The fluoridation issue

While many important issues of the day may be holding our attention, we must not forget that the fight to preserve our communities from the mass medication known as fluoridation must go on. Here below we reprint excerpts of a letter which appeared in the August, 1962, issue of Prevention magazine. The author is Dr. Douw G. Steyn, professor of pharmacology on the medical faculty of the Institute of Pathology in South Africa. The letter was written to the mayor and councillors of Detroit, Michigan. We reprint these excerpts with the kind permission of the editors of Prevention. Where emphasis is shown it has been supplied in the text.

Not a fluorine deficiency but deficient diets are the most important single cause of dental decay. Serious consideration should immediately be given to the results of experiments conducted by Asiander, and his co-workers, namely - that food supplementation with bonemeal has a most pronounced caries-protective effect in children.

Bonemeal is a wholesome food.

There is additional sound evidence that fluorine is not an essential nutrient.

Fluorine is the most dangerous poison from the chronic toxicity point of view; as it is so very prone to accumulate in the body. For this reason its chronic toxic effects may be discernible only after 20, 30, 40, or more years.

Fluorine may be harmless in certain water supplies whereas the same concentrations in other water supplies may be, and at times are, harmful to health. There is evidence that fluoridated water protects teeth only in early childhood and that it has no such effects in later life. If this is so, then it is most wasteful to alloy many millions of people of more advanced age to drink such water. Also, only a very small portion of fluoridated water is used for drinking purposes; industries consume enormous quantities of it.

The method of statistical analysis employed in the American fluoridation studies has been severely criticized in the United States, Britain, France and Australia. The basis of these criticisms is firmly supported by information supplied in recent publications.

Before proceeding with fluoridation studies, or implementing it as a means of combatting tooth decay, those concerned are well-advized, in the interests of many millions of people, to subject the American method of statistical analysis to severe scrutiny in the light of the criticisms levelled at it. In this way a great future tragedy may be averted. The fluoridation of drinking-water is illegal, immoral and unethical and seriously infringes the religious convictions of many millions of people throughout the world. We dare not deny any individual the right to decide for himself, or herself, in this matter as their attitude constitutes no danger to their fellow-beings or to communities.

It is dangerous to permit many millions of people to drink water containing the same concentration of fluorine irrespective of their age, susceptibility, diet, sex, type of employment, living conditions and state of health. If this were to happen some individuals may imbibe up to twenty times or more fluorine than other individuals.

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C. H. Douglas

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