The Fluoride Panacea

Lee Taylor is a former pro-fluoride activist and a resident of Bellingham. He has written three books, “Pend Oreille Profiles,” “A History of Hydroelectricity: Columbia River Valley Power” and “Everychild’s Christmas.

Part 3

Editor’s note: This is the final article in a three-part series concerning the history of fluoride in this country, how the fluoride paradigm shifted from poison to panacea, and how this paradigm shift can be demythologized.

The first paid lawsuit damages for fluorine emissions took place in Freiburg, Germany, in 1855, and in 1893 these smelters incurred 880,000 marks in damages and 644,000 marks for permanent relief.1 American industry took notice. In 1895, Andrew W. Mellon founded ALCOA, and in 1913, created the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research at the University of Pittsburgh, to protect company interests from fluorine emission and other lawsuits. In 1921 he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, with the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) under his control.

Worries about lawsuits gave other corporations a reason to join the research arena. Funded by Ethyl Corporation, General Electric and DuPont in 1930, the Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati was organized under the direction of Dr. Robert Kehoe. Kehoe’s laboratory was set up for contract research on chemical hazards in the fluoride industry and for protection against litigation and government restrictions.

Kettering Laboratory quickly dominated fluoride safety research. A book [“Fluorosis: The Health Aspects of Fluorine Compounds”] by a Kettering scientist “to ‘aid industry in lawsuits arising from fluoride damage,’ became a basic international reference work.” 2

Between 1931 and 1939, the USPHS sought to remove fluorine from drinking water due to endemic mottled teeth, and health scientists continued to regard it as highly toxic.

As medical director of the Ethyl Corporation, consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission and the Division of Occupational Medicine of the USPHS, Dr. Kehoe was committed to the suppression of industrial fluoride dangers. By 1931, most of Kettering Laboratory’s facilities were devoted to the study of fluorides.

Medical information was made available to public health agencies only upon approval of the industrial provider of the research grant. Agreements between ALCOA and institutions of higher learning clearly specified that “Confidential information obtained from the Donor shall not be published without permission of said Donor.” 3 The magnitude of such industrial consortium power to control is impossible to estimate.

ALCOA’s smelters had been dumping fluoride waste into Pittsburgh’s groundwater for decades, and now it had entered the drinking water. Undaunted, in a letter to the city of Pittsburgh Bureau of Water (June 1931), ALCOA’s chief chemist suggested that fluoride in small doses “may be positively beneficial.” 4 To distract from fluoride air pollution, ALCOA tried to convince the public that it was excess fluoride in the water that caused “mottling.” The Pittsburgh Press May 31, 1931, headline agreed, “Scientist Here Finds Secret Poison Which Blackens Teeth of Children.” 5

In 1931, USPHS dental research scientist H. Trendley Dean was instructed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Mellon (also founder of ALCOA) to leave the industrial sodium fluoride pollution of the urban East and visit the naturally calcium fluoridated rural West. In 1939, Dean examined the naturally fluoridated water from 345 Texas communities, reporting that naturally high concentrations of calcium fluoride in the drinking water of these areas caused dental mottling while also decreasing tooth decay in children. His epidemiological studies, subsequently referenced as the key “fluorine caries hypothesis,” were to provide the “scientific basis” for U.S. water fluoridation, earning Dean the title, “the father of fluoridation.”

Fluoridation critic, Dr. Richard G. Foulkes, referencing Dean’s “Endemic Fluorosis and Its Relation to Dental Caries” and “Domestic Water and Dental Caries,” with Dean under cross-examination in a 1960 Chicago lawsuit, Dean “was forced to admit that his early studies…and his later studies…of 7,257 children, did not meet his own criteria of ‘lifetime exposure’ and ‘unchanged water supply’ and were, therefore, worthless. Dr. F. B. Exner [a radiologist and critic of fluoridation] prepared an ‘Analytical Commentary’ on Dean’s testimony [showing]…that not only were the basic criteria lacking in Dean’s work, but also random variations…cancelled out any ‘benefits’ that appeared in the high fluoride vs. lower fluoride cities.” 6

In 1935, Ray Weidlein, director of Mellon Institute, formed a lobbying group, the Air Hygiene Foundation. Later renamed the Industrial Hygiene Foundation, this consortium listed some of the most powerful industries in America, including ALCOA and DuPont. Their purpose was to fund and control Mellon Institute research from a medical-legal perspective, protect their interests in court and shape public perception of fluoride. Kettering Institute’s Fluorine Lawyers Committee performed a similar function.

