The Palm Beach County Commission made an unfortunate and irresponsible decision to give the green light to fluoridation before waiting for the results of a major project now under way at the National Research Council in Washington, D.C. The project is titled “Toxicological Risks of Fluoride in Drinking Water.” Note, the project title is not “Fluoride, the Dental Panacea.”
The NRC, an arm of the National Academies of Sciences, is evaluating the last 12 years of published peer-reviewed literature on how fluoride affects the human body — and its focus is clearly on fluoride’s toxicity. The decision to ignore this project was the real “no-brainer” decision made by the commission. (Sun-Sentinel Jan. 15) Thanks are due to Commissioners Mary McCarty and Tony Masilotti, who exercised sound judgment in voting to wait for the NRC report, due in a few months.
County Health Director Dr. Jean Malecki would have to be psychic to repeatedly assure the commission that fluoride “benefits everyone and harms no one,” as she hasn’t seen the conclusions of the NRC report. Also, her statement is patently untrue for any medication; especially so for a known toxin such as fluoride. Then again, Dr. Malecki is part of the public health establishment, and relentless promotion of fluoridation is its official policy at every level — local, state and federal.
Apparently, denigrating any and all opposition is also integral to her job, as she assures everyone that any scientist who opposes fluoridation is not “reputable.” This must include Dr. Arvid Carlsson, Nobel Prize winner for medicine in 2000, who has stated, “The addition of fluoride to water supplies violates modern pharmacological principles.” Or perhaps she has in mind Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor emeritus of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, who has written about “the ineffectiveness of fluoridation of water with industrial wastes, and its risks of nerve and brain damage…”
After a half-century of exposure to fluoride, government reports now show, up to 60 percent of U.S. children are afflicted with dental fluorosis, which experts recognize as the first visible sign of fluoride poisoning. American mothers are starting to realize that fluoride is the cause of those disfiguring, irreversible white/brown patches on their children’s teeth. To add insult to injury, fluoridation’s failures are obvious as dental decay rates are at crisis levels in cities that have long been fluoridated, such as Boston, New York and Washington, D.C.
Fluoride is a Schedule-A poison under pharmacy law; it is classified as more toxic than lead and slightly less toxic than arsenic. As with any cumulative poison, a low-level dose inflicts its damage slowly over time. You can find the truth at www.fluoridealert.org.
Unfortunately, 450,000 unincorporated county residents will now be forced to drink a daily dose of fluoride in uncontrolled quantities, with freedom of choice taken away from them by this commission’s decree.
As noted historian and science writer Jacques Barzun stated in his book, Science: The Glorious Entertainment, “One hopes that behind the fluoridation scheme there are politics and selfish business interests; the presence of solid ulterior motives would restore one’s faith in common intelligence.”
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Carol L. Patton, RN., Patricia Moreell and Naomi Flack are the steering committee of the South Florida Citizens for Safe Drinking Water.