Forcing Medication Down Your Throat

Yes, I confess: I’m a veteran anti-fluoridationist, thereby – not for the first time – risking placing myself in the camp of “right-wing kooks and fanatics.” It has always been a bit of mystery to me why left-environmentalists, who shriek in horror at a bit of Alar on apples, who cry “cancer” even more absurdly than the boy cried “Wolf,” who hate every chemical additive known to man, still cast their benign approval upon fluoride, a highly toxic and probably carcinogenic substance. And not only let fluoride emissions off the hook, but endorse uncritically the massive and continuing dumping of fluoride into the nation’s water supply.

First: the generalized case for and against fluoridation of water. The case for is almost incredibly thin, boiling down to the alleged fact of substantial reductions in dental cavities in kids aged 5 to 9. Period. There are no claimed benefits for anyone older than nine! For this the entire adult population of a fluoridated area must be subjected to mass medication!

The case against, even apart from the specific evils of fluoride, is powerful and overwhelming.

The government had already done the commission bit in 1983, when disturbing studies on fluoridation drove our old friend the PHS to form a commission of “world-class experts” to review safety data on fluorides in water. Interestingly, the panel found to its grave concern that most of the alleged evidence of fluoride’s safety scarcely existed. The 1983 panel recommended caution on fluoride exposure for children. Interestingly, the panel strongly recommended that the fluoride content of drinking water be no greater than two parts per million for children up to nine, because of worries about the fluoride effect on children’s skeletons, and potential heart damage.

The chairman of the panel, Jay R. Shapiro of the National Institute of Health, warned the members, however, that the PHS might “modify” the findings, since “the report deals with sensitive political issues.” Sure enough, when Surgeon General Everett Koop released the official report a month later, the federal government had thrown out the panel’s most important conclusions and recommendations, without consulting the panel. Indeed, the panel never received copies of the final, doctored, version. The government’s alterations were all in a pro-fluoride direction, claiming that there was no “scientific documentation” of any problems at fluoride levels below 8 parts per million.

In addition to the bone cancer studies for the late 1980s, evidence is piling up that fluorides lead to bone fractures. In the past two years, no less than eight epidemiological studies have indicated the fluoridation has increased the rate of bone fractures in males and females of all ages. Indeed, since 1957, the bone fracture rate among male youth has increased sharply in the United States, and the U.S. hip fracture rate is now the highest in the world. In fact, a study in the traditionally pro-fluoride Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), August 12, 1992, found that even “low levels of fluoride may increase the risk of hip fracture in the elderly.” JAMAconcluded that “it is now appropriate to revisit the issue of water fluoridation.”

Clearly, it was high time for another federal commission. During 1990-91, a new commission, chaired by veteran PHS official and long-time pro-fluoridationist Frank E. Young, predictably concluded that “no evidence” was found associating fluoride and cancer. On bone fractures, the commission blandly stated that “further studies are required.” But no further studies or soul-searching were needed for its conclusion: “The U.S. Public Health Service should continue to support optimal fluoridation of drinking water.” Presumably, they did not conclude that “optimal” meant zero.

Despite the Young whitewash, doubts are piling up even within the federal government. James Huff, a director of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, concluded in 1992 that animals in the government’s study developed cancer, especially bone cancer from being given fluoride – and there was nothing “equivocal” about his conclusion.

Various scientists for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have turned to anti-fluoridation toxicologist William Marcus’s warning that fluoride causes not just cancer, but also bone fractures, arthritis, and other disease. Marcus mentions, too, that an unreleased study by the New Jersey Health Department (a state where only 15 percent of the population is fluoridated) shows that the bone cancer rate among young males is no less than six times higher in fluoridated than in non-fluoridated areas.

Even coming into question is the long-sacred idea that fluoridated water at least lowers cavities in children five to nine. Various top pro-fluoridationists highly touted for their expertise were suddenly and bitterly condemned when further study led them to the conclusion that the dental benefits are really negligible. New Zealand’s most prominent pro-fluoridationist was the country’s top dental officer, Dr. John Colquhoun.

