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FAN’s Founders – 25 Years Later
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Today, we have a special bulletin from FAN’s co-founders, the much beloved Paul and Ellen Connett. I had planned to publish a bulletin with an update on fluoridation legislation and the unprecedented success we’ve been having at the state level, but a major ice storm has hit New England, and power outages have led to a slight change in plans. That bulletin will have to wait until tomorrow (hopefully). 

I asked Paul and Ellen to share some remarks on FAN’s 25th Anniversary. Not surprisingly, it’s the people that they met and worked with who they focus on in the bulletin below. When FAN was founded in 2000, a group of medical and scientific professionals joined with concerned parents and citizen activists–all with outstanding integrity–to take on a coalition of the most powerful lobbying groups, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the world. 

For most of FAN’s history, our progress was incremental, but through steady discipline and diligence, each baby step has led up to unprecedented accomplishments 25 years later. Many reading this email were told we were wrong when we were in-fact right. We were ridiculed as anti-science by those who distorted the truth and projected their misinformation on to our science-based campaign. For years it felt like we were Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill, passing false summit after false summit. But now we can see that the top of the hill is actually within sight. Paul and Ellen, and their co-founders, all have something to feel incredibly proud of. As do all of you who showed integrity and dedication to the truth despite attacks over the past 25 years. Together we can make it. 

Since yesterday, we’ve raised $1,745 from 32 donors, bringing our total to $52,171 from 402 donors. We’re incredibly grateful for everyone’s support! Every donation is tax-deductible and important, large or small. 

If you’re unfamiliar with FAN’s history, we have a wonderful page set up on our website, as well as a list of accomplishments up to 2024, as well as my recent bulletin on accomplishments over the past year.

How To Make A Tax-Deductible Donation

FAN’s Founders – 25 Years Later

Stu has asked Ellen and I, as co-founders of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), to share some memories of our 30-year involvement in this issue and the 25th Anniversary of FAN. Let me begin with where we are today – the annual fundraiser. I always enjoyed these. They were always challenging, exciting and fun. 

In the old days I would record every donation as they came in by hand. And carefully tabulate the growing totals of donations and numbers of donors. It was a genuinely exciting experience as the familiar and very loyal names came in. The names would bring back unforgettable memories of the many communities I visited, where battles raged over fluoridation. 

There were always names I waited for; one in particular (my little mushroom in Dallas) taliswoman Regina Imburgia. Once she joined in at least 100 would follow, as she brought along family members and friends. And of course, the excitement in our house when a very big donation came in. But above all, the fundraiser for me became an annual metaphor of our struggle, “they” had “authority” (misused of course) and an endless supply of resources and guile, “we” had “integrity” and lots of people, citizens and scientists who were determined that the truth be heard.

Every year, the “impossible dream” played out as we strived to reach our “impossible” goals. Now with so much more important science in hand, plus the National Toxicology Program’s review and our magnificent court case won, things no longer look so impossible. Integrity might well win out over corrupt science at the CDC and ADA and the other smug supporters of this worst public health policy ever conceived.

Some of the other exciting moments were the FAN “Citizens” conferences which brought together the best scientists to explain the issue and grassroots activists to carry out campaigns. These began at St. Lawrence University, whose location was ideal in bringing together folks from Ontario, Quebec, New York, New England, and beyond. I recall the weather at St. Lawrence University was out of season for July and was unusually horrible – very humid–and we sweltered without air conditioning. But nonetheless we got to hear from the best. Particularly memorable was 2006, when we heard from authors of the landmark National Research Council (2006) review – Kathleen Thiessen and Hardy Limeback. This conference was covered in a marvelous 4-page report in the Chemical and Engineering News by the late and lovely Bette Hileman – who had earlier written a special and definitive report on fluoridation for the same journal.

Then after my retirement from St. Lawrence University in 2006, the venues shifted for these FAN conferences. In 2008, we shared a conference with the International Society for Fluoride Research (ISFR) in Mississauga, Ontario. This conference was brilliantly organized by Dr. Hardy Limeback, with a focus on fluoride’s neurotoxicity.  Professor Vyvyan Howard, an infant and fetal pathologist from the UK, was a featured speaker. By this time there were 18 studies, mainly from China that showed an association between fluoride and lowered IQ. This important science was shared with the media in downtown Toronto, and even though it received good national coverage, the science was totally ignored by a specially handpicked (pro-fluoridation) panel by Health Canada, who somehow “missed” these studies!

2008 also marked the moment that Michael Connett went to law school, before doing so, he left FAN with a wonderful going-away present: the film “Professional Perspectives on Water Fluoridation”.  Michael put together a wonderful array of professionals for this purpose, including the late Nobel laureate, Arvid Carlsson, who explained why fluoridation was such a bad practice. In my view this tape remains the best we have made on the issue.

Subsequent FAN conferences were organized in Crystal City, near Washington, DC. These conferences were combined with a lobbying day organized by our “new” campaign director, Stuart Cooper.

The 2014 FAN conference was made very memorable for me by someone commandeering a piano in the hotel where the conference was held, and we were all delighted to discover the marvelous talent that our “new” communications and outreach director, Jay Sanders, had at his fingertips. And while others were lobbying Congress, Chris Neurath, Bill Hirzy, and I brought key Chinese researcher Qunayojng Xiang to the EPA where he explained that his data showed that children who had only mild forms of dental fluorosis had lowered IQ, making nonsense of the claim that the first sign of fluoride’s damage to the body was “severe dental fluorosis.”

Needless to say, the EPA didn’t act on this information. One of the reasons FAN pursued matters on two other tracks in 2016 was, a) through Dr. Bill Osmunson, we asked the NTP to review fluoride’s neurotoxicity, and b) through Michael, we petitioned the EPA to ban fluoridation under provisions in the Toxic Substances Control Act. I particularly remember Bill Hirzy and I taking a trunk full of hard copies of the nearly 300 studies to the EPA offices that Michael had amassed for his petition.

Then at the 2017 FAN conference, Michael gave a riveting update of our case, especially of a new important study about to be published. Like a bombshell in the early hours of the morning after our conference had ended, the Bashash study was made public and was the turning point in a long history of studies finding a lowering of IQ from low levels of fluoride in drinking water.

The rest, they say, is history. But to complete that history, we need another successful fundraiser to continue FAN’s work. I will continue to watch the donations come in looking for names of so many supporters I fondly remember. Thank you all for making this effort such an important part of educating the world on this dangerous and outdated practice.

Thank you,

Paul and Ellen Connett

Co-Founders and former Directors

Fluoride Action Network