Subject:
Errors in Gov't Fluoridation Presentations
To:
Rep. Peter King
August 16, 2005
Your copy -
William Bailey, DDS, MPH
Department of Oral Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, Georgia
Hi Bill
It was a pleasure speaking with you at the fluoridation symposium even if you are on the wrong side of the issue 8-] It's so rare that I meet a fluoridation proponent who is as courteous as you were to me. And I thank you for that. However, what I heard at that symposium is disturbing.
A thread running through the delivered speeches is that you all seem to believe that folks opposed to fluoridation disseminate misinformation. No fluoridation opponents were speaking before this assembled crowd. Yet lots of misinformation and improper behavior was flowing For example:
1) Dr. Lynn Mouden's presentation about the Arkansas fluoridation battle maligned one of my new friends, and Mouden’s fellow Arkansasan, who was outside picketing. He also insulted Arkansas legislators and falsely reported that State Senator Jack Critcher voted down the fluoridation mandate bill. An Arkansas newspaper, "The Lovely Citizen," reported Mouden’s words and then Critcher’s correction of Mouden’s un-truths (See: http://www.fluoridealert.org/news/2352.h... ). .I suggest this article be disseminated to all Symposium attendees as a “what not to do” and hope they don’t repeat Mouden’s misstatements and further malign or embarrass Arkansas residents, legislators or themselves.
2) Several speakers dismissed Dr. Dean Burk and Dr. John Yiamouyiannis’ cancer study because it wasn’t adjusted for important variables, they said. This often-repeated criticism is false. Burk/Yiamouyiannis did make adjustments. When fluoridation proponents are put on the witness stand in courts of law, they are unable to scientifically invalidate the Burk/Yiamouyiannis study.
For example, Pennsylvania Judge Flaherty presided over a case which focused on the validity of the Burk-Yiamouyiannis study. Over the course of five months, the court held periodic hearings which consisted of extensive expert testimony from as far away as England. Flaherty found "[p]oint by point, every criticism made of the Burk-Yiamouyiannis study was met and explained by the plaintiffs. Often, the point was turned around against defendants. In short, this court was compellingly convinced of the evidence in favor of plaintiffs [fluoridation opponents]."
Then fluoridationists further misinformed legislators, others and me by reporting that Flaherty’s case was “thrown out of court for lack of evidence.” So I wrote to Flaherty in1996. This is what he said: “My decision regarding the fluoridation of the public water supply, made during my tenure as a trial judge almost twenty years ago, was on appeal, purely a jurisdictional issue,,,That the practice is deleterious is more and more accepted -- its utility doubted,…”
3) Another speaker, Dr. George Stookey, reported that after 15 years of water fluoridation which began in 1945, Grand Rapids had about a 50% less tooth decay rate than Muskegon, the non-fluoridated control city. He stressed that no other fluoride was around back then. However, Muskegon started fluoridation in 1951. So, in effect, Stookey’s comparison was made between two fluoridated cities, which actually indicates something other than fluoridation was protecting the teeth of Grand Rapids children.
4) I was shocked when Missouri’s Ashley Micklethwaite expressed fear of anti-fluoridationists in her talk. She advised attendees to get unlisted phone numbers to avoid us. It seems fluoridationists have been so good at creating a negative image of Americans who fight for pure water that they believe their own PR.
When my and my daughter’s picture appeared in a Long Island newspaper in the early 1980’s as opposed to fluoridation, I got very alarming phone calls directed to my then 5-year-old. I never assumed these troubling calls were from dentists or fluoridationists. However, Dentists don’t have a monopoly on sanity. Google searches reveal dentists who murder, rape, commit Medicaid fraud and more. We don’t judge a whole barrel by a few bad apples. So I’m surprised your speaker expressed such a fear of us.
If only you had allowed chemistry professor Paul Connet, PhD, Executive Director of the Fluoride Action Network to speak as he and I requested, Ms Micklethwaite would have seen her fear was misguided. Also, maybe Dr. Connett could have corrected your speakers’ blunders before they permeate throughout the country and those 7 foreign countries which were represented at the symposium.
Not there to defend himself, one of your speakers took a cheap shot at Dr. Connett. Florida dentist Robert Crawford said, “The fellow that was out here in the book covers when you went to the celebration of fluoridation out in the tent the other day [Paul Connett] . They flew him in to debate us. Can you imagine what you feel like standing up here and debating somebody standing between two book covers.” This brought laughter from the audience who, apparently, are quite comfortable denigrating opponents of fluoridation.
