The Fluoride Debate: From Poison to Panacea

Lee Taylor is a former pro-fluoride activist and a resident of Bellingham. He has written three books, “Pend Oreille Profiles,” “A History of Hydroelectricity: Columbia River Valley Power” and “Everychild’s Christmas.”

Part 1

Editor’s Note: This article is part one of a continuing series concerning the history of fluoride in this country, how the fluoride paradigm shifted from poison to panacea and how this paradigm shift can be demythologized.

Over six decades of fluoride debate, misinformation and scandal have become symptomatic of a major breakdown in the public health-public trust equation. Not unlike the 16th century heliocentric movement of the Copernican astronomical discovery away from entrenched second century Aristotelian geocentric Ptolemaic theory, the paradigm shift in that “Great Debate” was not accomplished overnight. The ultimate voice of authority, the Roman Catholic Church, found the heretical Galileo guilty of breaching the conditions established by the 1616 Inquisition and sentenced him to life imprisonment. This voice of authority has yet to admit that it was wrong in convicting Galileo of heresy for his belief that the Earth rotates around the sun.

Not unlike the heroic acts of the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement which challenged both the legal and religious defense of slavery, not unlike the national upheaval which stopped the insane bleeding and corporate profiteering in Viet Nam and not unlike the emergence of the environmental movement which continues to challenge the deadly myopia of government/industrial destruction of our planet, the voice of authority within the federal government-military-industrial-public health complex is now being challenged by increasing numbers of thoughtful Americans and highly credentialed scientists.

Bringing this conflict between the scandalous voice of authority and the voice of public awareness closer to home, the city of Bellingham was targeted in the November general election to become the next victim in a campaign of forced fluoride in our drinking water. Sponsored by a group calling themselves “Bellingham Families for Fluoride,” Bellingham Proposition 1 was handed a decisive defeat by thoughtfully informed voters unimpressed by breezy authoritarian propaganda, a plethora of professional endorsements, a media blitz of nearly $260,000 of outside money and the pro-fluoride cheerleading of The Bellingham Herald. Now that Proposition 1 has been soundly defeated, pro-fluoride “experts” continue to play the guilt card, accusing thoughtful voters, who resisted the glossy façade of dental authority, of being responsible for the suffering of Bellingham children who remain victims of a tooth decay crisis.

There seems to be no middle ground in this highly vitriolic conflict. The local public forums were replete with intense accusations of misinformation, science fiction propaganda, authoritarian patronage and a conspicuous lack of trust. Statistics were presented as the gospel truth only to be shattered by a counter volley of statistics. Facts were quoted only to collide with contradictory facts while a strong suspicion of misinformation and propaganda hung like a cloud over the entire course of debate.

Having initially aligned myself with the pro-fluoride camp and having educated myself into an anti-fluoride stance, I attempted to analyze or conceptualize the cause of such anger and mutual recrimination. Since I’ve seen nothing in the public media that seeks to establish an etiology of such a phenomenon, it may be helpful to attempt a sketch of some of the more obvious potential causes for such aggressive and dedicated headhunting, tracking these little foxes to their lair to see where they’re really coming from.

I’m motivated in this effort by stark raving fear bordering on terror because I firmly believe that our society is in painful transition and that the fluoride conflict is but a harbinger of greater conflicts to come as we suffer the pain of psychosocial self-discovery. A very ugly mix of misinformation, propaganda, posturing, hypocrisy, denial and terminal greed seems to be driving our suspicion of authority at all levels in all social institutions and agencies. How did this happen?

People often refer to the “good old days” as if they really existed. Presumably those were the days when we could trust our dentists, doctors, ministers, teachers, and government, military and corporate leaders. Those were days when there were such things as honor, integrity, morality and respect. But did those days really exist and was our trust in such authority a blind, uninformed and misplaced trust?

Now that the floodgates of information exchange have opened and we can easily access previously covert activities of the power brokers in this society, what are we discovering about who we are and have been as a nation and society? As a relatively young society in the eyes of much older cultures, are we experiencing the growing pains of an impetuous and reckless youth or are we on the verge of imploding in the sewer of our own toxic corruption? Do we actually believe our politically correct jargon will protect us from the reality of what has been sown by those among us who value the spoils of power more than human life, more than the life of our planet home?

My journey through the past six decades of the fluoride conflict has been painfully unbelievable, as if I were reading a science fiction horror story. I quite sincerely doubt that most Americans will ever bother to educate themselves regarding the history of fluoridation in this country until they realize that the physical impact of fluoride is pandemic, cumulative and irreversible, that it has become, as the progeny of our military-industrial complex, one of the most profitable conceptions of human suffering in our culture.

So what’s the fuss all about? First of all, let’s be clear on what we’re talking about. Fluorine is a tiny halogen element, a pale yellow, highly toxic and corrosive gas, the 13th most abundant element in the earth’s crust, a negatively charged atom with nine positively charged protons surrounded by outnumbered electrons. Consequently, this unbalanced, electron-hungry atom becomes a dangerous predator seeking positively charged ions such as calcium or sodium to form stable compounds such as calcium fluoride or sodium fluoride.

