Page 44 - Spring 2019 Journal

ELEVEN ARGUMENTS WHY FLUORIDATION SHOULD BE ENDED
1. Fluoridation is unethical. Using the public water supply to deliver dental therapy goes against all recognized principles of modern pharmacology and ethical healthcare practice. It imposes medication on all water con- sumers indiscriminately and without the individual’s informed consent. These include the unborn, bottle-fed infants, persons with chronic diseases known to be aggravated by fluoride (such as poor kidney function), the poorly nourished (such as those with low iodine intake) and the elderly. It does so with uncontrolled dosage, no monitoring of adverse effects and no possibility of avoiding treatment for most, if not all, people. This is especially true for those on a low-income budget who simply cannot afford avoidance measures like reverse osmosis filtration systems.
2. Fluoridation is unusual. The vast majority of countries worldwide do not fluoridate their drinking water. Out of one hundred ninety-six countries, only twenty-four have any fluoridated cities, and of those, only ten, includ- ing the U.S., fluoridate more than half their population. Ninety-five percent of the world’s people drink water without artificial fluoridation. Over half of those who do, live in the U.S. In Europe, where forty-three out of forty-eight nations have no water fluoridation, 98 percent of the population is not forced to drink fluoridated water. A few European countries (namely France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria) have fluoridated salt avail- able, but people are not forced to buy this salt, as non-fluoridated salt is also available. Despite this, World Health Organization (WHO) data61 indicate that since the 1960s, tooth decay in twelve-year-olds has been coming down as fast in non-fluoridated countries as in fluoridated ones.
3. Children in fluoridated communities are being grossly over-exposed to fluoride. In the U.S. and other fluo- ridated countries, there has been a dramatic increase in young children and teens in the prevalence of dental fluorosis (discoloration of tooth enamel caused by low-level systemic fluoride toxicity during tooth formation). This condition indicates that children have been grossly over-exposed to fluoride before their permanent teeth have erupted. The latest national survey indicates that over 60 percent of U.S. teens have dental fluorosis.52,53 Of those, 24 percent have moderate and nearly 2 percent have severe levels of the disease. These levels can produce yellow and brown staining and structural damage to the enamel. To put this into context, the early promoters of fluoridation anticipated only 10 percent of the children in fluoridated communities would be af- fected by this condition, and these would be only in the “very mild” category. They believed that this was an acceptable trade-off for reducing tooth decay. Even avid promoters of fluoridation no longer accept that the current prevalence rates as acceptable but they tend to blame other sources of fluoride—rather than water fluoridation—for the dramatic increase. In reality, every source of fluoride ingested contributes to this preva- lence. The contribution from water fluoridation can be eliminated with a simple policy change.
4. Fluoride has the potential to damage many other tissues. Because of the prevalence of dental fluorosis, there is no question that fluoride can damage the developing teeth. Nor is there any question from the evidence provided in countries with large areas of endemic fluorosis (such as India and China) where millions of people have both dental and skeletal fluorosis, that high doses of fluoride can damage other tissues including bones, connective tissue, the brain, the endocrine system, the gut and kidneys. The Indian Ministry of Health & Family Welfare54 provides an excellent description of the problems faced by thousands of villages poisoned by fluo- ride. For the Western world, much of this evidence was provided in a comprehensive review of the literature conducted by the National Research Council of the National Academies in 2006.16 What has emerged since 2006 is a growing body of evidence that this harm can occur at doses experienced in artificially fluoridated communities.
5. Fluoridation is unnecessary. Fluoride is not an essential nutrient. No one has ever demonstrated that a single biological process in the human body needs fluoride to function properly. There is no such thing as a “fluoride- deficiency” disease. Children can have perfectly good teeth without ingesting fluoride. Even promoters of water fluoridation admit that the predominant benefit of fluoride is topical, not systemic.55-58 Thus, it is morally indefensible to force people to ingest fluoride via the public water supply, when for those who want fluoride,
42 Wise Traditions SPRING 2019