Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (6 page)

Today, Australia has "distinguished" itself by promoting the fluoridation programme with such vigour that Australia now ranks as the most comprehensively fluoridated country in the world. More than 70 percent of Australians are obliged to drink water to which fluorides have been added. Brisbane is the Australia persists in its despite the fact that 98 percent of the world's population has either discontinued fluoridation programmes or never begun them.

Statistics show that less than 40 percent of the U.S. is currently fluoridated and less than 10 percent of England. Sweden, Scotland, Norway, Hungary, Holland, West Germany, Denmark, and Belgium have all discontinued fluoridation, to name only a few.
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only capital city which

policy committment to remains unfluoridated. artificial fluoridation,

CAN FLUORIDATION BE KEPT AT SAFE LEVELS?

Although 1 ppm is standardly defined as that level of fluoride concentration which provides maximal protection against dental decay, with minimal clinically observable dental fluorosis, controversy ranges widely as to adverse effects of prolonged fluoride exposure even at this level. As early as 1942, it was reported that in areas of endemic fluorosis with fluoride concentrations of 1 ppm or less, children with poor nutrition suffered skeletal defects, coupled with severe mottling of teeth.

Even if one grants that fluoride concentrations of 1 ppm are relatively safe, it has become increasingly clear that individual levels of safe fluoride ingestion cannot be adequately controlled. Drinking water dosages of fluoride, for example will depend partly upon variable factors such as thirst. Liquid intakes also vary according to age, work situation, climate and season and levels of exercise. Athletes, for instance, tend to consume more water than their non-athletic counterparts. Adjustments to municipal water supplies cannot accommodate satisfactorily the wide array of relevant individual differences of this kind.

In addition fluorides are ingested in varying quantities from many unsuspected sources. Fluoride tablets, seemingly innocuous mouthwashes, gels and even water-based tablets contribute to dangerous increases in fluoride levels well beyond the recommended 1 ppm contained in drinking water. Although the point has yet to be established definitively, it has been suggested that aluminum cooking utensils and non-stick cookware which are coated with Tetrafluoroethylene may exude fluoride into food, particularly if they have surface scratches or are overheated.
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Even more surprising is the fact that tea leaves contain sufficient fluoride that by drinking three to eight cups daily, using fluoridated water, the total fluoride dosage is somewhere between four and six times the safe maximum recommended daily allowance.
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In addition to endemic fluorides in the natural foods we eat, we are in many industrial cities forced to breathe fluorides derived from factory emissions.
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FLUORIDE CONTAMINATION
FROM BEVERAGE CONSUMPTION

By far the most common source of additional fluoride intake comes from beverage consumption. Beverages which contain fluoridated water include reconstituted juices, punches, popsicles, other water-based frozen desserts and carbonated beverages. Studies have shown that soft drink consumption decades, not among 1-2 year old children. Statistics show that in Canada soft drink consumption increased by 37 percent from 1972 to 1981.
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The increase in soft drink consumption coincided with a decrease in the consumption of milk, thereby increasing the overall fluoride intake. A number of studies reveal that the dramatic increase in beverage consumption, coupled with fluoridation of municipal waters constitutes a potential health hazard.
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Prolonged exposure to fluorides may actually increase rather than diminish the incidence of tooth decay. enamel mineralisation creates a parotic caries than would otherwise be the case.
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In a major study of adverse effects of fluoride, Yiamouyiannis and Burk reported in 1977 that at least 10,000 people in the U.S. die every year of fluoride-induced cancer. In the introduction to their work 17 research papers are cited which demonstrate the mutagenic effects associated with fluorides.
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There is now side consensus within the scientific community that the mutagenic activity of a substance can be regarded as an important indication of its potential cancer-causing activity.

