It took decades to “prove” that even low-level lead exposure caused mental retardation and behavioral problems in children. In 1973 when I graduated from medical school, there was a mountain of compelling evidence of the terrible things lead in paint and auto exhaust was doing to kids. However under pressure from corporate interests (the companies who put lead in gasoline and paint) the medical establishment officially proclaimed that at “subclinical levels,” lead was totally safe.

Fortunately Nixon’s newly created Environmental Protection Agency stood up to the corporate elite in 1973, taking the emphatic position that even low-level lead exposure was posing a direct threat to the public. Which forced the US auto industry to install catalytic converters in cars, enabling them to run on unleaded fuel, in 1975. The use of lead-based paint in homes was banned in 1978.

Fluoride: the New Lead

The bad news is that by the time there was overwhelming research evidence that fluoride has the same effect (reducing IQ and causing hyperactivity) in lab animals and children, the EPA had ceased to perform its regulatory function – namely to protect the environment from corporate-caused pollution. Which is most unfortunate, given that many US municipalities still put fluoride in the public drinking water (which can’t be removed by simple filtration and is found in many brands of bottled water).

It boggles the mind that communities across the US continue to mass medicate their residents – with a substance that has never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (it’s actually unpurified toxic waste from the aluminum and agricultural phosphate industry – which means it’s full of heavy metals, as well as fluoride) – without their consent. Not only does it constitute a major civil rights issues, but it poses far more potential harm to human health than TSA full body scanners.

Established Link to Hip Fractures, Bone Cancer and Liver Cancer

And by the point, the evidence is pretty overwhelming. In 2006, after three years of study, doctors, chemists, toxicologists and other researchers appointed by the National Research Council concluded the preponderance of evidence showed fluoride in public water systems was causing an increase in hip fractures and bone and liver cancer, in addition to its neurotoxic effects in children (see http://www.fluoridealert.org/nrc-review.htm). They also found strong evidence it was contributing to an epidemic of hypothyroidism, infertility and arthritis in Americans (1/3 of Americans suffer from arthritis), but felt more research was needed in these areas. At the same time they felt the established health risks were so serious, they strongly recommended all water fluoridation be stopped while additional studies were completed. There is an excellent 98 minute interview with some of these scientists at http://blip.tv/file/2223981/.

Fraudulant Science

One area they didn’t explore, which BBC investigative journalist Christopher Bryson covers in his 2004 book Fluoride Deception, is the systematic way that corporate interests have “doctored” fluoride research. One common practice was to selectively publish research favorable to fluoride, while simultaneously firing and blacklisting scientists whose studies showed otherwise. Scientists who research medical problems related to genetically modified foods face the same problem – their work is suppressed, while they themselves are fired and blacklisted.

Thanks to Bryson others, who obtained dozens of secret documents regarding water fluoridation via the Freedom of Information Act, the full extent of this massive fraud is finally in the public domain. There is a thirty minute interview with Bryson regarding his book at http://www.fluoridealert.org/bryson.htm.

To be continued with a review of fluoridation’s sordid history (including its link to the Manhattan Project) and why 98 percent of European communities have stopped fluoridating water)

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