As chairman of the Fluoridation Promotion Committee, Colquhoun decided to gather statistics to show doubters the great merits of fluoridation. To his shock, he found that the percentage of children free of dental decay was higher in the non-fluoridated part than in the fluoridated part of New Zealand. The national health department refused to allow Colquhoun to publish these findings, and kicked him out as dental director. Similarly, a top pro-fluoridationist in British Columbia, Canada, Richard G. Foulkes, concluded that fluoridation is not only dangerous, but that it is not even effective in reducing tooth decay. Foulkes was denounced by former colleagues as a propagandist “promoting the quackery of anti-fluoridationists.”

WHY THE FLUORIDATION DRIVE?

Since the case for compulsory fluoridation is so flimsy, and the case against so overwhelming, the final step is to ask: why? Why did the Public Health Service get involved in the first place? How did this thing get started? Here we must keep our eye on the pivotal role of Oscar R. Ewing, for Ewing was far more than just a social democrat Fair Dealer.

Fluoride has long been recognized as one of the most toxic elements found in the earth’s crust. Fluorides are by-products of many industrial processes, being emitted in the air and water, and probably the major source of this by-product is the aluminum industry. By the 1920s and 1930s, fluorine was increasingly being subject to lawsuits and regulations. In particular, by 1938 the important, relatively new aluminum industry was being placed on a wartime footing. What to do if its major by-product is a dangerous poison?

The time had come for damage control; even better, to reverse the public image of this menacing substance. The Public Health Service, remember was under the jurisdiction of the Treasury Department, and treasury secretary all during the 1920s and until 1931 was none other than billionaire Andrew J. Mellon, founder and head of the powerful Mellon interests, “Mr. Pittsburgh,” and founder and virtual ruler of the Aluminum Corporation of America (ALCOA), the dominant firm in the aluminum industry.

In 1931, the PHS sent a dentist named H. Trendley Dean to the West to study the effects of concentrations of naturally fluoridated water on people’s teeth. Dean found that towns high in natural fluoride seemed to have fewer cavities. This news galvanized various Mellon scientists into action. In particular, the Mellon Institute, ALCOA’s research lab in Pittsburgh, sponsored a study in which biochemist Gerald J. Cox fluoridated some lab rats, decided that cavities in those rats had been reduced and immediately concluded that “the case (that fluoride reduces cavities) should be regarded as proved.” Instant science!

The following year, 1939, Cox, the ALCOA scientist working for a company beset by fluoride damage claims, made the first public proposal for mandatory fluoridation of water. Cox proceeded to stump the country urging fluoridation. Meanwhile, other ALCOA-funded scientists trumpeted the alleged safety of fluorides, in particular the Kettering Laboratory of the University of Cincinnati.

During World War II, damage claims for fluoride emissions piled up as expected, in proportion to the great expansion of aluminum production during the war. But attention from these claims was diverted, when, just before the end of the war, the PHS began to push hard for compulsory fluoridation of water. Thus the drive for compulsory fluoridation of water accomplished two goals in one shot: it transformed the image of fluorine from a curse to a blessing that will strengthen every kid’s teeth, and it provided a steady and substantial monetary demand for fluorides to dump annually into the nation’s water.

One interesting footnote to this story is that whereas fluorine in naturally fluoridated water comes in the form of calcium fluoride, the substance dumped into every locality is instead sodium fluoride. The Establishment defense that “fluoride is fluoride” becomes unconvincing when we consider two points: (a) calcium is notoriously good for bones and teeth, so the anti-cavity effect in naturally fluoridated water might well be due to the calcium and not the fluorine; and (b) sodium fluoride happens to be the major by-product of the manufacture of aluminum.

Which brings us to Oscar R. Ewing. Ewing arrived in Washington in 1946, shortly after the initial PHS push began, arriving there as long-time counsel, now chief counsel, for ALCOA, making what was then an astronomical legal fee of $750,000 a year (something like $7,000,000 a year in present dollars). A year later, Ewing took charge of the Federal Security Agency, which included the PHS, and waged the successful national drive for water fluoridation. After a few years, having succeeded in his campaign, Ewing stepped down from public service, and returned to private life, including his chief counselship of the Aluminum Corporation of America.

There is an instructive lesson in this little saga, a lesson how and why the Welfare State came to America. It came as an alliance of three major forces: ideological social democrats, ambitious technocratic bureaucrats, and Big Businessmen seeking privileges from the State. In the fluoridation saga, we might call the whole process “ALCOA-socialism.” The Welfare State redounds to the welfare not of most of society but of these particular venal and exploitative groups.

January 1993

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