On May 1, 1935, the Youngstown (OH) Telegram, headlining a press release from Weidlein, announced that Mellon researchers had “found evidence that the presence of a factor in the diet at a crucial period of tooth formation leads to the development of teeth resistant to decay.” 7 Mellon scientist, Gerald J. Cox, led the hunt for this elusive “factor,” proclaiming in 1936 that he’d discovered the mystery “factor” protecting teeth. In 1937, Cox announced, “It is possible that fluorine is specifically required for the formation of teeth.” 8 In that same year, he and Ray Weidlein published their “discovery” in the scientific press, following up in 1938 with a declaration [in the Journal of the American Medical Association] that “the case [for fluoride] should be regarded as proved.” 9

In his historic 1939 statement, ALCOA biochemist Cox, having noted in his 1939 meeting with the American Water Works Association, “The present trend toward complete removal of fluoride from water and food may need some reversal,” 10 made the first public proposal for compulsory fluoridation. Recognizing that water works officials might become liable for poisoning people, Cox cautioned his audience: “Fluorides are among the most toxic of substances…The results on adults of drinking water containing sufficient fluoride to prevent dental caries in children must be determined.” 11

Ironically, it was the USPHS, under Mellon’s direction, which had, for 10 years after Dean’s 1931 tooth mottling discovery, devoted its efforts to eliminating fluorine ions from drinking water. Cox had based his fluoridation suggestions on experiments with rats and evidence provided in 1938 by W. D. Armstrong and P. J. Brekhus of the University of Minnesota. As a biochemist and USPHS Dental Division consultant, Armstrong’s report indicated more fluoride in enamel of healthy than in decayed teeth, but in 1963, Armstrong stated, “No difference in fluoride content of enamel of sound teeth from that of sound enamel of carious teeth was found in the same decade of life.” “Armstrong…concluded that his earlier findings were wrong…The discovering scientists themselves admitted that the two major scientific findings of the 1930s that showed that fluoride might be good for the teeth, and were the basis of later campaigns to compulsorily fluoridate water supplies, were worthless.” 13

In 1943 a special New York Health Department Technical Advisory Committee was appointed under the direction of Harold Hodge, toxicologist at the University of Rochester and chief of fluoride toxicity studies at the Manhattan Project, to guide the N.Y. Health Department’s study of the advisability of fluoridating Newburgh’s drinking water. The Journal of the American Medical Association simultaneously published a September 18, 1943, article, Chronic Fluorine Intoxication, stating, “Fluorides are general protoplasmic poisons, changing the permeability of the cell membrane by inhibiting certain enzymes…The sources of fluorine intoxication are drinking water containing 1ppm or more of fluorine.” 14

Dr. David Ast, Chief Dental Officer of the N.Y. Health Department, directed the Newburgh fluoridation project in 1944, working in conjunction with the Pentagon Scientific Research and Development Group under Manhattan Project’s Hodge, both groups seeking information on cumulative effects of fluoridation. Meanwhile, the Michigan State Department of Health had selected Grand Rapids as test city for a 10-year fluoridation experiment, with un-fluoridated control city, Muskegon. On July 31, 1944, the Grand Rapids City Commission approved fluoridation, placing H. Trendley Dean in charge.

Three months prior to the January 1945 launching of the Newburgh-Kingston (two cities in New York state) fluoride experiment, divisive safety concerns emerged, threatening to undermine the paradigm shift from poison to panacea, harbingers of disaster for both fluoride industry and Manhattan Project. A covert connection between the Manhattan Project and New York Public Health Service (NYPHS) developed. Pretending to focus on public safety, the Manhattan Project used the Newburgh Public Health Service experiment as wartime camouflage for bomb production, simultaneously protecting fluoride industry from post-war litigation.

Recognizing the urgency for a consolidated voice, a conference on fluoride metabolism was secretly convened on January 6, 1944, by President Roosevelt’s science adviser, James Conant. Medical authorities from the wartime fluoride industry were invited. Industrial contractors for the Manhattan Project were concerned about fluoride’s toxic impact on their employees and ensuing damage claims. David Ast, anticipating the 10-year Newburgh experiment, offered a solution: Reporting that “animal tests were of doubtful value” in determining fluoride toxicity in humans, he suggested that scientists utilize the Newburgh experiment to determine fluoridation’s effects on humans.

Declassified documents of the Manhattan Project Medical Section, “Program F,” revealed a complete file on the Newburgh experiment, reflecting near disaster in the poison-to-panacea paradigm shift. “The top fluoride scientist for the U.S. Public Health Service, Dr. H. Trendley Dean…had secretly opposed the Newburgh fluoridation experiment, fearing fluoride’s toxicity.” 15 This placed at risk both Newburgh and Grand Rapids experiments, jeopardizing potential subjects for Hodge’s covert experiments, bomb factories workers and possibly aborting the national fluoridation plan.