Since it is the most reactive of all halogens, it is found only in compounds with other elements, combining with minerals to form fluoride. As the most chemically active nonmetallic element and the most reactive electro-negative ion, fluorine quickly displaces other halogens such as chlorine, bromine and iodine from their mineral salts. Combined with hydrogen it forms hydrogen fluoride gas, which becomes hydrofluoric acid in water.

Since fluorine may combine with nearly all known elements with lightning speed, its volatility producing extreme heat, it also becomes extremely difficult to isolate.

So we have a very sneaky little critter on our hands that is always on the move, hard to track, highly toxic and cumulative. It can sneak up on big molecules like proteins or DNA and cause a ton of problems with such biological foundations of life, attacking the immune system at will. As indicated so well by Christopher Bryson in his classic book, “The Fluoride Deception,” fluoride is the natural enemy of humanity as it attacks the enzymes in our body’s cells essential to cell nourishment, the process of life itself.

Such an attack on our bodies and the environment has been recorded since 1968 by scientists at the International Society for Fluoride Research in their journal Fluoride, linking fluoride to multiple human health effects, including thyroid problems, Down’s Syndrome, arthritis, central-nervous-system effects, cardiovascular and respiratory problems.1

In its 68-page “Bibliography of Scientific Literature on Fluoride,” hundreds of scientific studies are indexed by Second Look regarding fluoride’s toxic impact on the brain, oxidative stress, G-proteins, bones, cancer, the thyroid, kidneys, reproductive system, birth defects, the immune system, allergy/hypersensitivity, tooth decay and dental fluorosis.2 Fluorides are listed by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry among the top 20 of 275 substances posing the most significant threat to human health.

While the stakes are extremely high in this conflict, both in terms of the power of profits and the wages of human suffering, all the mutually heated recriminations on this battleground seem to be blocking the light which is needed to perceive the carefully orchestrated fluoride paradigm shift, from rat poison to panacea, firmly rooted in the mid 19th Century Industrial Revolution, the rapid industrial growth of the 1920s and creation of the first atom bomb in the 1943 Oak Ridge National Laboratory Manhattan Project of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Fluoride has always been the problem child of industry. It was discharged into the air from the first iron and copper factories of the 1850s, poisoning plants, animals, and people. Rapid industrial growth of the 1920s created massive pollution, poisoning and killing as it grew, with the threat of potentially devastating lawsuits. It soon became apparent to both government and industry that extreme measures were mandated in the interest of military power and industrial profit, particularly following the 1933 fluoride disaster in Belgium’s Meuse Valley where thousands became violently ill and 60 died.

Prior to this, fluoride had been sold in very small amounts by the aluminum, steel and chemical industries, to rat poison and insecticide manufacturers. A commercial market was invented when the connection was made between water containing traces of fluoride and decreased rates of tooth decay. This initiated a very creative campaign of disinformation designed to convince the American public that fluoridation of drinking water was safe and good. Major players within the government, the aluminum industry, the military and public health agencies had discovered a way to dispose of fluoride, the key chemical in the atomic bomb production of the Manhattan Project.

Millions of tons of fluoride were essential for the manufacture of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for the nuclear arsenal of the Cold War and it was the problem child of industry; fluoride simultaneously became a military hero and the leading chemical health hazard of the U.S. How this bizarre horror story plays out in a radical paradigm shift will provide the nuts and bolts of subsequent articles in Whatcom Watch.

The psychosocial ingredients within the matrix of this growing fluoride conflict have largely been ignored by both the public media and respective antagonists. The Western culture is a repressed culture. We have been raised to be unaware and there is no amount of Yankee ingenuity, national pride or appeal to any voice of authority that can reverse the sure and tragic consequences of such lack of awareness.

From day one we have survived by accommodating our thinking, emotions and behavior to the countless voices of authority surrounding us. Experience has taught us to gauge our self-worth on how well we respond to the seductive voices of authority on our way to the “promised land,” wherever that may be. Chasing the illusion that human life will somehow find fulfillment in the sacrifice of consciousness to the blessings of authority, we become the sheep, which most assuredly will be lead to the slaughter. Powerbrokers cannot survive without an abundant supply of sheep and a handful of goats to lead them. Often bitter and disillusioned by misplaced trust in authority, we create heroes, cultural icons, through which we vainly seek vicarious fulfillment.

People say, “I don’t know what made me do such a thing” or “I don’t know what came over me,” and they aren’t kidding. They don’t know. They are truly out of touch with themselves, unable to see whatever it is they’ve repressed or buried in the psychological basement of their unconscious being. Increasingly vulnerable, lacking the authenticity and strength of inner authority, they are quite easily manipulated and exploited by outer voices of authority. But this individual and social blindness carries a high price tag and we will continue to pay the fiddler until we wake up, until we become conscious of how we’ve been dehumanized and violated.

