A little context before reading as this started out as a Facebook reply before it got too long. A friend of mine posted a blogpost poking fun at the snake-oil peddling/pseudo science aspects of the anti-fluoridation proponents. I responded with a fairly tabloidy news article just to illustrate the changing opinions relating to the issue. Primarily I wanted to show that the anti-camp has an argument above conspiracy and paranoia. A third party then rebutted my article so I felt compelled to defend my advocate position!
I posted
the Indo article to: Illustrate that there may be a reason to be anti-fluoridation
other than conspiratorial paranoia. Unfortunately the Indo don't do citations!
But rather than post the articles and reports (the venue being facebook) I figured a
news article would suffice. Instead all I did was give John a straw man to batter! I should make clear here that my own knowledge of the subject didn't go beyond that espoused by the snake oil brigade (flouride is a scary communist plot) and childhood classes on dental hygiene (Yay! flouride).
I intended in an off-hand way to balance Marc's (Alypius's) post. Bikini clad girls and new-age folk seemed an easy target and I am always inclined (as you know Marc) to go 'weeell yes.. but what if..." . So in the interest of avoiding the book review I was supposed to be doing I did a little reading and googling to discover if there was a plausible case for anti-fluoridation (specifically in the sense of the mass-medication of water).
I found that there was. However, rather than posting a selection of links to academic reports and the like, I found an Irish news article that I thought this would serve the purpose "Hey.., is not all faith healing guru's". Also posting the indo article made sense because considering the affable tone of Marc's post it might've been interpreted as rude or bullish of me to go posting a host of links on the cheery-fwendly-fwends-happy-smiles playground that is facebook. I generally prefer a softly-softly approach to debate and I like that kind of correspondance. It seemed to get pretty heated between Andrew and John and no-one wants to force anyone behind the barricades. In my opinion you have to be aware of the ego and pride of whoever your chatting if you want to change their mind. I hope that doesn't sound passive-aggressive. Its not meant to.
I should mention that it is pretty clear that the majority of scientific texts show that the intended levels of Fluoridation (WHO guidelines) are probably not harmful. Your links and argument helped show this. So that much is obvious, and I have no hidden agenda. However, as iterated in any of the comprehensive reports, measuring effects on entire populations is problematic. This is why many wealthy countries, who could otherwise afford it, don't do it - its legality is unclear in many jurisdictions. Legally and ethically medication is administered on an individual basis largely because the heuristics are manageable i.e. there is dramatically simpler cause and effect trail (more on that later).
So anyway I'll reiterate my originally flippant and conversational aim ( I reread that and it looks like 'Controversial' I mean Con-ver-sat-ional!) : An anti-flouridation stance is rationally defensible and not the sole product of conspiracies and paranoia.
Here's a fairly haphazard selection of the material that I'd come across.
Also I
remember numerous kids with this growing up.. Little maggots gobbling toothpaste I presume ;) .. I knew one guy whose nickname was toffee teeth .. poor fella.
(It’s a
massive doc so word search for keywords.)
Osteoporosis
– Plenty of material but none of it too convincing and lots of conflicting
results. The thing here is that Fluoride is sometimes used to treat osteoporosis.
However some research shows it is effectively trading increased bone mass at a
loss of actual strength. Here’s one:
Cancer -
Once again there's loads of scientific reports on carcinogenic contaminants in drinking water.
Obviously Fluoride is way down the list in terms of threats. I find it funny that China don't fluoridate their water.. sure its full of arsenic courtesy of their industrial revolution.. so you'd think they already have the inexplicable poisoning of their people covered! To be clear.. that's a satirical joke of which the snake oil merchants and 'woo peddlers' are the butt. ( Imagine a Stewart Lee style mock indulgent 'hehehe' here.)
As we know though, Carcinogens
and toxins (fluoride being a toxin) work by gradual accumulation. Like Tesco chipper slogan 'every
little helps' the rise of the Pink Robots (cancer). If I had the time or will I'd love to photoshop a Tesco logo replacing 'Tesco' with 'cancer.. every little helps'. *ahem* Pardon my sense of humour. I don't mean to be facetious but sometimes it can't be helped
Imagine tesco value cancer.. Or rather their 'everyday' range.. whew..
The general
toxicity of fluoride is well documented as I'm sure ye know http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037842741301312X This is also one of the reasons its legality is problematic in some countries. It is
worth mentioning that there have been numerous accidents where water sources
were overdosed. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Three outbreaks
were reported in the U.S. between 1991 and 1998, caused by fluoride
concentrations as high as 220 mg/L; in the 1992 Alaska outbreak, 262 people
became ill and one person died. In 2010, approximately 60 gallons of fluoride
were released into the water supply in Asheboro, North Carolina in 90
minutes—an amount that was intended to be released in a 24-hour period.
