Poison is Treatment: The Campaign to Fluoridate America
Global
Research, May 17, 2013
Global
Research 23 June 2012
Region: USA
Theme: Science and Medicine
The wide scale US acceptance of fluoride-related compounds in drinking water and a wide variety of consumer products over the past half century is a textbook case of social engineering orchestrated by Sigmund Freud’s nephew and the “father of public relations” Edward L. Bernays. The episode is instructive, for it suggests the tremendous capacity of powerful interests to reshape the social environment, thereby prompting individuals to unwarily think and act in ways that are often harmful to themselves and their loved ones. The example is especially pertinent today as Western governments withhold data and utilize propaganda techniques to suppress knowledge of new technologies and life-threatening disasters such as the still-unfolding nuclear breakdown in Fukushima.
Today
the battle over water fluoridation remains obscured in caricature and
falsification often perpetuated by the mainstream press itself. The potential
for popular myth to eclipse historical fact is greatly accelerated when the
political and informational pillars of civilization actively support such
distortions. For example, a recent New
York Times editorial points to “that cold war paranoia about fluoridation
in drinking water [sic].” Citing the
Center for Disease Control’s claim that fluoridation is one of the top
accomplishments in public health over the past century, the Times evokes fluoride’s difficult
struggle with purportedly uninformed segments of the public. “Critics no longer
contend that fluoridation is a Communist plot. Instead, they express concerns
about the costs involved, improper government control over a personal decision,
and potential health dangers.”[1]
The
refrain is familiar throughout a corporate-controlled media that
unquestioningly amplifies the pronouncements of government agencies concerning
fluoride’s alleged safety and value for dental health. Having been seemingly
vetted and upheld by the newspaper of record and its counterparts, such
sweeping declarations are seldom interrogated further by readers, much less the
broader public.
In
fact, sodium fluoride is a dangerous poison and has been a primary active
ingredient in a wide variety of insecticides and fungicides.[2] The substance
bioaccumulates in mammals, has been linked to dulled intellect in children [3]
and is a cause of increased bone fractures and osteosarcoma. Further, recent
studies indicate that fluoride’s role in preventing cavities through ingestion
[4] or even topically [5] is close to non-existent.
Metal Industry’s Pollution Liability
Historical
evidence indicates how the many concerns over water fluoridation were wholly
warranted. Indeed, fluoridating the nation’s water supply one locality at a
time appears to have been a carefully coordinated plan that sought to shield
major aluminum and steel producers from the countless liabilities caused by the
substantial fluorine pollution their plants generated. This pollution increased
alongside stepped-up military aircraft and armaments manufacture during World
War Two. The steel factories in California and Utah, and aluminum producing
plants in Washington and Oregon, generated fluorine-saturated air that
inevitably poisoned livestock, crops, and farming families.
In
the postwar era $30 million in damage suits were filed in Provo, Utah alone,
with metal manufacturers paying $4.5 million to settle out of court. Thus
American industrial interests were the chief forces behind water fluoridation,
not because of greed or altruism, but rather through fear of continued and
potentially increased pollution liability as the Second World War drew to a
close and the Cold War began. This was the conclusion of Dr. F. B. Exner, a
steadfast public health advocate and opponent of water fluoridation, who
observed that at the turn of the century
“the
very existence of the smelter industry, both in Germany and Great Britain, was
threatened by successful suits for fluorine damage and by burdensome laws and
regulations. Today that same threat hangs over the bulk of American
big-industry; and fluoridation offers both camouflage and scapegoat. Hence the
relentless and uncompromising drive for universal fluoridation.”[6]
In
a discerning 1955 essay Exner points to the unusual absence of research on
fluorine in US medical literature beginning in the late 1930s, whereas “the
foreign medical literature has contained hundreds of articles on a wide variety
of troubles that can be caused by fluorine. The same was true of the veterinary
literature in this country.
“Exner
further points to the apparent strategy behind fluoridation—one that may be
occurring along similar lines in the Japanese government’s efforts to
distribute and incinerate radioactive waste from the March 2011 nuclear
disaster throughout the archipelago.[7] “There has been constant danger,” Dr.