Since those provocative studies over a decade ago, a vast scientific literature has continued to accumulate which strongly indicates that the practice of fluoridating municipal water supplies is dangerous. In 1983 an Australian dental surgeon, G. Smith, reported a number of studies which suggest that there is now a serious risk to the public of fluoride overdose. He argues that "the crucial argument does not concern the fluoride level in a community water supply per se, but rather whether fluoridation increases the risk that certain people develop, even for a short time, levels of fluoride in the blood that can damage human cells and systems."
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In 1985 another Australian scientist, M. Diesendorf, drew attention to the discovery of a whole new dimension to the health hazards associated with the ingestion of fluorides. Sodium fluoride, for example, had been found to cause unscheduled DNA synthesis and chromosonal aberrations in certain human cells.
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Other recent studies purport to reveal the actual mechanism by virtue of which fluoride can disrupt the DNA molecule and the active sites of the molecules of many human enzymes.
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in the U.S. has increased markedly over the last two only among teenage boys from 15-17 years of age, but

Enzymatic damage related to tooth far more susceptible to

When all is said, it is manifestly clear that the time has come for a serious and comprehensive review of the policy which mandates the compulsory fluoridation of our municipal water supplies. Such a review will no doubt require a multi-faceted approach in which reliable research investigations can be integrated with a philosophy of health education to assist their implementation. Through education it may be possible to appreciate that within nature itself are important patterns of design for an overall programme of health. In nature, for instance, fluorides are typically found in decidedly insoluble forms which are relatively safe. By deliberately intervening to make nature's insoluble forms of fluoride soluble we transform a relatively harmless natural substance into a concentrated and highly toxic substance which can then be indiscriminately dispersed throughout the environment as a poison. The subtle constellation of health clues which nature provides in respect of fluorides is further illustrated by the simple but elegant mechanisms of breastfeeding. Breastfed infants are actually protected from receiving more than extremely low concentrations of fluoride in breast milk by an inbuilt physiological plasma/milk barrier against fluoride.
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There is much about health to learn from nature, but to do so we must be more concerned to join with nature in partnership than to stand back from nature to subdue and manipulate it.

Whether the fluoridation campaign must be indicted in the light of the evidence as one of the major public hoaxes perpetrated this century, is a judgement best reserved for the reader. Whatever the judgment, it is incontestable that the prevention of tooth decay is not the bottom-line of the fluoridation debate when the panacea has become the poison.

For more information on artificial fluoridation, we recommend to readers: The Australian Fluoridation News, GPO Box 935G, Melbourne, Vic, 3001. This is a bi-monthly publication, which costs $15 per annum.

REFERENCES

1. N.I. Sax, Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials, 2nd ed. (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corp., 1963), p. 1187.

2. L. Hodges, Environmental Pollution, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), p. 64.

3. G.S.R. Walker, Fluoridation—Poison on Tap (Melbourne: Glen Walker Publisher, 1982), p. 40.

4. H.T. Dean, "Studies on the Minimal Threshold of the Dental Sign of Chronic Endemic Fluorosis," Public Health Rep, 50:1719-1729, 1934.
5. Walker, op. eit. p. 115.

6. D. Stevenson, "Fluoridation, Panacea or Poison?," Simply Living Magazine, Vol. 3, #6 (1988), p. 102.

7. G. Caldwell and RE. Zanfagna, Fluoridation and Truth Decay (California: Top-Ecol Press, 1974), p. 7.

8. Ibid.

9. W. Varney, Fluoride in Australia (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1986), p. 14.

10. Walker, op. cit. p. 159.
11. Ibid.
12. Caldwell and Zanfagna, op. cit. p. 8.
13. B. Burt, Chem & Eng News (22 October 1979), p. 6.

14. G.L. Waldbott, Fluoridation: the Great Dilemma (Kansas: Coronado Press Inc., 1978).

15. D. Sherrell, Chem & Eng News (7 January 1980), p. 4.
16. J.R. Lee, Chem & Eng News (28 January 1980), pp. 4-5.
17. Walker, op. cit. p. 156.
18. Varney, op. cit.
19. Stevenson, op. cit. p. 103.
20. Ibid. p. 104.

21. Committee on Food Protection, Food and Nutritional Board National Research Council, Toxicants Occurring Naturally in Foods (Washington, DC: National Academy of Science, 1973), pp. 12-14.

22. Walker, op. cit. p. 308.

23. J. Clovis and J.A. Hargreaves, "Fluoride Intake from Beverage Consumption," Community Dent Oral Epidemiol, 16:14, 1988.

