The Girl Against Fluoride Archives - Making Sense of Fluoride

Guest Post: Angel healer spreading misinformation in Ireland

Daniel Ryan — Sun, 24 May 2015 00:31:14 +0000

A satirical view of the TGAF by Mick Flavin.

At first, it sounded like the plot of a particularly funny episode of the “Big Bang Theory”…

An “angel healer” with no scientific education, stripping off her clothes in the front of Dáil Éireann to highlight that there is a worldwide conspiracy to poison the population via municipal water fluoridation.

A conspiracy that asserts that a few medium-sized fluoride supply companies have succeeded where Big Oil and Big Tobacco have failed and managed to fool and/or compromise the world’s scientific researchers.

Aisling Fitzgibbon aka The Girl Against Fluoride (TGAF) is as the name suggest, Ireland’s most prominent anti-fluoridation advocate and a close associate of leading anti-vaxxers and MMS advocates.

As publicity stunts go, this one was particularly effective; the “sex sells” media happily facilitated her as she endeavoured to set back the cause of feminine equality just a small bit that day.

Now cheap sexually exploitative publicity stunts are nothing new, but one done in the name of a cause that denies basic factual science is a new one on me.

Call us intellectual snobs but we in the scientific community expect reasonable and logical arguments when it comes to scientific debate, not this!

Fluoride occurs naturally in water and many countries regulate this level up or down to a level that gives a best dental effect of between 40 to 67% fewer cavities.

Other countries add fluoride to salt, flour, UHT milk, give regular dental rinses or use fluoridated bottled water but the system used in Ireland is considered best practice. It is a public health preventative measure that costs about €1 per person and saves an estimated €200 per year in dental costs.

70 years of its practice around the world has proven it to be safe and the World Health Organisations have called it one of the greatest public health initiatives of the twentieth century. The science on it is settled, there is no debate among reputable scientists.

Scaremongering about it began in the 60’s, believed to be a communist plot and it was famously satirised in the classic Stanley Kubrick movie “Dr Strangelove”.

The advent of the internet reignited this conspiracy theory but this time the villain was “Big Pharma” (despite the fact that most if not all Pharmaceutical companies have no business interest in fluoride).

A conspiracy theorist will tell you to “follow the money” and if you do you will soon discover that billion dollar snake oil “natural medicine” companies are behind most of these and many other pseudoscience websites.

Chief culprits are websites like Naturalnews.com, the Fluoride Action Network and Mercola.com which in between the scaremongering will try to sell you water filter systems and cure-all for cancer, AIDS, Ebola etc.

Unsurprisingly these websites also spread anti-vaccination scare stories and advocate MMS treatment to “cure” autistic children. The obvious base motivation here is to make massive profits from gullible people.

If you similarly “follow the money” of the Irish anti-fluoride lobby, the same motivation is also apparent, one notable Irish anti-fluoridationist operates a water “consultancy” service and flogs his book which blames fluoride for every disease and ailment known to man. (Real scientific researchers publish their research in peer-reviewed journals, not on Amazon.)

Similarly The Girl Against Fluoride cashes-in by getting kickbacks from Reverse Osmosis Water filters sellers, her quack alternative health practice and her “naked” calendar.

Recently she has increased her qualifications by becoming a so-called “GAPs Nutritionist”. As comedian Dara O’Brien put it – “A Dietician is to nutritionist what a dentist is to a toothologist” and anyone can claim to be one as it is an unprotected title.

The GAPs part of the title is short for “Gut and Psychology Syndrome”. This is a made up ailment that no reputable doctor recognises. Its Russian inventor has also (in a possible world first) patented the disease which means only gullible people who pay for this “qualification” can diagnose and cure it.

Unsurprisingly, all these pseudoscience groups are inextricable linked, prominent anti-vaxxers and MMS supporters regularly appear together at events advocating each other’s causes. Indeed The Girl against Fluoride has stated that after she gets fluoridation stopped, she will target vaccinations.

Apparently vaccinations are so last year.

If you are unfamiliar with MMS. It stands for Miracle Mineral Solutions, is a 40% bleach solution and claimed to be a “cure” for Aids, Ebola, cancer, homosexuality, autism and everything else you can think of. It was invented by a breakaway of the Scientology cult and its leader claims to be a billion-year-old alien. It would make you laugh except people are giving this poison to autistic children in order to “cure” them. It is administered in oral and enema form and it dissolves the gut lining, it is child abuse plain and simple. As usual, it is the most vulnerable who suffer in this madness.

