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Dear Dr. Barrett,
I found your site having typed the words "fluoride+fluoridation" into www.yahoo.com.
I grew up in New Zealand and drank fluoridated water for the first 19 years of my life (at 1 ppm). My concern is that fluoride seems to be both unnecessary for dental health and quite possibly detrimental to health in general. Having searched the internet for information, I have found very little scientific opinion supporting any health benefits from fluoride ingestion (indeed most investigations carried out seem to indicate the opposite).
My present suspicion is that the motivations for fluoridating water supplies are, in fact driven by the aluminum and fertilizer industries being in need of a convenient outlet for hazardous byproducts containing fluoride.
I presently live in Austria, where the water supply is unfluoridated (as is most of western Europe).
I have endeavored to see if there exists any comparisons showing significantly higher incidence of dental cavities or broken bones in unfluoridated Europe as compared with fluoridated countries (Australia, U.S.A., New Zealand).
So far I have found no such comparisons.
you state on your web site:
"Curiously, quacks are not always interested in real deficiencies. Fluoride is necessary to build decay-resistant teeth and strong bones. The best way to obtain adequate amounts of this important nutrient is to augment community water supplies so their fluoride concentration is about one part fluoride for every million parts of water. But quacks usually oppose water fluoridation <../03HealthPromotion/fluoride.html>, and some advocate water filters that remove fluoride. It seems that when they cannot profit from something, they may try to make money by opposing it."
Are you aware of any research carried out which demonstrates how fluoride is necessary to build strong bones? If so I would very much appreciate if you could let me know of it, as I´m also very interested in the pastime of exposing "Quacks"!!
On this issue however, I am beginning to wonder if the "Quacks" are not in fact the supporters of fluoridation, who rather than understanding the science, are perhaps rubbing shoulders with big business?
I would appreciate any insights into your position on this.
Many Thanks, Warren
REPLY:
In order for your suspicions to be correct, you would have to
conclude that hundreds of thousands of physicians and dentists
worldwide and all public health officials are either dishonest,
stupid, and/or crazy. If you want more information, read
http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/fluoride.html and follow
all of the links.
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Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Board Chairman, Quackwatch, Inc.
NCAHF Acting Vice President and Director of Internet Operations
P.O. Box 1747, Allentown, PA 18105
Telephone: (610) 437-1795
Dr Barrett
Thank you for the prompt reply!
I have read the link you suggested and have to agree about many of the "Anti"´s tactics described within. It makes sense that if you want to diminish the popularity of an idea, it helps to throw mud at it from as many directions as you can think of.
But to denounce their arguments merely by exposing their tactics isn't quite sufficient in my mind, what I´m looking for is certified scientific research which supports the claim that Fluoride IS necessary to build decay-resistant teeth and strong bones.
Where is the evidence?
Surely there must have been dozens of experiments done with rats having their bones tested for fracture resistance and the like. Or what about simple comparisons between European and American children's teeth? One would also imagine that there would be more dentists per capita in Europe than in the U.S.A., in order to meet the higher demand for tooth repair. If this were indeed the case, then why not reveal this statistic as support for fluoridation? A few bits of hard evidence would do a lot more for me than a hundred pages describing the folly of the opposition.
Also, the possibility that a lot of people are crazy/stupid isn´t all that out of the ordinary is it? There was a time it was generally considered that cigarettes were healthy. And my mother tells me when in the 50´s she watched her toes wiggle under fluoroscopic x-ray machines in shoe stores! These machines were considered to be completely harmless by the "experts".
Yours, Warren
REPLY:
The page I referred you to has links to other sites -- such as the
American Dental Association's -- that have extensive references.
Click on the ADA's Fluoridation Facts link, for example.
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Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Board Chairman, Quackwatch, Inc.
NCAHF Acting Vice President and Director of Internet Operations
P.O. Box 1747, Allentown, PA 18105
Telephone: (610) 437-1795
Dr. Barrett
I have spent the last 4 hours searching through the studies referenced to at www.ada.org, under the link "Fluoridation Facts".
So far I have found:
1. The actual research reports themselves are in most cases very difficult to locate (links are not included on the site). For example:
30. Murray JJ. Efficacy of preventive agents for dental caries. Caries Res 1993;27(Suppl 1):2-8.
About this reference is said:
"In 1993, the results of 113 studies in 23 countries were compiled and analyzed.30 (Fifty-nine out of the 113 studies analyzed were conducted in the United States.) This review provided effectiveness data for 66 studies in primary teeth and for 86 studies in permanent teeth."
Naturally I would be interested in reading the investigation, but where can it be found??
So I typed Murray JJ. Efficacy... into yahoo and came up with 9 web sites. The first on the list was (believe it or not!) the exact page I had just come from! namely:(http://www.ada.org/public/topics/fluoride/facts-ref1-99.html)
The second site was decidedly "anti" fluoridation and was asking the question "Should Natick Fluoridate", again, it contained merely a reference to Mr. Murray´s work.
The third one takes me to www.fluoridation.com. This site is also decidedly "anti", however the link I was taken to contains (and links to) numerous (see for yourself) detailed scientific reports. Reports which indicate various dangerous detrimental effects of fluoridation.
The forth link takes me to http://www.db.od.mah.se/car/data/fluoride.html which is decidedly "pro" fluoridation. Yet again, this site does not include anything from Murray JJ, rather they say:
"To read more about this subject:
Murray JJ, Rugg-Gunn AJ, Jenkins GN. Eds Fluorides in caries prevention. Third Edition. London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991"
Ie, "go and buy the book"!!
There seems a rather obvious pattern to me.
