Dental Lobby Pour Half-million Dollars into Fluoridation PR Campaign

Dental Lobby Pour Half-million Dollars into Fluoridation PR Campaign
By Carol Kopf, Media Director for Fluoride Action Network

The American Dental Association (ADA) announced on December 8, 2014, that they will pour $500,000 into a PR campaign to fool the American public into believing that fluoridation is good for them when science and government statistics prove otherwise. However, we have something they can never buy – the truth - which is why we are winning the fluoridation wars.

In a left-handed compliment to all of us, the ADA says “anti-fluoridation groups are very media savvy.”

Like corporations that market health-robbing sugary drinks and cereal to children, the ADA plans to sell fluoridation to the American public with “marketing and advertising via Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms and optimizing search engines to help ensure that ADA information is prominent in Internet searches.”

This tactic isn’t new. In a 1951 State Dental Directors’ meeting, sound-bites, excuses and whitewashes were suggested to initiate fluoridation. “Voices of opposition have been suppressed since early days of fluoridation,” according to Chemical & Engineering News, 1988).

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the ADA’s monetary involvement with the U.S. Congress in 2014 included:

Contributions to candidates: $1,187,100
Contributions to Leadership PACs: $363,500
Contributions to parties: $120,250
Contributions to 527 committees: $505,418
Contributions to outside spending groups: $317,000


Find out how much money your Congressional representatives received in 2014.

Fluoridation continues to be sold to the American public with slick PR, appeal to authority, spokesperson training, strategy-meetings, expensive lobbyists but little, if any, valid science. Even the Oral Health Division of the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) employs a PR Agency to sell you fluoridation.  And the Pew Charitable Trusts is funding the Children’s Dental Health Project that has created coalitions of local health groups throughout the country to mobilize for fluoridation.

On the other hand, for example, Portland, Oregon, used science and integrity  to defeat fluoridation, 61% to 39% even after being outspent 3-to-1 and despite Portland fluoridationists seemingly attempting to buy votes.

The truth is that, after 7 decades of fluoridation, 6 decades of fluoridated toothpaste, a glut of fluoridated dental products (and in higher concentrations), a fluoride-saturated food supply, tooth decay is a growing epidemic in the US – untreated tooth decay is even worse.

The culprit is poverty and poor diets. And those with the greatest dental needs can’t get their cavities filled.  Eighty percent of dentists refuse Medicaid patients.  130 million Americans don’t have dental insurance.  Many with insurance can’t afford dentistry’s high out-of-pocket costs. Hospital emergency rooms are their only option. The Journal of American Dental Association reported that 101 people died in hospitals from the consequences of untreated tooth decay. Many, who can afford to, travel to other countries to get affordable quality dentistry.

One solution is to legalize Dental Therapists in the US to work in areas where dentists refuse to go.  But organized dentistry lobbies against any group infringing upon dentists’ lucrative monopoly. In fact, the ADA joined the rich and politically influential American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which bloomberg.com reports may be to get help in thwarting Dental Therapists because “The dentists, no surprise, are decidedly against outsourcing their work to non-dentists.”

Some evidence that fluoridation has failed:
Florida is 78% fluoridated. In 2012, more than 139,000 (6.4% increase from 2011) were treated in hospital emergency departments (ER) for preventable dental conditions. Spending averaged $141 million (22% increase from 2011). Only 8% of Medicaid Children got dental treatment. Only 10% of Florida dentists participate in Medicaid. See: http://www.nnoha.org/nnoha-content/uploads/2014/08/Jaana-Gold-presentation.pdf

Collier County, Florida, is 80% fluoridated but cavity rates among third-graders “were among the highest levels documented in the United States,” according to University of Florida researchers’ presentation at the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry’s May 2014 annual meeting. See:  http://www.eventscribe.com/2014/posters/aapd/SplitViewer.asp?PID=NTc0NTEyOTYx;#

Nationally, 830,590 Americans were treated in ERs for preventable dental problems in 2009. Fifty-two percent of US children enrolled in Medicaid did not receive dental care in 2011. Over 45 million Americans live in areas with a dentist shortage. Fifty-two countries use Dental Therapists and other midlevel professionals to expand care to more people. The first US Dental Therapists are working in rural Alaska where residents used to pull their own teeth.  The ADA spent a million dollars on an unsuccessful lawsuit trying to stop them.

 

More evidence that fluoridation is failing:  http://www.FluorideNews.Blogspot.com

How does the ADA have so much money?  This article gives a clue: "Fluoridation: Follow the Money."