Once
again public opposition is not merely down to paranoia.Shit happens. I've been living in Donegal for a year now and the rumours of extra bucket loads of Chlorine and Flouride being tossed into to the reservoirs whenever a dead sheep plops into the murk are common. I swear, my water tasted like antifreeze one week last spring! There was an awful stench of anecdotal evidence of it too.. kinda smelt like apricot. :)
Also there
are a few biochemists and salubrious organisations that are against Water-fluoridation
The
International Chiropractic Association (ICA) makes the point that Water Fluoridation
must be proven safe before mass
administration.http://www.chiropractic.org/?p=ica/policies#fluoridation
That seems obvious. But, in terms of legally defensible proof,
all we have are statistics that usually correlate i.e. less dental caries in
populations where water is treated. (I heard a joke once in the vein of that
old idiom ‘correlation does not equal causation’ that would be relevant here.) If
you’re dealing with mass medication of the population phrases like ‘evidence
suggests’ won’t be cutting the mustard!
For
similar reasons Avid
Carlsson, no less than a Nobel Prize winner, is against Fluoridation. He figures
water fluoridation violates pharmacological principles.
Unfortunately
his stuff is mostly in Swedish. (In fact it seems the Pro-fluoridation
Zeitgeist is distinctly Anglophone thanks to the yanks - they just love their flouride. The majority of critical papers I’ve found
have been in other languages.) Here’s Carlsson in English (screen grab):
Following
this there are numerous political parties (cross spectrum but mostly green)
which consider Fluoridation of water contrary to international law. For instance
the UK greens have been arguing for years now that
[f]luoridation
violates Article 35 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights
Under Article 35 of the Charter, the right to health care includes the right to
refuse health care, for whatever reason. It establishes the individual's right
to receive particular drugs or treatments - or to prevent them from having such
treatment administered against their wishes.
There’s
a lot more as ye can imagine.. dementia links in the Lancet etc. dodgy down syndrome links (mostly rebutted.., in fairness). My point is
that once I did a wee bit of searching I found that opposition to fluoridisation
is not, on the face of it, irrational or unreasonable. As you can see the
strongest arguments against it are political, ethical and philosophical. The scientific arguments are inconclusive in terms of the
negative effects if not the positives. In my opinion mass medication, even assuming you aren't ethically or politically opposed, is not like the individual in the court of law: innocent until proven guilty. Biochemical and pharmaceutical compounds are usually considered, for want of a better phrase, guilty until proven innocent. And I mean in a real world context. Hence my opinion that Fluoride is suitable for addition to toothpaste where the heuristics of testing it are manageable. Administering it to a nation-state (once again this is my opinion) is unpredictable and fragile (I use that word with Taleb's import)
So, in my very recently formed (and still
flexible) opinion the host of countries who have phased it out of water treatments
are behaving sensibly, rationally and ethically. That's not to say fluoridation of water is unethical in countries where it is practiced. It stands to reason that the motivations are ethical in both positive and negative cases if the general population and government considers it so. If further conclusive reports
paint a clearer picture I’m sure it could easily begin to be reinstated. The Zeitgeist is fickle mudder.
I was
going to post this on my Facebook page but I’d be mortified if a faith healer
or some other header shared it.
PS.
John
If I’d
expected a blow by blow rebuttal I wouldn’t have thrown you a straw man (the
indo article). You battered it manfully! As I said above I just wanted a summary article to
show that there is another side. Its not just hippies and newage chakra-guru-slacktivist-facebookers.
Incidentally Wikipedia have a page on Fluoridisation by
country that I assume you’ve seen. It’s pretty clear that, outside of the English
speaking world water fluoridisation has fallen out of fashion over the years. It
seems more sensible to me to put it in salt but that is another issue – water Fluoridisation
is the issue. This is neither here nor there because I agree that the Indo article is weak but the journalist wrote it in 2000 when Wikipedia and Google.Translate were not available so who knows her source of misinformation.
John, I’m
going to finish with a Bertrand Russell allegory that works as a mischievous joke in this context (I think you know it Marc) :
"Imagine a turkey that has
lived for 1000 days on a farm, well fed, with proper shelter, playing with the
farmer’s children and so on. The turkey has reason to expect, based on its
historical experience that this will go on forever – the 1001st day, the Thanksgiving,
not being an exception."
One man’s
30 years feeling fine won’t cut it if your defending mass medication!
If you
are going to take issue with this post by all means reply. I’d appreciate if
you respond to my argument specifically as I am partially convinced of the dental benefits of water flouridation so delivering me links singing its praises won't add to what you've already achieved in your respective posts. In other words explain to me why my impression; that anti-flouridation isn't just for headcases, is false.
To be honest I'm still unsure how to feel about it ethically and that is an issue I'd also be happy to debate. So feel free to convince me of that too.
I love debates so long as there isn't too much testosterone flowing and there's no tar and feathers. That's why I felt the need to check for anti-flouride materials in the first place.
Regards
and good-will
Roger.
I had good craic writing this .. Got an extension on the book review too! Woo hoo.