If TGAF ever succeeds in banning fluoride and vaccinations then what? Maybe she’ll campaign to ban the contraceptive pill which her mother (and manager) believes causes homosexuality. In her case, I am definitely blaming the parents!

Even the use of Reverse Osmosis water can be harmful as in it increases the leaching effect of water thus removing lead from pipes and nutrients from boiled food and the body.

What is even scarier is that this lobby has gained influence on the political front and not just from fringe political groupings like Direct Democracy Ireland, but also previously with the Green Party and currently with Sinn Fein.

It is a scary thought indeed that Sinn Fein does not seem to have one person among their ranks that can advise them to what the scientific facts are. When the Green Party was in power, the end of fluoridation was John Gormley’s pet project and a biased report written by him was shelved when saner people realised what unscientific nonsense it was. Will we be so lucky if and when Sinn Fein get into power and if not, will this start a slippery slope of pseudoscience and scaremongering winning over scientific reason and logic?

You may say no, of course not, saner heads will prevail, but recently the United States Congress voted to deny the factual scientific reality that is climate change. They did this because so-called “Big Oil” has managed to convince an unscientifically educated public that it doesn’t exist despite what the overwhelming majority of scientists say. With a few notable exceptions, Irish scientists are remaining silent while the conspiracy nuts scream and shout. Maybe they are just too busy or maybe they are just bad at publicity.

Maybe I should do a striptease in front of the Dáil……….

……………On the other hand maybe not

This guest blog post comes from Kenneth Mitchell B.Eng., H.Dip. M.Sc., C.Eng.
Ken is a Chartered Chemical and Environmental Engineer and is accredited by Engineers Ireland (unlike Declan Waugh). He lives in a negative equity two-bed mid terrace house in an unfinished estate in Kildare Ireland which he pays for by being a big pharma shill.

The post Guest Post: Angel healer spreading misinformation in Ireland appeared first on Making Sense of Fluoride.

Guest post: Lifting the Curtain on the Anti-Fluoridation movement

Daniel Ryan — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 00:21:01 +0000

Gerry Byrne, who runs Fluoridation of Irish Water is Harmless Facebook page sent this to Dublin City Councillors today:

Lifting the Curtain on the Anti-Fluoridation movement

A recent email to your good selves from a Mr Owen Boyden, of the Fluoride Free Towns campaign, has led me to follow the trail of money and influence which is behind, not just the Irish, but the International campaign to abolish water fluoridation.

It’s a trail which leads ultimately to a $2 million mansion outside Chicago, the home of Dr Joseph Mercola, a former GP who spurned conventional medicine in favour of a lucrative $10 million a year business peddling highly controversial unregulated alternative health remedies. Mercola has been the subject of a number of United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Warning Letters related to his health remedies activity and a 2006 Business Week editorial called his marketing practices as “relying on slick promotion, clever use of information, and scare tactics.” (See below for details of the FDA warnings to Mercola. For criticisms of Mercola products by medical researchers see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola#FDA_Warning_Letters).

On his highly profitable website Mercola sows doubt among gullible readers about almost every aspect of conventional medicine ranging from drug efficacy, to surgery, and even vaccination, which he vehemently opposes. But then he also also has a Mercola brand “natural” product to offer for almost every ailment, even including AIDS.

Earlier this year Mercola formed a close alliance with several other alternative health movements, including the National Vaccine Information Center, which opposes the vaccination of children, and the Fluoride Action Network, led by an Englishman, Paul Connett, and his son, which opposes fluoridation. Both of them are funded by receiving a share of sales of Mercola’s questionable remedies.

The Mercola-funded Connett paid a flying visit to Dublin last Sunday to be a guest of honour at a poorly attended anti-fluoridation gig in Whelans of Wexford Street. In fact advance bookings were so poor that the gig’s organiser, Mr Boyden’s anti-fluoridation colleague, the Tralee-based Aisling Fitzgibbon, in a bid to fill the room, ditched the venue’s €15 entry fee and offered to refund any who had already paid.

As far as Ms Fitzgibbon is concerned, anti-vaccination and anti-fluoridation are two sides of the same coin so she probably had lots to discuss with Connett, who is also a trenchant opponent of child vaccination. Her anti-vaccination stance (she is not vaccinated) may have been acquired from her mother (who has also acted as her campaign manager) and who is on record as saying that homosexuality (or “the gay”, as she termed it on a Cork radio interview) is caused by vaccination.