24. J. Mann, M. Tibi, and H.D. Sgan-Cohen, "Fluorosis and Caries Prevalence in a Community Drinking Above-Optional Fluoridated Water," Community Dent Oral Epidemiol, 15:293-294, 1987.

25. Ibid. p. 295.

26. J. Yiamoyiannis and D. Burk, "Fluoridation and Cancer. AgeDependence of Cancer Mortality Related to Artificial Fluoridation," Fluoride, 10:102-123, 1977.

27. G. Smith, "Fluoridation—Are the Dangers Resolved?," New Scientist (5 May 1983), p. 286.

28. M. Diesendorf, "Fluoride: New Risk?," Search, 16, nos. 5-6:129, 1985.

29. Ibid.

30. Smith, op. cit. p. 287

Deadly Mercury:
How It Became Your Dentist's Darling

Val Valerian

Exposure to mercury from "silver" dental fillings is slowly poisoning millions of Americans each year. In fact, chronic mercury toxicity from such fillings ranks among our most serious public health problems.

The modern dental amalgam, widely misnamed "silver" and used in fillings for more than 180 years, now accounts for 79-80 percent of all dental restorations.
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In truth, however, it contains only about 35 percent silver by weight, compared to 50 percent mercury (with 13 percent tin, and small amounts of copper and zinc).
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Citing the silver-mercury ratio, Murray Vimy, professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Calgary (Canada), notes that average amalgam fillings have a mercury mass of 750-1,000 milligrams (mg) and should more properly be called mercury fillings. They have a functional life of about 7-9 years, after which they are usually replaced with another one made of the same material.
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Mercury is more toxic than lead or even arsenic. Considering the mountains of scientific information that have accumulated over the last 70 years, which clearly show the poisonous effects of mercury, using it today in dentistry is simply criminal. Yet each year worldwide, hundreds of tons of this toxic material are placed into patients' teeth, while some finds its way from dental offices into sewage and refuse systems, to poison the environment instead of the patients.

The American Dental Association (ADA) and government scientists know mercury's potential and actual harm, yet continue to promote its use. They thus make a direct, if covert assault on America's health while producing large profits for themselves and their special interest group. Appropriately, such crimes are punishable by death under the Crime Bill of 1994 and United Nations rules concerning genocide.
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Within the dental profession, t he issue of mercury-filling safety has recurred periodically. Introduced in 1812 by British chemist Joseph Bell, the "silver paste"—a combination of old silver coins and mercury—became fashionable for tooth restoration. Since the coins were not pure silver, the material often expanded, fracturing teeth and/or giving patients a "high bite."

When it was first introduced in the United States (in 1833 in New York), dentists rebelled. They refused to use the "silver" because it caused immediate symptoms of mercury poisoning. Within the first 10 years most dentists denounced its poor filling qualities and toxic nature, forming the American Society of Dental Surgeons in 1840 to declare mercury usage malpractice. The society mandated that its members sign an oath not to use materials containing mercury.

Nevertheless, amalgam increased in popularity, particularly among poorly-educated practitioners; it was cheaper than gold—the standard until then—giving the renegades an economic edge over their colleagues who demanded higher quality. (In those days many nonprofessionals, including itinerant peddlers, were filling teeth for the pioneer population also.) Besides, amalgam fillings were user-friendly—for the dentist, not the patient—and durable in the mouth.

By 1856, the anti-amalgam society had lost so many members that it had to disband, while wealthy businessmen (not dentists) founded a new group to push the toxic material: the ADA. For a time the debate was dead. The poison had won; the patients had lost.
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MERCURY AND THE BRAIN

In the 1920s another controversy erupted after Dr. Alfred Stock, a German chemistry professor, published articles and letters attacking mercury fillings for their possible toxic effects. By 1935, Stock's research proved that some of the mercury vapor coming from dental amalgams enters the nose, is absorbed by the mucosa and passes rapidly into the brain: It was found in the olfactory lobe and in the pineal gland. After a while, however, the furor surrounding Stock's findings also died down.