Flouride: Friend or Foe?
Part 2

by Warren A. Mitchell, D.D.S.

From Part I:

Since April 1997, the Food and Drug Administration has required a warning label on all dental care products containing fluoride. Last issue, we showed how early tests warned of the dangers of fluoride for human ingestion. In the late 1930s, lawsuits against industries such as ALCOA (the world's largest aluminum producer) increased. At this time, ALCOA was selling unwanted waste by-product of sodium fluoride as a rat poison and insecticide and searching for other markets to rid themselves of this hazardous waste. How did companies such as ALCOA convince people that rat poison was good for them?

Between 1921 and 1932, Andrew Mellon (founder of ALCOA) served as Secretary of the Treasury, a job which placed him in charge of the United States Public Health Service. Mellon expressed his personal interest in studies of fluoride's effects on humans.

With the studies from Dr. Gerald Cox and data gathered from H. Trendley Dean, Mellon began a campaign to promote fluoridation. He was met with two major obstacles: the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Dental Association (ADA).

On September 18, 1943, the Journal of the American Medical Association pointed out:

Distribution of the element fluoride is so widespread throughout nature that a small intake of the element is practically unavoidable. Fluorides are general protoplasmic poisons, probably changing the permeability of the cell membrane by inhibiting certain enzyme systems. The exact mechanism of such actions is obscure. The sources of fluorine intoxication are drinking water containing 1 part per, million or more of fluorine, fluorine compounds used in insecticide sprays for fruits and vegetables (cryolite and barium fluosilicate) and the mining and conversion of phosphate rock to superphosphate, which is used for fertilizer. The fluorine content of phosphate rock is about 4 percent. During conversion to superphosphate, about 25 percent of the fluorine present is volatilized and represents a pouring into the atmosphere of approximately 25,000 tons of pure fluorine annually. Another source of fluorine intoxication is from the fluorides used in the smelting of many metals, such as steel and aluminum, and in the production of glass, enamel, and brick.

The October 1, 1944 issue of the Journal of the ADA warned that:

We do not know the use of drinking water containing as little as 1.2 to 3.0 parts per million of fluorine will cause such developmental disturbances in bones as osteosclerosis, spondylosis, and osteopetrosis, as well as goiter, and we cannot afford to run the risk of producing such serious systemic disturbances in applying what is at present a doubtful procedure intended to prevent development of dental disfigurements among children.

Because of our anxiety to find some therapeutic procedures that will promote pass prevention of caries, the seeming potentialities of fluorine appears speculatively attractive, but, in the light of our present knowledge or lack of knowledge of the chemistry of the subject, the potentialities for harm far outweigh those for the good.

Despite these warnings, Dr. Cox had convinced a Wisconsin dentist, J. J. Frisch, to promote the addition of fluoride to the water supply. In his book, The Fight for Fluoridation, historian D. R. McNeil referred to Frisch as "a man possessed…

Fluoridation became practically a religion with him." In his crusade, Frisch enlisted the support of Frank Bull, who organized political campaigns in order to persuade local officials to approve fluoridation.

According to the May 25 - 27, 1954 Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce: "In 1944, Oscar Ewing was put on the payroll of the Aluminum Company of America, as its attorney, with an annual salary of $750,000. This fact was established at a Senate hearing and became a part of the Congressional Record. Since the Aluminum Co. had no big litigation pending at that time, the question might logically be asked, why such a large fee? A few months thereafter, Mr. Ewing was made Federal Security Administrator with the announcement that he was taking a big salary cut to serve his country."

The United States Public Health Service (USPHS), then a division of the Federal Security Administration, was under Ewing's command and began vigorously promoting fluoridation nationwide. An article from the Fall 1992 issue of Covert Action fills in the next piece of the puzzle:

Oscar Ewing's public relation's strategist for the water fluoridation campaign was none other than Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward L. Bernays, the "original spin doctor," as a Washington Post headline recently termed him. Bernays, also known as the "Father of Public Relations," pioneered the application of his uncle's theories to advertising and public propaganda. The government's fluoridation campaign was one of his most stunning and enduring successes.

In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays explained "the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind and how it is manipulated by the special pleader (i.e., public relations counsel) who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity… Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…"

"If you can influence the (group) leaders," wrote Bernays, who had many confidential industrial clients, "either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group that they sway…"

Describing how (as PR man for the Beech-nut Bacon Company) he influenced leaders of the medical profession to promote sales, Bernays wrote, "The new salesman (would) suggest to physicians to say publicly that it is wholesome to eat bacon. He knows as a mathematical certainty that large numbers of persons will follow the advice of their doctors because he understands that psychological relationship of dependence of men on their physicians."

Substitute "dentist" for "physicians" and "fluoride" for "bacon" and the similarities are apparent.

On July 24, 1944, City Manager Walter H. Sack asked members of the City Commission of Grand Rapids, Michigan, to meet with representatives from the University of Michigan, Federal Government and State Health Department. One week later, the City Commission approved a motion to fluoridate water and six months later (despite the warning issued only three months earlier by the ADA), Grand Rapids became the first city in the U.S. to fluoridate its drinking water. It was to serve as the test city and its tooth decay rates were to be compared with those of nonfluoridated Muskegon, Michigan, for ten years, at which time it would be determined, whether or not fluoridation was safe and effective. Dr. H. Trendley Dean was put in charge of the project.

The article from Covert Action continues:

Almost overnight, under Bernays' mass mind molding, the popular image of fluoride -- which at the time was being widely sold as a rat and bug poison -- became that of a beneficial provider of gleaming smiles, absolutely safe, and good for children, bestowed by a benevolent paternal government. Its opponents were permanently engraved on the public mind as crackpots and right-wing loonies…

"Fluoridation made possible a master public relations stroke -- one that could keep scientists and the public off fluoride's case for years to come. If the leaders of dentistry, medicine, and public health could be persuaded to endorse fluoride in the public's drinking water, proclaiming to the nation that there was a 'wide margin of safety,' how were they going to turn around later and say industry's fluoride pollution was dangerous?

They fell for it. In 1950, long before any studies had been completed to determine whether the addition of fluoride to the public water supplies was a safe and effective means for reducing tooth decay, the USPHS and the ADA endorsed fluoridation. Within a short time thereafter, Muskegon, the control city in the Grand Rapids study was also fluoridated. These endorsements effectively overshadowed the fact that tooth decay rate in the nonfluoridated Muskegon had decreased about as much as in the fluoridated Grand Rapids and that fluoridation was ineffective in reducing decay in permanent teeth.

The USPHS formed an unholy alliance with the trade unions of medicine and industry to promote the addition of a toxic waste product to the public water supply, at a concentration already shown to damage teeth (mottling, i.e., fluorosis). Its other health effects were as yet undetermined.

As stated in the first part of this series on fluoridation, fluorosis is the first outward visible sign of fluoride poisoning to the body. But what other harmful effects does fluoride have on our bodies?

To be continued in the next issue of Alaska Wellness Magazine….

The Wellness Team at Health Centered Dentistry welcomes your questions on this subject and other dental matters. Call 277-2600 for more information, and/or to schedule a visit with us as your next step toward whole body wellness.

Readers can also research fluoride on the Internet at www.saveteeth.org.