Christopher Bryson - The Fluoride Deception

"Christopher Bryson is an excellent narrator, and he reports on recent research previously not known to me. Especially I am intrigued by the story about Phyllis Mullenix and her animal research on the influence of fluoride

on behavior and brain development____ft is my sincere hope that his book

will receive the attention it deserves and that its implications will be seriously considered."

Dr Arvid Carlsson. 2000 Nobel Prize Laureate for Medicine

"In much the same way biologist Rachel Carson warned us over forty years ago in Silent Spring about the havoc and harm being caused by the misuse of persistent pesticides, journalist Christopher Bryson here lays bare the secret story and hidden dangers of the introduction of fluonde chemicals from the cold war era into our drinking water The irrefutable evidence of duplicity and cover-up presented in this book is hair-raising. The Fluoride Deception presents a scorching indictment of how researchers and health care officials working closely with government agencies, big industry, and their attorneys have allowed themselves to surrender their responsibility for the medical well-being of their fellow citizens."

Dr Albert W. Burgstahler. former president of the International Society for Fluoride Research and Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Kansas

Bryson is nght on in his emphasis on the ineffectiveness of fluoridation of water with industrial wastes, and its risks of nerve and brain damage, and cancer, coupled with the long-standing industrial conspiracy to suppress this information."

Dr Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine.

University of Illinois School of Public Health

The Fluoride Deception compellingly and inescapably exposes the murderous fraud that heads of state and industry have for decades perpetrated on an innocent public, Extremely well written and tightly researched, The Fluoride Deception is sure to become the must read' book in this important and burgeoning field."

Derrick Jensen, author of The Culture of Make Believe and A Language Older Than Words

Toute entreprise humaine, fut-elle industrielle, est susceptible de perfectionnement!

Inscription on memorial to the sixty dead of the 1930 Meuse Valley disaster

It is not just a mistake for public health agencies to cooperate and collaborate with industries investigating and deciding whether public health is endangeredit is a direct abrogation of the duties and responsibilities of those public health organizations.

Scientist Clair Patterson to the U.S. Senate,

If you aint thinking about Man, God and Law, you aint thinking about nothin'.

Joe Strummer (1952-2002)

Foreword by Theo Colborn vii Note on Terminology x Acknowledgments xii Introduction xiv

Major Figures in the Fluoride Story xxii

1 Through the Looking Glass 1

2 Fireworks at Forsyth 11

3 Opposite Sides of the Atlantic 30

4 General Groves's Problem 45

5 General Groves's Solution: Dr. Harold Hodge and

the University of Rochester 65

6 How the Manhattan Project Sold Us Fluoride:

Newburgh, Harshaw, and Jim Conant's Ruse 78

7 A Subterranean Channel of Secret-Keeping 91

8 Robert Kehoe and The Kettering Laboratory 101

9 Donora: A Rich Man's Hocus Pocus 114

10 The Public Health Service Investigation 133

11 As Vital to Our National Life As a Spark Plug to a Motor Car 148

12 Engineering Consent 158

13 Showdown in the West: Martin vs. Reynolds Metals 168

14 Fluorine Lawyers and Government Dentists: A Very Worthwhile Contribution 176

15 Buried Science, Buried Workers 184

16 Hurricane Creek: The People Rule 202

17 The Damage Is Done 217 Epilogue: Blind to the Truth? 230

Postscript: Dr. Arvid Carlsson, 2000 Nobel Laureate 240 Note on Sources 242 Notes 247

Index 359

THEO COLBORN

THE QUESTION OF whether fluoride is or is not an essential element is debatable. In other words, is the element, fluorine, required for normal growth and reproduction? On one hand there appears to be a narrow range of topical exposure in which it might prevent cavities. But if exposure is too high, it causes serious health problems. And could an individual who is totally deprived of fluoride from conception through adulthood survive? Definitive research to resolve these questions has never appeared in the public record or in peer-reviewed journals. It is important to keep this fact in mind as you read this book.

Chris Bryson informs us that fluorine is, indeed, an essential element in the production of the atom bomb, and there is good reason to believe that fluoridated drinking water and toothpasteand the development of the atom bombare closely related. This claim sounded pretty far-fetched to me, and consequently I was extremely skeptical about the connection when I started reading the book. Bryson writes with the skill of a top-selling novelist, but it was not his convincing storytelling that made me finish the book. It was the haunting message that possibly here again was another therapeutic agent, fluoride, that had not been thoroughly studied before it was foisted on the public as a panacea to protect or improve health. Bryson reveals that the safety of fluoride became a firmly established paradigm based on incomplete knowledge. The correct questions were never asked (or never answered when they were asked), thus giving birth to false or bottomless assumptions that fluoride was therapeutic and safe. Certainly, the evidence Bryson unearthed in this book begs for immediate attention by those responsible for public health.

As the story unfolds, Bryson weaves pieces of what at first appears to be totally unrelated evidence into a tapestry of intrigue, greed,

collusion, personal aggrandizement, corporate and government cover-up, and U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) mistakes. While reading the book, I kept thinking back to 1950, three years after I got my BS degree in Pharmacy and the year I gave birth to my first child. Fluoride came on the market packaged in pediatric vitamin drops for infants. Mothers left the hospital with their new babies in their arms and prescriptions in their hands from their dismissing physicians for these fluoride-laced drops. About that time communities around the country began to add fluoride to their drinking water. The promised benefits of fluoride were so positive that my dentist friends began to wish that they had chosen dermatology instead of dentistry. At that same time pregnant women were being given a pharmaceutical, diethylstilbestrol (DES), to prevent miscarriages, as well as DES-laced prescription vitamins especially designed for pregnant women to produce big, fat, healthy babies. I felt good when I dispensed the fluoride and DES prescriptionsthey were products designed to prevent health problems rather than treat them. Now I can only wonder how many children were harmed because I and others like me took the word of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the USPHS, and the major pharmaceutical companies producing these products. We were caught up in the spin. We were blind to the corporate hubris and were swept along with the blissful enthusiasm that accompanies every new advance in modern technology and medicine.

The hazards posed by prenatal exposure to DES surfaced a lot sooner than those posed by fluoride. And although by 1958 it was discovered that DES caused a rare vaginal cancer that until that time had been found only in postmenopausal women, its use during pregnancy was not banned until 1971thirteen years later. Even this year, 2003, new discoveries are being reported about the impact on health in the sons and daughters of the DES mothers, and now in their grandchildren. It is estimated that in the United States alone there are ten million daughters and sons. In comparison to DES, where exposure could be traced through prescription records, the extent of exposure to fluorides through drinking water, dental products, vitamins, and as Bryson points out, through Teflon, Scotchgard, Stainmaster, and other industrial and agricultural fluorinated products is practically unmeasurable.