Harvard Archives - Making Sense of Fluoride

Next Level BS fluoride misinformation (our first video)

Daniel Ryan — Sat, 07 Mar 2015 13:11:55 +0000

Next level BS is a website full of videos that look at the evidence for a number subjects ranging from detoxing to shape shifting reptilians. Episode 38 on fluoride interested us, but we found some misinformation and it had a disappointing conclusion. We have created a video (our first) to debunk the misinformation and make the scientific evidence clear.

Leave a comment if you want us to make more videos

Sources

Community Water Fluoridation and Intelligence: Prospective Study in New Zealand

Choi (2012) Statement on Fluoride Paper – September 11, 2012

Harvard deans on fluoridation

Next Level BS video episode 38

Water fluoridation: health monitoring report for England 2014

Health Effects of Water Fluoridation: a Review of the Scientific Evidence (2014)

Critical review of any new evidence on the hazard profile, health effects, and human exposure to fluoride and the fluoridating agents of drinking water (2011)

A Systematic Review of the Efficacy and Safety of Fluoridation (2007)

Fluoride in Drinking-water (2006)

FDI 2014 Policy Statement on Water Fluoridation

Severe dental fluorosis and cognitive deficits (2015)

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Guest post: Credibility question is a no brainer really

Daniel Ryan — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 04:05:59 +0000

Dr Broadbent recently finished his study into I.Q loss in children to fluoride.
This found no link and this has upset the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) no end. They have been dining out on the “Harvard” papers for years and even regurgitated them last year to start all over again.
The fact articles like this have trashed the paper does not seem to worry FAN. Now they have published a rebuttal about the Broadbent paper [well they had to really, the Harvard paper was their gravy train]. This has been released to the natural health websites, and this has been like a blue whale falling into the Kermadec Trench, every bottom feeder has had a bite, and as such, the rebuttal has spread like a fire around the Natural Health sites on the net, any news being good news for some.
Most sites worth its salt would treat this paper like an Indian rape trial and want nothing to do with it.
So what do we have, a well-respected scientific paper from a respected author and university with a PHD and a BDS being picked up by an equally well-respected American Journal of Public health.
The FAN rebuttal was written by Paul Connett, who has no qualifications relating to human health and is not a registered health professional, and is a self-proclaimed expert in fluoride, who has not had a paper published in his name about fluoride.
The credibility question is a no brainer really.

Written by Chris Price.

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FANNZ press release on Yahoo’s news feed.

Alison Campbell — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 01:59:16 +0000

I didn’t intend to write another post on this subject so soon after the last one, but a story on yahoo.com’s news feed has really annoyed me. I know journalists these days are seriously under pressure, but that doesn’t really justify taking a ‘press release’ from a known activist organisation and running it uncritically ie without actually looking into any of the claims made therein. You’ll find the story here(edit: no longer on Yahoo), & I’m going to comment on some of the claims it contains below. (I would have done it directly on the yahoo.com piece but they don’t actually allow comments, grumble grumble mutter.)

Dr Paul Connett is currently visiting NZ and Australia to promote the views of the anti-fluoridation organisation FAN and its antipodean sub-groups. While he has reportedly spent 17 years ‘researching’ issues associated with community water fluoridation (CWF), he has published neither original research papers on this particular topic nor a systematic review of the existing scientific literature, in leading science journals. He has, however, published a book on the subject, the contents of which formed the basis of an extensive discussion on the Open Parachute science blog (also syndicated to the Science Media Centre’s sciblogs.co.nz). This output doesn’t really justify the ‘expert’ description so adroitly promoted by the FANNZ spokesperson who provided the yahoo item.

Repeated calls for a ‘debate’ are rather misleading as they suggest that there is in fact something to debate. In the case of the science behind CWF, as Sir Peter Gluckman has said, it is effectively settled. To call for a debate is simply an attempt to sow doubt and fear in people’s minds, and any such event would be ‘won’ by the better demagogue and not necessarily on the basis of the actual science presented. Thus it makes perfect sense for TV3 to seek comment from Dr Jonathan Broadbent, who has a solid research record around oral health, rather than to opt for the flawed ‘debate’ format & so give some feeling of false equivalency to an issue where none exists.

The FANNZ claim that our health officials are “

[advocating] a highly toxic chemical be added to the drinking water of over 2 million people” is an attempt to imply that this practice is doing harm. However, there is no good evidence that the fluoridated water coming from the taps actually causes significant adverse health effects. Nor have health officials “gone into hiding” (as stated in the yahoo story), as Dr Broadbent’s willingness to be interviewed clearly demonstrates,

What are the facts that FANNZ is so keen for New Zealanders to hear? The organisation certainly seems keen to obscure the evidence that community water fluoridation improves oral health (here, here, and here , for example) and is a cost-effective way of doing so. The spokesperson comments that it “is [health officials’] responsibility to provide people with real factual information” – and appears to be ignoring the fact that the National Fluoride Information Service has been set up to do just that. And just yesterday dental health experts provided commentary on fluoridation via the Science Media Centre.

As I’ve said, many large-scale systematic reviews have found that there is good evidence that ingesting fluoride reduces decay – and, contrary to the claim in the original press release – the evidence of “unacceptable health risks” is not “growing daily”. For example, the claim that fluoride is implicated in development of osteosarcoma appears to be based on a single preliminary study, and is not supported by more recent large-scale analyses. Similarly the ‘Harvard’ review, often cited as evidence that fluoridation affects IQ, has a number of flaws, some of which were identified by the authors themselves.

Yahoo.com, it’s a real pity you didn’t look into this one rather more deeply.

Edit: Yahoo no longer has the story.

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