As I pointed out many a times our scientific base for mass fluoridation
is pretty weak. About topical application on individual indications, there
are no alarming facts, as far as I know. And it is much more effective
than fluor in tap water.

However, even if I think it is very refreshing,  and absolutely paramount
for the development of our civilization,  to constantly contest established
"truths" and authorities,  I do think this way to talk about an 180 degree
change is a bit strange, and would appreciate an official confirmation
from the dental school at the University of Toronto.

Hans Lennros DDS

PS: J Blythman. wrote something on this topic recently in the
       Sunday Herald, I will see if I can locate it.
==================================================

Prominent Researcher Apologizes for Pushing Fluoride
by Barry Forbes

"Why'd you do it, Doc? Why'd you toss the fluoride folks overboard?"

I had just tracked down Dr. Hardy Limeback, B.Sc., Ph.D in Biochemistry,
D.D.S., head of the Department of Preventive Dentistry for the University
of Toronto, and president of the Canadian Association for Dental Research.

Dr. Limeback is Canada's leading fluoride authority and, until recently, the
country's primary promoter of the controversial additive. In a surprising
newsmaker interview this past April, Dr. Limeback announced a dramatic
change of heart.

"Children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste," he
counseled. "Or drink fluoridated water. And baby formula must never be
made up using Toronto tap water. Never."

Why, I wondered? What could have caused such a powerful paradigm shift?

"It's been building up for a couple of years," Limeback told me during a
recent telephone interview. "But certainly the crowning blow was the
realization that we have been dumping contaminated fluoride into water
reservoirs for half a century. The vast majority of all fluoride additives come
from Tampa Bay, Florida smokestack sc{*filter*}s. The additives are a toxic
byproduct of the super-phosphate fertilizer industry."

"Tragically," he continued, "that means we're not just dumping toxic
fluoride into our drinking water. We're also exposing innocent,
 unsuspecting people to deadly elements of lead, arsenic and radium,
all of them carcinogenic. Because of the cumulative properties of toxins,
the detrimental effects on human health are catastrophic."

A recent study at the University of Toronto confirmed Dr. Limeback's worst
fears. "Residents of cities that fluoridate have double the fluoride in their hip
bones vis-a-vis the balance of the population. Worse, we discovered that
 fluoride is actually altering the basic architecture of human bones."

Skeletal fluorosis is a debilitating condition that occurs when fluoride
accumulates in bones, making them extremely weak and brittle.

The earliest symptoms?
 "Mottled and brittle teeth," Dr. Limeback told me. "In Canada we are now
 spending more money treating dental fluorosis than we do treating cavities.
That includes my own practice."

 One of the most obvious living experiments today, Dr. Limeback believes,
is a proof-positive comparison between any two Canadian cities. "Here in
Toronto we've been fluoridating for 36 years. Yet Vancouver - which has
never fluoridated - has a cavity rate lower than Toronto's."
And, he pointed out, cavity rates are low all across the industrialized
world including Europe, which is 98% fluoride free. Low because of
improved standards of living, less refined sugar, regular dental checkups,
flossing and frequent brushing. Now less than 2 cavities per child
Canada-wide," he said.

"I don't get it, Doc. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
ran a puff piece all across America saying the stuff was better than
sliced bread. What's the story?"

"Unfortunately," he replied, "the CDC is basing its position on data
that is 50 years old, and questionable at best. Absolutely no one
has done research on fluorosilicates, which is the junk they're
dumping into the drinking water."

"On the other hand," he added, "the evidence against systemic fluoride
in-take continues to pour in."

"But Doc, the dentists..."

"I have absolutely no training in toxicity," he stated firmly. "Your well-
intentioned dentist is simply following 50 years of misinformation from
public health and the dental association. Me, too. Unfortunately, we
were wrong."

Last week, Dr. Hardy Limeback addressed his faculty and students at
the University of Toronto, Department of Dentistry. In a poignant,
memorable meeting, he apologized to those gathered before him.

"Speaking as the head of preventive dentistry, I told them that I had
 unintentionally mislead my colleagues and my students. For the
past 15 years, I had refused to study the toxicology information that
is readily available to anyone. Poisoning our children was the furthest
thing from my mind."

"The truth," he confessed to me, "was a bitter pill to swallow, but
swallow it I did."

South of the border, the paradigm shift has yet to dawn. After half a
century of delusion, the CDC, American Dental Association and
Public Health stubbornly and skillfully continue to manipulate
public opinion in favor of fluoridation. Meantime, study after study is
delivering the death knell of the deadly toxin. Sure, fluoridation will
be around for a long time yet, but ultimately its supporters need to
ready the life rafts. The poisonous waters of doubt and confusion
are bound to get choppier.