Ms Fitzgibbon, who also calls herself The Girl Against Fluoride (or TGAF to some of her friends) is a talented attention seeker who on occasion has been known to strip down to her (pink) underwear for photographs. She also turned up at Dublin City Hall prior to a council meeting earlier this year where, in the words of one councillor, she “aggressively filmed” him when he announced that he planned to vote in favour of the retention of fluoridation.

She recently published on Facebook a poster of a group of charming babies with the headline “Love them. Protect them. Never inject them. There are NO safe vaccines.” The posting also alleged that vaccination caused polio, in addition to shaken baby syndrome, chronic ear infections, death, SIDS

[sudden infant death syndrome], seizures, allergies, asthma, autism, diabetes, and meningitis. The posting was introduced on Ms Fitzgibbon’s Girl against Fluoride Facebook page by the alarming sentence: “Vaccines are so last year.”

I need hardly add that not a single one of Ms. Fitzgibbon’s outlandish anti-vaccination claims are even remotely true. One might be tempted to give Ms Fitzgibbon some benefit of doubt upon learning that she is a qualified therapist but alas, her therapy skills relate solely to the manipulation of one’s angels (it’s often called Angel Healing) whom, it is said, she can persuade to act positively on one’s behalf. She also recently acquired the status of an alternative lifestyle “GAPS” nutritionist. Her qualification came courtesy of a correspondence course offered by a Russian doctor, Natasha Campbell-McBride, who is not qualified to practice in Europe, or the USA.

Campbell-McBride has nonetheless managed to discover a new disease she calls “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” (GAPS). Unusually, Campbell-McBride has registered the name of the newfound disease as a trade mark, something I’ve never encountered before in many years of writing about science and which probably means nobody else can offer a competing cure, no matter how effective. For fear of being held in breach of copyright by her I’ll very briefly list some of the diseases she claims her diet can treat. They include autism, ADHD/ADD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, depression and schizophrenia. I’ve yet to encounter any medical specialists who agree with her unique methods (but if you know of any do please let me know).

But back to Paul Connett. On his Fluoride Action Network website he publishes what he calls the “largest scholarly database for fluoride related contaminants.” However using it we failed to unearth any of several Irish studies which confirmed fluoridation posed no health risk.

Connett’s database greatly misrepresents the limited science it does present. An example is a doctoral thesis by a young US scientist called Bassin who discovered what she thought was a link between fluoridation and osteosarcoma, an extremely rare bone cancer in males. As doctoral theses often are, this was described by some as an “exploratory” study. Even Bassin herself admitted that the link might be tenuous because she could find no similar association in females and said it required further research. Subsequent research in the US, and also in Ireland, has failed to support her contention and concluded there is no link between the two.

However, the Fluoride Action Network went into typical “Shoot the Messenger” mode and, while it continued to praise and promote Bassin’s now firmly rebutted research, accused the lead researcher on one study disproving Bassin’s thesis of massive breaches of scientific ethics. Another even more convincing 2011 osteosarcoma study, by Kim et al, also failed to find an association between osteosarcoma and fluoridation, in addition to another 11 studies which also failed to find any link with fluoridation. But Fluoride Action Network says Kim merely “purported” to find no association and then went on to complain about things it said should have been studied instead. Not only does Connett assassinate the messenger, he manages to convincingly muddy the waters too.
And so it goes.

It has been said that restricting the flow of external information to one’s adherents is one of the hallmarks of a cult.
You might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

Gerry Byrne,
Science Journalist

PS: I shortly hope to deal with Mr Boyden’s recent points in another email.

APPENDIX

Dr. Joseph Mercola has been the subject of a number of United States Food and Drug Administration Warning Letters related to his health advocacy activities:

02/16/2005 – Living Fuel RX(TM) and Coconut Oil Products – For marketing products for a medical use which classifies those products as drugs in violation of 201(g)(1) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.[51]

09/21/2006 – Optimal Wellness Center – For both labeling / marketing health supplements for purposes which would render them to be classified as regulated drugs as well failing to provide adequate directions for use upon the label in the event that they were legally sold as drugs.[52]

03/11/2011 – Re: Meditherm Med2000 Infrared cameras – For marketing a telethermographic camera for medical purposes which have not been FDA approved.[53]

12/16/2011 – Milk Specialties Global – Wautoma – Failure to have tested for purity, strength, identity, and composition “Dr. Mercola Vitamin K2” and others.[54]

The post Guest post: Lifting the Curtain on the Anti-Fluoridation movement appeared first on Making Sense of Fluoride.