Dean’s confrontation with Hodge’s Newburgh Committee took place in the N.Y. Health Department on April 24, l944. Drawing from his 1930s epidemiological studies, Dean provided evidence of fluoride’s toxic effects, requesting time to study the effects of lower concentrations of fluoride before approving the Newburgh experiment. Assured by Dr. Bain of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Children’s Bureau, (the funding agency for the Newburgh experiment), that the Newburgh project had been approved by the children’s bureau, Dean’s was the only dissenting vote on the Advisory Committee. This enraged Newburgh Project Director, David Ast, who attributed Dean’s “flip-flop” on public health concerns to career ambition. A political scramble was taking place to be the first to add fluoride to U.S. water. Dean had been secretly planning his own fluoridation experiment. Ast concluded, “He was going to do it in Michigan. He wanted to get in before I could.” 16

On July 14, 1944, Dr. H. Trendley Dean, “the father of fluoride,” stepped on board the fluoride bandwagon. In his letter to Dr. William Davis of the Michigan Bureau of Public Health Dentistry, “Dean makes no further mention of the worrisome potential ‘toxic effects’ he had feared in Newburgh. ‘Let me know what you think of actually getting started on this proposition…I…think Grand Rapids would…be the most desirable place for the fluorination.’” 17

America’s fluoride experiment began on January 25, 1945, in Grand Rapids, with Newburgh following on May 2, 1945, neither complying with scientific procedure. Originally sponsored by the Surgeon General, the Grand Rapids experiment was taken over by the NIDR in 1948 under Dean’s direction. With Grand Rapids as the test city and Muskegon the control city, this planned 15-year project ended in July 1951, when Muskegon was fluoridated, canceling any possible scientific conclusions and concealing results indicating comparable reduction of tooth decay in both cities. The political consequences of this were unacceptable to the Public Health Service, National Institute of Dental Research, American Dental Association, and the fluoride industry.

The Newburgh-Kingston experiment suffered the same destiny as Grand Rapids-Muskegon. As indicated in declassified documents, it played a major role in Hodge’s experiments on citizens of Newburgh, fueling fluoridation propaganda. “Fluoride levels varied by up to 900 percent between individuals, hence averages as the basis of safety conclusions were not only worthless, but dangerous.” 18 The published results, analyzed by independent statisticians concluded there was no improvement in Newburgh, and predicted that decay rates would exceed those of Kingston, which had less tooth decay than fluoridated Newburgh.19

Although quoted as “conclusive proof” of the benefits of fluoridation, the Grand Rapids-Muskegon experiment was scientific anomaly. Muskegon fluoridation took place in 1951, four years after ALCOA attorney, Oscar Ewing, had been appointed director of the U.S. Federal Security Agency, which directed the USPHS. Following Ewing’s national PHS fluoridation promotion, and lobbying from Frank Bull’s Wisconsin dental group, on “June 1, 1950, the PHS announced, ‘Communities desiring to fluoridate their communal water supplies should be strongly encouraged to do so.’ This endorsement was followed five months later by the American Dental Association, and others.” 20

During his tenure, Ewing exercised his political clout in another significant legal stunt: “It was he who changed the Federal Code of Regulations to remove fluoride from the regulations that control food levels of other potentially toxic materials and placed all control of drinking water fluoride concentration in the hands of the PHS.” 21

Bull keynoted the infamous 1951 Conference of State Dental Directors, promoting national fluoridation by subversive means, manipulating public concern over toxic health effects by promising fluoridation safety. The fluoridation campaign continued to snowball as U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Leonard Scheele, became president of the WHO, the AMA’s Public Health Committee gained endorsement of the AMA, and the National Research Council joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in endorsing fluoridation. “The original spin-doctor,” Edward L. Bernays, sponsored by the U.S. Government, simultaneously launched his national character assassination campaign against all fluoridation adversaries. Fluoridation propaganda had simply become a mantra of bogus science and professional endorsements.

Within three years of the 1947 PHS national fluoridation campaign under Ewing, 87 additional cities were fluoridated. Current Center for Disease Control statistics indicate two-thirds fluoridation of U.S. drinking water, with approximately 162 million people drinking hydrofluosilicic acid, far more toxic than Grand Rapids sodium fluoride. Nobel Prize Winner, Dr. Albert Schatz (microbiology), co-discoverer of Streptomycin, the cure for tuberculosis and numerous other bacterial infections, concludes, “Fluoridation…is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated and it has been perpetrated on more people than any other fraud.” 22 §

, r-6 Bryson, p. 267.