So, I am reaching out to everyone in Bellingham, Whatcom County, the state of Washington and all the folks in this nation who choose to raise your thoughtful voice of awareness, to assume with courage the responsibility for your gift of life, to assume with courage your concern for the lives of all people in this culture, to assume with courage your defense of life on this planet, and to bring to an end the toxic scourge of fluoride in this nation and on our planet home.

Its deadly paradigm for the past 63 years has been an insufferable horror story of toxic environmental and human pollution and the time for its burial has come. Lest the weak and intimidated withdraw from this challenge, have you forgotten a lady by the name of Rosa Parks, who on December 1, 1955, refused to bow to the Jim Crow laws of slavery, who chose to risk her life against that “voice of authority,” and who revolutionized the toxic mentality of that domestic form of terrorism?

It was precisely the same courage and active commitment of four very loosely knit grassroots citizen groups of Bellingham—Citizens Against Forced Fluoride, Healthy Goals for Bellingham, Bellingham Citizens Against Fluoride Tax and Clean Water Health Advocates—that confronted Bellingham Families for Fluoride in a David and Goliath showdown in the past general election and prevailed. With less than $15,000 in hand, they took on the challenge of $260,000 of outside special interest money contributed by the Washington Dental Service Foundation, Washington State Dental Association, Washington State Dental PAC, Mt. Baker District Dental Society and Seattle-King County Dental Society, and they won.

In sharp contradistinction to the well-oiled dynasty of fat cat fluoride special interest financing and the dental “voice of authority,” this is a tribute to democracy and human courage against some very long odds. But the war against fluoride is far from over. It remains to be seen what the next power play will be from this cozy arrangement between the fluoride industry and their friends in the dental/public health profession.

By way of conclusion to this introductory jumping off point, and in anticipation of a documented study of the paradigm shift in America from fluoride poison to fluoride panacea, I should like to direct reader attention to the continued political efforts of The Bellingham Herald in its dedicated effort to wrap fluoride in the ink of daily news and assist its deposit in city drinking water.

In the December 10, 2005, front page article, “Fluoride measure backers consider their next move,” we were informed that the two biggest players in the attempt to fluoridate Bellingham drinking water were not in tactical agreement following election defeat. The Washington State Dental Association, a $118,549 contributor, and the Washington Dental Service Foundation, which contributed $84,434 and pledged $600,000 for fluoridation startup expenses, have been quite consistent in touting improved oral health as their goal. While the same may be said of Bellingham Families for Fluoride, it is noteworthy that Bellingham voters clearly recognized and rejected the central role of fluoride as a healthy, safe, effective and cost-effective means to that end.

The journalistic politics of The Bellingham Herald continues to be reflected in their projection of guilt onto those who oppose placing fluoride, one of the most toxic chemical compounds on the planet, in city drinking water, caricaturing the anti-fluoride voters as those opposed to improved oral health. According to Dr. John Yiamouyiannis, Ph.D. (Biochemistry), retired National Cancer Institute biochemist and recognized as the world’s leading authority on the biological effects of fluoride: “We would not purposely add arsenic to the water supply. And we would not purposely add lead. But we do add fluoride. The fact is that fluoride is more toxic than lead and just slightly less toxic than arsenic.” 3

While all the promotion of Bellingham Families for Fluoride preaches the safety, effectiveness and bargain basement price of fluoridation in meeting the local tooth decay crisis, the equivocation of opposition to improved oral health with opposition to fluoridation, is simply a cheap political red herring designed to distract from the primary issue.

The voters of Bellingham were not being offered an altruistic, scientifically based, socially/environmentally responsible catalyst for improved oral health. They were being sold industrial waste fluoride. They were being asked to become human waste sites for industrial toxins, a highly profitable enterprise for industry and its financially rewarded partners in the field of public health, and a very costly prospect for its victims.

In his invitation to help in programs which improve access to dentistry for low-income kids and adults, Dr. Curt Smith appeals to “even those who opposed fluoridation” to join in this effort. While his expectations of a positive response from Bellinghamsters appear to be less than stellar, his parting shot would seem to indicate at least some appreciation for the challenge issued by informed Bellingham voters: “I would expect it [help] when pigs fly and shrimps whistle. I have not personally had anyone call me and say, ‘What can I do to help with oral health?’”

There may be another option. When flying pigs are not carrying a load of toxic industrial waste and shrimp are not whistling science fiction and public health propaganda, pro-fluoride proponents may be pleasantly surprised to discover how many anti-fluoride citizens of Bellingham might respond to such an invitation. But until pigs fly and shrimp whistle, the voters of Bellingham will continue to reject the fantasy that the $300,000 attempted coup of votes had anything to do with improved oral health for third graders or anyone else in Bellingham.

That tidy sum of money could have rescued every third grader in Bellingham from the tooth decay crisis referenced in the statistics of the 2005 Final Report of the Whatcom County Health Department’s “Smile Survey” recommended by your Whatcom County Oral Health Coalition. §

Next Month: We begin our journey with the Manhattan Project and consequent paradigm shift from rat poison to panacea, tracing the complexities of this story with more specific references and comprehensive treatment.