"Are lawsuits inevitable?" I asked the good doctor.
"Remember tobacco," was his short, succinct reply.

Welcome, Dr. Hardy Limeback, to the far side of the fluoride equation.
It's lonely over here, but in our society loneliness and truth frequently
travel hand in hand. Thank you for the undeniable courage of your
convictions.

Barry Forbes
 The Tribune, Mesa, AZ
 Reproduced With Permission

Best wishes,
Peter

Here's an recent article for you - see below.
Bye for now,
Hans
============================================

UK: JUST HOW SAFE?
By Joanna Blythman.

Is water fluoridation the saviour of all dental evil or is fluoride a
dangerous poison which makes money for the dental industry?
Joanna Blythman investigates

To most people, fluoride is a wholly beneficial chemical with no
downside whatsoever. Its remarkably favourable public image is
based on our trust of the dental profession which has been telling
us since the 1950s that fluoride is good for our teeth and advising
us to brush them with fluoride toothpaste and swallow fluoride
tablets. Fluoride is the dental magic bullet for deprived
urbanchildren whose teeth are rotten at an absurdly early age.
Fluoridate their drinking water and hey presto, Blackhill kids get
Bearsden teeth, even if they don't possess a toothbrush and live
on sugary fizzy drinks.

But a growing body of international scientific and environmental
opinion sees fluoride as nothing more than a poisonous pollutant,
profitably and misleadinglyrebadged as the scourge of dental
caries. Discomfitingly for the fluoride lobby,evidence to support
these claims is building up as studies link it with adverse health
effects including tooth discolouration, lowered IQ, increased
perinatal mortality and birth defects, bone cancer, osteoporosis
and hip fractures.

Even leading dental authorities are having second thoughts.
Aubrey Sheiham, professor of community dental health at
University College London, says: "I havegone cool on water
fluoridation. Fluoride does have a definite negative effect on
teeth. Also the dental profession's concentration on fluoride has
let sugar off the hook."

Could it be that fluoride is one of the greatest chemical
blunders of the last century?

Fluoride entered the public health frame in the 1930s when an
American doctor noted that the teeth of children in areas with a
high natural calcium fluoride level in water were stained and
discoloured, a condition named fluorosis. It wasno surprise that
fluoride damaged teeth. In 1936, the American Dental Journal
condemned fluoride as "a general protoplasmic poison the most
important symptomsof chronic poisoning known at present are
mottling of the teeth and interferencewith bone formation". Until
then, it had been commonly used as a rat poison. Fluoride is still
classified as an "extremely toxic" substance, rated between 4 and
5 on a toxicity scale of 1-6, more poisonous than lead and almost
as poisonous as arsenic. Not the sort of thing you want to ingest.

Fluoride is not a nutrient, you do not need it in your diet. But
doctors and dentists were persuaded that the children with
fluorosis had fewer dental caries, and therefore, that fluoride
prevented decay. Mottled teeth were just a small cosmetic price
to pay for this dental breakthrough. And to this day fluoridationis
still pursued with missionary fervour. "We're talking massive
improvements totooth health and less avoidable pain and misery all
by implementing a safe and effective public health measure," says
Sheila Jones, spokeswoman for the BritishFluoridation Society, a
government-funded body which promotes fluoridation.

This government has targeted four areas of poor tooth health it
wants to see fluoridated - Northwest England, Northern Ireland,
the West of Scotland and Inner London. Over the past three
decades, Northern Ireland and the North of England have rejected
fluoridation four times. In a landmark court battle in 1983, Lord
Jauncey ruled that Strathclyde was exceeding its legal authority
whenit tried to fluoridate its water. London mayor, Ken
Livingstone, has said that he will oppose it too. Others have
tempered their traditional unbridled advocacyof fluoride with more
measured warnings which reflect its toxic status. "In the past 10
years we have been aware that children do have an increased risk
of adverse effects and are recommending that when brushing
teeth, only a pea-sized drop of fluoride toothpaste should be used
and that parents supervise brushing to make sure that children
spit it out," says Dr John Beal of the British DentalAssociation.