The sites in support of fluoridation offer obscure references which are difficult to find on the internet, while the "anti" sites contain detailed reports from qualified scientists (certainly not people who by any stretch of the imagination could be labeled "Quacks").
2. The investigative reports which I was able to find (of those referenced at ADA) were either inconclusive in regards to supporting the benefits of water fluoridation, or in some cases, tending to even undermine the health benefits of fluoridation!!
For example, take number 124.
124. Jacobsen SJ, Goldberg J, Cooper C, Lockwood SA. The association between water fluoridation and hip fracture among white women and men aged 65 years and older: a national ecologic study. Ann Epidemiol 1992;2(5):617-26.
After putting this into Yahoo I came up with 18 links. The very first link took me directly into the hands of the opposition!! (www.fluoridation.com), where one can read this excerpt from the original report.
"Jacobsen SJ, Goldberg J, Cooper C, Lockwood SA, The association between water fluoridation and hip fracture among white women and men aged 65 years and older. A national ecologic study, Annals of Epidemiology, 1992 September, (2:5): 617-626
For the past 45 years, there has been a great deal of debate regarding the health issues surrounding the fluoridation of public water supplies. In order to assess the association between fluoridation and hip fracture, we identified 129 counties across the United States considered to be exposed to public water fluoridation and 194 counties without exposure. Data from the Health Care Financing Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs were used to calculate the incidence of hip fracture among white persons, aged 65 years or older, in fluoridated and nonfluoridated counties. There was a small statistically significant positive association between fracture rates and fluoridation. The relative risk (95% confidence interval) of fracture in fluoridated counties compared to nonfluoridated counties was 1.08 (1.06 to 1.10) for women and 1.17 (1.13 to 1.22) for men. As comparisons were made at the grouped level, it may be inappropriate at this time to draw inferences at the individual level. The relationship observed at the county level needs to be duplicated at the individual level with more precise measures of fluoride exposure."
There is more!
128. Riggs BL, O'Fallon WM, Lane A, Hodgson SF, Wahner HW, Muhs J, Chao E, Melton LJ III. Clinical trial of fluoride therapy in postmenopausal osteoporotic women: extended observations and additional analysis. J Bone and Min Res 1994;9(2):265-75.
Again I am taken from Yahoo to www.fluoridation.com
"Riggs BL, O'Fallon WM, Lane A, Hodgson SF, Wahner HW, Muhs J, Chao E, Melton LJ 3rd, Clinical trial of fluoride therapy in postmenopausal osteoporotic women: extended observations and additional analysis, J Bone Miner Res, 1994 Feb, 9:2, 265-275
[excerpt from the paper] Because NaF treatment results in losses of cortical bone, the effect on fracture occurrence may be more adverse at sites that contain substantial amounts of cortical bone, such as the hip, than at sites than contain large amounts of cancellous bone, such as the vertebral bodies. Because of the severity of the consequences of hip fracture, a treatment that decreases the incidence of vertebral fractures would be deemed to be worthwhile only if it does not concomitantly increase the risk of hip fracture. In this regard, it is of concern that in our study there was a threefold, but nonsignificant, increase in the incidence of hip fracture in the NaF group and that another randomized controlled trial using only 50 mg NaF per day there was a twofold, statistically significant increase in hip fracture occurrence."
Strong bones indeed!!
Even at the ADA, they quote a study in Canada:
"These findings suggest that fluoridation of drinking water has no impact, neither beneficial nor deleterious, on the risk of hip fracture."
And then a little down the page they state:
"The study reported a small positive ecologic association between fluoridation of public water supplies and the incidence of hip fracture among the aged. The authors stated that this observation did not yet provide a firm platform for health policy, but stated further research was warranted."
They make no mention whatsoever of the fact that fluoride is necessary to build strong bones (perhaps because there is no evidence to support this claim?). Instead they merely reference reports which indicate either a slight deleterious impact, or no observable impact whatsoever on bone health.
Back to the theory that fluoride decreases the incidence of DMFT.
After becoming tired of the ADA references which I was constantly unable to locate, I decided to try the WHO, and see if they had any data comparing nonfluoridated countries with fluoridated ones.
They did indeed have such information!! And here´s some excerpts directly from http://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/expl/regions.html
DMFT average for 12 year olds
Nonfluoridated Countries:
Sweden 1999, 0.9
Austria 1997, 1.7
Denmark 1995, 1.2
Finland 1994, 1.2
France 1998, 1.9
Germany 1997, 1.7
Iceland 1996, 1.5
Netherlands 1992/3, 0.9
Fluoridated Countries:
Canada 1993, 4.3
U.S.A. 1991, 1.4
Brazil 1996, 3.1
New Zealand 1993, 1.5
Australia 1996, 0.9
I think I can let the figures speak for themselves (I am unable to think of any motivations the WHO would have to falsify this data in order to mock fluoridation), and repeat the words from the ADA site in regards to the impact of fluoridation on hip fractures, this time in relation to it´s impact on tooth decay.
"These findings suggest that fluoridation of drinking water has no impact, neither beneficial nor deleterious, on the risk of tooth decay."
I sincerely hope I have convinced you of the necessity to make some serious alterations to your web site!
Yours, Warren
ps: Should you be concerned as to why such a large number of dentists and "experts" support water fluoridation when the data clearly shows no beneficial correlations whatsoever, I suggest you read Noam Chomsky´s book "Manufacturing Consent". This book will give you some insights into the workings of corporate propaganda, and the "trickle down" way that untruths become woven into the fabric of our society.
(Still awaiting reply from Dr. Barrett!)
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