Aryana Libris

Author : Bryson Christopher
Title : The Fluoride Deception
Year : 2004

Link download : Bryson_Christopher_-_The_Fluoride_Deception.zip

Theo Colborn. The question of whether fluoride is or is not an essential element is debatable. In other words, is the element, fluorine, required for normal growth and reproduction? On one hand there appears to be a narrow range of topical exposure in which it might prevent cavities. But if exposure is too high, it causes serious health problems. And could an individual who is totally deprived of fluoride from conception through adulthood survive? Definitive research to resolve these questions has never appeared in the public record or in peer-reviewed journals. It is important to keep this fact in mind as you read this book. Chris Bryson informs us that fluorine is, indeed, an essential element in the production of the atom bomb, and there is good reason to believe that fluoridated drinking water and toothpaste—and the development of the atom bomb—are closely related. This claim sounded pretty far-fetched to me, and consequently I was extremely skeptical about the connection when I started reading the book. Bryson writes with the skill of a top-selling novelist, but it was not his convincing storytelling that made me finish the book. It was the haunting message that possibly here again was another therapeutic agent, fluoride, that had not been thoroughly studied before it was foisted on the public as a panacea to protect or improve health. Bryson reveals that the safety of fluoride became a firmly established paradigm based on incomplete knowledge. The correct questions were never asked (or never answered when they were asked), thus giving birth to false or bottomless assumptions that fluoride was therapeutic and safe. Certainly, the evidence Bryson unearthed in this book begs for immediate attention by those responsible for public health. As the story unfolds, Bryson weaves pieces of what at first appears to be totally unrelated evidence into a tapestry of intrigue, greed, collusion, personal aggrandizement, corporate and government cover-up, and U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) mistakes. While reading the book, I kept thinking back to 1950, three years after I got my BS degree in Pharmacy and the year I gave birth to my first child. Fluoride came on the market packaged in pediatric vitamin drops for infants. Mothers left the hospital with their new babies in their arms and prescriptions in their hands from their dismissing physicians for these fluoride-laced drops. About that time communities around the country began to add fluoride to their drinking water. The promised benefits of fluoride were so positive that my dentist friends began to wish that they had chosen dermatology instead of dentistry. At that same time pregnant women were being given a pharmaceutical, diethylstilbestrol (DES), to prevent miscarriages, as well as DES-laced prescription vitamins especially designed for pregnant women to produce big, fat, healthy babies. I felt good when I dispensed the fluoride and DES prescriptions—they were products designed to prevent health problems rather than treat them. Now I can only wonder how many children were harmed because I and others like me took the word of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the USPHS, and the major pharmaceutical companies producing these products. We were caught up in the spin. We were blind to the corporate hubris and were swept along with the blissful enthusiasm that accompanies every new advance in modern technology and medicine. The hazards posed by prenatal exposure to DES surfaced a lot sooner than those posed by fluoride. And although by 1958 it was discovered that DES caused a rare vaginal cancer that until that time had been found only in postmenopausal women, its use during pregnancy was not banned until 1971—thirteen years later. Even this year, 2003, new discoveries are being reported about the impact on health in the sons and daughters of the DES mothers, and now in their grandchildren. It is estimated that in the United States alone there are ten million daughters and sons. In comparison to DES, where exposure could be traced through prescription records, the extent of exposure to fluorides through drinking water, dental products, vitamins, and as Bryson points out, through Teflon, Scotchgard, Stainmaster, and other industrial and agricultural fluorinated products is practically unmeasurable. Certainly the evidence Bryson presents in this book should cause those charged with protecting public health to demand answers about the developmental, reproductive, and functional role of fluorine in all living organisms. A lack of data on the safety of a product is not proof of safety. Evidence has only recently surfaced that prenatal exposure to certain fluorinated chemicals is dangerous, often fatal at high doses, and that—even at extremely low levels—such exposure can undermine the development of the brain, the thyroid, and the metabolic system. This evidence surfaced because industrial fluorine chemicals were suddenly being discovered in human and wildlife tissue everywhere they were looked for on earth. As a result, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA) began to press the manufacturers of these products for data on their safety. It is no wonder that such chemicals never made it on the list of known endocrine disrupters, chemicals that undermine development and function. The studies were never done, or if they were, they were not available to the public. It is time that these chemicals, at the cumulative concentrations they are found in the environment, be tested thoroughly for their developmental, reproductive, and endocrine effects. Whether or not Bryson's nuclear-bomb connection is ever confirmed without a doubt, this book demonstrates that there is still much that needs to be considered about the continued use of fluorine in future production and technology. The nuclear product that required the use of fluorine ultimately killed 65,000 people outright in one sortie over Japan. The actual number of others since then and in generations to come who will have had their health insidiously undermined by artificial exposure to fluorides and other fluorine chemicals with half-lives estimated in geologic time may well exceed that of the atom bomb victims millions and millions of times over. Dr. Theo Colborn, coauthor of Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story (1996). ...