What otherwise might they be swallowing? Fluoride is a by-product
of phosphate fertiliser or aluminium production and a dangerous
pollutant. "Companies cannot by law dump this material in the
environment but they are allowed to sell it to public water utilities
where it is diluted down in the water supply," says Dr Paul
Connett, an international expert on environmental toxins. He
states that whenever fluoride is tested in laboratories, usually on
rats, a pharmaceutical grade of sodium fluoride is used with
distilled or double-deionised water and this is entirely different
from the substance put into the public water supply which is
hexafluorosilicic acid, a toxic soup of silicofluorides and a number
ofother contaminants from the phosphate process which commonly
include arsenic, cadmium and radionuclides.

According to the BDA, such claims are "complete, unmitigated
drivel". "Fluoride from phosphate manufacture is just a convenient
type of recycling which meets strict government safety standards,
monitored by the Drinking Water Inspectorate," says Beal.

But can there ever be a "safe" level for any poison? The "optimal"
level for fluoride in water was set at one part per million back in
1945, with no allowance made for the cumulative effect of other
sources of fluoride such as fluoridated dental products, soft drinks
and processed foods. Nor have the possible synergistic{*filter*}tail
effects of fluoride with other chemicals we ingestbeen taken into
account.

While the BDA insists that "fluoridation could reduce decay in
cities like Glasgow by a half", other European countries remain
unconvinced. Only the UK, Ireland and Spain fluoridate their
drinking water in some areas. It is the same story internationally.

The Japanese government's position, for example, is that
wholesale water fluoridation can cause health problems and that
individuals are at liberty to use a fluoride toothpaste if they wish.
These days, non-fluoridated Western Europe and Japan have the
same, or in some cases fewer, dental cavities than the US.

Meanwhile in the 62%-fluoridated US, fluorosis, which ought to be
rare, is running at between 20% to 80%. More than 50 US towns
and cities have stopped fluoridation since 1990.
Sheiham says: "When I worked in the US, the first thing I noticed
was what nice white teeth Americans had. But tooth whitening is
an initial sign of low-score fluorosis. The staining comes later with
the higher scores. Ironically, it is the middle-class children that are
most badly affected by excess fluoride because they also use
fluoride toothpaste."

Increasingly more scientists seem to agree that if there is any
benefit to fluoride at all, it comes from topical application
(toothpaste), not indiscriminate and ill-targeted mass fluoridation
which could cause problems forvulnerable groups such as the
elderly, diabetics, people with vitamin and mineral deficiencies and
cardiovascular or kidney problems. And what about the perfectly
healthy population? Why ingest a known toxin on a lifetime basis
just because some children suffer from too much tooth decay?

Why not add aspirin to water in order to prevent heart disease and
strokes in the elderly, or spray steroids into the air because some
people get asthma?

British opponents of fluoridation point out that only about 3% of
the global population is artificially fluoridated and that the strong
American drive to promote the practice has been spectacularly
unsuccessful. "The trick is to make people think that they are
somehow behind the times and should feel guilty for depriving their
children of this miracle-working pollution," says Jane Jones,
campaign director of the National Pure Water Association.

The fluoride debate is certainly calling into question the integrity
of the dental research community. Can we trust dentists? And
even if we are talking about those well-intentioned dentists who
have simply subscribed to a professional orthodoxy, do they see
the wider health picture? "The public have been sold a Janet and
John story about fluoride," says Jones. She makes the
ultra-cynical observation that dentists have a financial interest in
promoting fluoride because they can make more money covering
up the staining of fluorosis than carrying out extractions or fillings.

Recently the credibility of the British Dental Association took a
knock when it gave its official accreditation to a soft drink -
Ribena Tooth Kind - which claimed it was "safe for teeth". (The
BDA makes tens of thousands of pounds each year from product
accreditation.) The Advertising Standards Authority found that
these claims weremisleading. Now the BDA defends its
accreditation on the grounds that that it was only saying that
Ribena Tooth Kind was less harmful than other sweet drinks and
not suggesting that there was no danger of decay.
This debacle illustrates the somewhat ambivalent relationship that
exists between the advocates of fluoride and the sugar industry.

Sugar and the corrosive acids in fizzy drinks are the number one
cause of tooth decay and their effect is most damaging amongst
deprived urban children with poor diets who do not take care of
their teeth. Yet sugar overconsumption in such communities is
often met with shoulder-shrugging and patronising tolerance
whileNanny State interventionism is advocated in the form of
water fluoridation.

"Fluoride has been found to be effective over 40 years in improving
dental health by 60%. It is a much more realistic way of tackling
tooth decay than approaching the manufacturers of sugary
drinks," says Margie Taylor, consultant in Dental Public Health in
Lanarkshire.

Now the University of York has been funded by the government to
come up with a "once and ...

read more »