I trust you have perused PART 1 and PART 2 of this article.
Continuing…
… you will recall I had shown some of the distorted claims in the 1957 Commission of Inquiry document, and how they had been disagreed with by some of the subsequent scientific literature, and how these findings were ignored by experts discussing fluoridation in media, claiming the opposite.
Fast forward to the present day.
Here in New Zealand, the NZ media quoted a politician as saying she would “really like to see what was spent annually in Christchurch on fixing children’s teeth as a result of fluoride deficiency.”
Pictured: Steven Walton, Health expert urges council to look at costs of dealing with decaying teeth, 18th April, 2022.
I wrote to Stuff, asking them to add a little rejoinder saying something along the lines of “fluoride deficiency” not actually existing. Here’s the correspondence, links to documents mentioned are below.
Pictured: My email to Stuff.
You can read the 2021 document here, non-essentiality of fluoride claimed under How much fluoride is appropriate?
You can read the 2013 European Food Safety Authority document here, see page 10 of the pdf.
Pictured: Stuff discussing my email (above).
Pictured: Stuff’s response to my email.
Pictured: My response to Stuff’s response.
You can read the Stuff article I cited here. The 1971 review was shown in PART 2 of this article.
WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE MISREPRESENTATION OF SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AMONG EXPERTS WHO ADVOCATE FLUORIDATION?
One reason is quite simple – it’s that in some of the “scientific” literature, the term “fluoride-deficient” is used to mean “a community whose water is not fluoridated.” The experts then take a further step, and tell us that our teeth rotting out is symptomatic of this “deficiency” – though all of the best quality rodent experiments, and some human observations (see Chapter 6.3 of my work, or read a summary here) tell us otherwise.
What I did was quite unique: I sourced about 5000 articles on fluoridation printed in New Zealand and Australian newspapers, and all of the experiments (cited by groups of experts that advocate fluoridation) that tested if fluoride was a nutrient – i.e., the experiments that attempted to create a “fluoride deficient” population of rodents.
In the experiments, about a third concluded “no it’s not a nutrient”, about a third concluded “uncertain”, and about a third concluded “yes it is a nutrient”.
In the media claims, about 99% of the “experts” who advocate fluoridation, claimed that fluoride was a nutrient, when they mentioned the topic.
This is quite incredible, and when these two sets of statements (experimental conclusions vs. claims made in media) are compared, we see that science is completely irrelevant when it comes to the claims that are made in public. When an experiment or document concluded fluoride non-essential, it was ignored, treated in media like it didn’t exist. When an experiment or document concluded fluoride a nutritional essential, it was sometimes mentioned by “experts” who advocate fluoridation.
Yet what’s most interesting is that essentiality was presupposed – in most of the media claims, there’s no experimentation or document cited at all (the 1970s were an exception to this, see below).
It’s just an unquestionable belief, because “all the experts” know it’s true – even though it’s blatantly not. But because of the distortions in the meaning of words, and the refusal of advocates to publicly call into question the objectivity of their peers, not to mention the ignorance, we keep on going with the lie.
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And, of course, obsessive focus on fluoride has detracted from our understanding of what nutritional factors are essential for our teeth – amino acids, minerals, etc.
THAT is a big deal, but it goes unnoticed.
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Regarding the 1957 Commission of Inquiry, it was authored by only three people, though many submitted research and spoke to these three. Only one of these three was a scientist, Professor Edson, a biochemist from Otago University. This NZ university has consistently had staff pushing for CWF, for instance Sir Charles Hercus and Dr. Muriel Bell. A letter found in the Health Department archives in Wellington, demonstrates that Professor Edson admitted he had “no special knowledge” about fluoridation when he was asked to serve on the Commission.
Pictured: Edson to Maclean, 5th September, 1956.
So you don’t actually need to know anything about fluoridation, in order to be an expert, and write government documents about it. In 2013, the New Zealand Listener printed a letter from Dr. Muriel Bell’s stepson, that not only claimed our soils are deficient in fluoride, but that Dr. Edson was a distinguished biochemist. Why would someone like Hefford know of Edson’s letter to Maclean (above)? It had only ever been discussed in ex-NZ Health Dept. John Colquhoun’s 1987 PhD.
Pictured: Jim Hefford, Letter to Editor, New Zealand Listener, 3rd August, 2013.
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Another reason is that there has also been a distortion of the meaning “trace element” – advocates of fluoridation (expert and lay) have often claimed, suggested, implied, etc, that a “trace element” instantly confers essentiality – which is false.
In science, “Trace” refers to concentration or (amount in a sample, if you like it non-technical). I contacted the IUPAC (The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) about this, because I was constantly scratching my head as to why, according to advocates of water fluoridation, fluorine became an essential element simply because it was a trace element, whereas many other “trace elements” were still trace elements yet were not essential – for instance vanadium, tin, nickel, aluminium...
Here, a step too far is taken by many of the well-intentioned fluoridation advocates.
The IUPAC’s definition is: “Any element having an average concentration of less than about 100 parts per million atoms (ppma) or less than 100 μg (microgram) per gram.”
I also contacted the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry (NZIC). The NZIC’s suggestion was simple: differentiate between essential and non-essential trace elements. Only the beginning and end of the email is pictured here, for simplicity’s sake.
If we read the letters to editors from the advocates of fluoridation, we would simply think any element present in trace quantities was essential, which is obviously weak in logic. It presupposes that presence = essentiality. By this criterion, all fluorine need do is be present, and it becomes essential.
I don’t think the advocates of fluoridation knowingly lie or desire to deceive, I think they just listen to other advocates and repeat each other without spending a whole head-scratching nerdfest in trace element textbooks.
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And I think they don’t care about any other nutritional factors for teeth beyond sugar.
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There is a kind of “less-than-purely-conscious” bias involved, wherein we don’t like to critique the good guys on our side.
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There is also another way in which “expert” advocates of fluoridation imply that fluoride is essential. It is by talking about actual nutrients in the same sentence, and letting the reader assume fluoride’s necessity, without really getting into any details. I suppose by doing that, they can claim they’ve never really claimed it’s essential.
I think it is quite a contemptuous way to treat the public.
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One of the main reasons this exaggeration happens is because dentists have been advised to propagandize.
Pictured: Dr. John Knutson, D.D.S., Dr.P.H., Water fluoridation after 25 years, Journal of the American Dental Association, Vol. 80, No. 4, pp. 765-769, 1970. This photo is a few years old. Don’t confuse this article with the editorial, page 697, that has a similar title. This one is in the “Original Articles” section.
If you’re sceptical, and I don’t blame you if you are, and want to search for this article independently, go to the Journal’s website yourself and scroll down to “List of issues”.
In Summary:
Were there experiments and documents that concluded fluoride essential?
YES. But on the whole, their quality was lower. Dr. Schwarz, for instance, concluded fluoride essential for rodents, and was in the newspaper holding a rodent, with the caption “Fluoride essential for humans”.
Hmmm…
Schwarz’s work was criticized by two (CWF-advocating) scientists in the US Dept. of Agriculture, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vol. 27, May, pp. 515-520, 1974), but completely ignored by all advocates of CWF quoting and citing Schwarz’s research in newspapers and science journals. This of course, leads to a divergence in opinion and knowledge.
I could go on.
My book (paperback & ebook, preview here) is about 400 pages of hammering this home – and about 100 pages of references, appendices, errata, etc.
It’s a lie that helps advocates of CWF achieve what they want.
To be blunt about it, the advocates of fluoridation have been spreading misinformation on this aspect of science for seven decades.
And they don’t show much willingness to admit it.
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Thank you for reading!
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