Crawford bragged about his successful Pinellas County fluoridation strategy. He made this outrageous statement, ”We identified county officials who were anti-fluoride and we had no further contact with them. And we cut them off, totally.” In effect, Crawford cut off anyone who doubted fluoridation; hardly a noble thing to do. Is he protecting people or fluoridation? Would his malpractice insurance cover him should he use the same tactics with a patient who questions him? I found him quite disturbing.
5) A symposium attendee, during a question and answer period, brought up misinformation disseminated on the National Institutes of Dental Research’s (NIDCR) website, where a “history of fluoridation” said H. Trendley Dean did not find fluorosis at “optimal” levels of fluoride in drinking water. This person called and spoke to the writer at NIDCR who then researched his objection and agreed it should be re-written. However, she said it was a low priority for her and she would get around to it someday. Since the symposium and his public revelation of this error, it has been corrected, however, but not after the incorrect information from this “reliable source,” the NIDCR was repeated in “On Tap” magazine and elsewhere.
I and others opposed to fluoridation are routinely personally denigrated by dentists and/or fluoridation proponents in person, in writing and on the internet, including from members of the public-dental-health listserv (my taxes at work?). I was called a baby-killer to my face by a dentist. Many exceedingly derogatory and ugly comments have been and are directed towards me on the internet where some dentists actually sign their real names and addresses, their criticism so apparently accepted within the profession. Dentists opposed to fluoridation are routinely tongue lashed by their colleagues on internet mail lists and message boards.
I can only wonder what’s been going on in private fluoridation meetings and at taxpayer subsidized dental schools over the years to provoke such hatred towards us.
This may be why California Dentist David Nelson felt so comfortable laughing at us on Wednesday July 13, 2005, while I snapped his picture. Nelson mockingly told me he was Kip Duchon, a federal employee. This, by the way, is a federal crime which I reported to his superiors, who probably will do nothing about it.
I was also offended when Dr. Nelson and two female colleagues chuckled when the Missouri presenter made a reference to San Jose woman writing and sending information to Missouri legislators. I felt like I was back in Junior High School. It scares me that these people are guardians of my health.
Fluoridation proponents have created an American myth that fluoride is absolutely safe. The average person is afraid to overdose on the water-soluble, relatively harmless vitamin C. But very few Americans similarly fear fluoride. That’s very odd. Since just a teaspoon of fluoride could and has killed. That may not be your intention; but that’s certainly the reality.
As you know, very few grants are available to study ill health effects of fluoride. And studies declaring fluoridation’s benefits are out-dated and scientifically flawed by today’s standards, according to the National Institutes of Health and the UK’s York Commission.
I hope in the future you will invite Dr. Paul Connett, Dr. William Hirzy, Dr. David Kennedy or another equally qualified fluoridation opponent to speak before any fluoridation meeting, symposium or gathering.You are doing no one a service by disallowing our participation in tax-payer funded fluoridation programs.
If your goal is to protect the health of Americans, you’ll invite one of our speakers. If your goal is just to win, you will not. If our science is so misrepresented as fluoridationists tell legislators in private, you’ll be able to show us where we are wrong in public.
The internet is often maligned as providing misinformation to fluoridation truth seekers. But the truth was definitely not on display at this government sponsored event. I fear New York State Department of Health employees, present at this symposium, will come back armed with misinformation, and use it to fluoridate more New Yorkers against their will and without their full knowledge of harm, further wasting my taxes.
However, I did enjoy our pleasant conversation about New York State. Someday I’d like to have a pleasant conversation with you about fluoridation.
I look forward to your response.
Copy to:
Willliam Maas, DDS director of CDC's oral health program
U.S.Senator Charles Schumer
U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton
U.S. Representative Peter King
NYS Senator Kemp Hannon
NYS Senator Owen Johnson
Mayor Heartwell Grand Rapids, Michigan
Dr. George Stookey
Dr. Lynn Mouden, director of the Arkansas Health Department’s Office of Oral Health
Dr Julie Louise Gerberding, Director,Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Elmer Green, Director,Bureau of Dental Health, NYS Dep't of Health
Dr. Jayanth Kumar,Director, Oral Health Surveillance and Research,Bureau of Dental Health, NYS Department of Health
Levittown , NY
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