the next, I’ll give the passionate people reason to not worry so much.

Promotion of fluoridation has often relied on two falsities – one is the implication that fluoride is not abundant, and the other is that we are harmed by a lack or absence of the element fluorine. The latter is what this article focusses on. (Sure, there’s more to fluoridation than those two things, but they’re a great place to start.)

In 2020, I published my work on the way in which experts who’ve advocated the fluoridation of community water supplies for the last seven or so decades, have exaggerated in their claims that fluorine is an essential element (or that “fluoride” – as it’s more casually known, is an essential nutrient).

This kind of exaggeration was pointed out early on by antifluoridationists like allergist, Dr. George Waldbott, who wrote in 1955 that:

“Some odd arguments are being advanced in otherwise scientific journals: … that fluorine is a trace element necessary to good human nutrition…”

Pictured: George L. Waldbott, M.D., F.A.C.P., Medical Evidence Against Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies, Australian Journal of Dentistry, p. 13-20, February, 1955.

In that same year, another scientist, Dr. L. A. Maynard, PhD, wrote in the New York State Journal of Medicine, that:

“no one has been able, however, to produce experimentally any specific deficiency symptoms in animals from diets nearly devoid of the element [fluorine], and there is no convincing evidence that the beneficial effect on teeth from its ingestion is the result of its metabolism following absorption from the digestive tract.”

“Thus, there is no proof that fluorine is a dietary essential.”

Pictured: L. A. Maynard, Ph.D., Trace Minerals in Nutrition and Health, New York State Journal of Medicine, Vol. 55, No. 9, p. 1311-1312, May, 1955.

Indiana University was a mainstay in toothpaste research in the 1950s. In 1957, an experiment authored by Dr. Richard Maurer and Dr. Harry Day was published in the Journal of Nutrition. It was 13 pages start to finish, and was subsequently regarded by other scientists (some of whom promoted CWF) as one of the finest experiments in this vein of investigation.

A couple of their conclusions:

“Under the extremely rigorous conditions of this study fluorine was not found to have any influence on the growth and well-being of rats.”

“Thus it is justifiable to conclude that under some conditions fluorine may not have any value in nutrition or even in the maintenance of dental health.”

Pictured: Richard L. Maurer and Harry G. Day, The Non-Essentiality of Fluorine in Nutrition, Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 62, pp. 561-573, 1957.

In New Zealand, a Commission of Inquiry (COI) was set up to deal with the early controversy around CWF in the 1950s. The COI’s findings were published in 1957.

The COI completely ignored most of the experiments that had looked at the question whether fluoride was essential or not (3 from the 1930s, and at least 4 from the 1940s and 50s), and distorted the interpretation of Waldbott’s work, suggesting that:

“If the intake is insufficient the deficiency should be made up in imitation of nature by fortification of the drinking water (cf. Waldbott, 1955 a).”

Pictured: The last sentence of paragraph 227 of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on the Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies, 1957, New Zealand.

The citation given is to Dr. Waldbott’s 1955 paper in the Australian Journal of Dentistry, the one shown above in which Waldbott suggests that claiming “fluorine is a necessary trace element” (i.e., one we can be deficient in) is an “odd argument”.

Distorting the intended meaning of Waldbott’s statement is disingenuous.

The COI also suggested that an opponent of fluoridation, Mr. Needham, “regards [sic] fluorine as an indispensable trace element…” which was, as far as I can tell, is false. In 2021 I managed to visit the New Zealand Archives branch in Auckland, which hold Needham’s 1957 statements to the Commission.

Pictured: paragraphs 227-230 of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry on the Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies, 1957, New Zealand.

Note that the claim that fluoridation is NOT “mass medication” (last word in first photo, paragraph 228) relies upon the (exaggerated, distorted) claim that fluoride is a nutrient.

Why do I care about some document from the 1950s? Please bear with me, you’ll see.

The following will demonstrate Needham was an opponent of fluoridation.

Pictured: Needham’s testimony, available at Archives.org (Auckland, New Zealand).

Regarding the COI’s claim that Needham was an “authority” the man himself claimed he was a painter, and “just a layman” who had “read many varying reports”

Pictured: Needham’s testimony, available at Archives.org (Auckland, New Zealand).

The following photos will demonstrate Needham’s scepticism towards an essential role for fluoride.

Pictured: Needham’s testimony, available at Archives.org (Auckland, New Zealand).

Maurer and Day’s work was not cited in the COI, or any of the reporting in NZ during the following years. Neither was the work of Wuthier and Phillips from the University of Wisconsin, that also concluded fluoride non-essential.

Pictured: R. E. Wuthier and Paul. H. Phillips, The Effects of Long-Time Administration of Small Amounts of Fluoride in Food or Water on Caries-Susceptible Rats, Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 67, No. 4, pp. 581-588, 1959.

CONTINUED IN PART 2!