Exner observed, “that someone would analyze tissues in both high and low
fluoride areas and find that fluorine poisoning is common [in those residing in
high areas]. But if every community can be fluoridated there will be no
fluorine-free areas for comparison.”[8]
The PR Campaign to Sell Fluoridation
In
the 1930s Edward Bernays was public relations adviser to the Aluminum Company
of America (Alcoa). Alcoa’s principal attorney, Oscar Ewing, went on to serve
in the Truman administration from 1947 to 1952 as head of the Federal Security
Agency, of which the Public Health Service was a part. In that capacity Ewing
authorized water fluoridation for the entire country in 1950 and enlisted
Bernays’ services to promote water fluoridation to the public.[9]
Still,
the campaign to fluoridate the nation’s water supplies took place mainly in
individual cities and townships, necessitating a sophisticated propaganda campaign
to persuade local officials to proactively support fluoridation. Bernays
recognized New York City as the foremost battleground and a particularly
valuable tactical prize given the prevalence of liberal media outlets. Once the
New York press was abuzz about the city’s prospective fluoridation other
municipalities would be more easily persuaded to form ranks.[10]
Bernays
recalled the fluoridation campaign in which he was involved as merely another
assignment. “The PR wizard specialized in promoting new ideas and products to
the public by stressing a claimed health benefit,” explains journalist
Christopher Bryson, who interviewed Bernays on the fluoride campaign in 1993.
“’You
can get practically any ideas accepted,’ Bernays told me, chuckling. “If doctors
are in favor, the public is willing to accept it, because a doctor is an
authority to most people, regardless of how much he knows, or doesn’t know … By
the law of averages, you can usually find an individual in any field who will
be willing to accept new ideas, and the new ideas then infiltrate the others
who haven’t accepted it.’”[11]
Yet
in the early 1950s, just as Bernays’ was brought on board, public sentiment
toward fluoridation was clearly on the side of the anti-fluoridationist camp
that included leading doctors and researchers. Arrayed against those opposing
fluoridation were the New York City Health Department Commissioner, New York
State’s Health Commissioner, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Public Health
Service. “All of this intrigues me to no end,” Bernays elatedly remarked to the
City Health Commissioner, “because it presents challenging situations deeply
related to the public’s interest which may be solved by the engineering of
consent.”
One
such approach to prompting public opinion involved correspondence from the
city’s Health Department to the presidents of the NBC and CBS television
networks, informing them “that debating fluoridation is like presenting two
sides for anti-Catholicism or anti-Semitism and therefore not in the public interest.”
Another method involved laying the groundwork for making fluoridation a
household term with a scientific patina. He advised his clients to send letters
to the editors of leading publications discussing what the specific aspects of
fluoridation required. “We would put out the definition first to the editors of
important newspapers,” Bernays recalled. “Then we would send a letter to
publishers of dictionaries and encyclopedias. After six or eight months we
would find the word fluoridation was
published and defined in dictionaries and encyclopedias.”[12]
In
1957 the Committee to Protect Our Children’s Teeth suddenly emerged to tout
fluoridation with several celebrity figures on its roster, including Dr.
Benjamin Spock, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, and A. Phillip Randolph.
Funded by grants from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation ($23,350) and the
Rockefeller Foundation ($2,500), the Committee’s makeup also included major
figures from atomic weapons research and manufacturing concerns.
A
sleek booklet, Our Children’s Teeth,
was ostensibly produced by the Committee and circulated throughout the US. Yet
it was first utilized by attorneys defending the Reynolds Aluminum Company in
federal appeals court in Oregon against charges for fluoride injury brought by
a farming family. The court was reminded by Reynolds’ lawyers how Our Children’s Teeth was packed with
testimonies of “one medical and scientific expert after another, all to the
effect that fluorides in low concentration (such as are present around aluminum
and other industrial plants) present no harm to man.”[13]
The
American Journal of Public Health
noted how the pamphlet contained no new information on water fluoridation, but
was rather “designed for presentation to the New York City Board of Estimate as
a distillate of expert opinion” from scientists and officials involved in
promoting fluoride. “The statements are concise but extremely quotable,” the
review read. “This volume is, therefore, especially commended to those
interested in or engaged in the promotion of water fluoridation in their own
communities.”[14]
Our Children’s Teeth referenced 300 members comprising
the Committee to Protect Our Children’s Teeth. This list appeared alongside two
additional lists of 229 “leading American Authorities on Nutrition” and 121 of
“The Nation’s Foremost Chemists.” In light of the flurry of names and titles
“[t]he real question,” Dr. Exner remarked, “is why anyone with any self respect
would permit his name on either list. The names are appended to two statements,”
Exner continued, “neither of which could be honestly signed by any intelligent
layman, much less by any scientist who values his scientific reputation.”
Curious
of how the lists were compiled Exner personally wrote each of the chemists
listed in the publication to inquire “whether he had signed or whether he
believed the statement true. Some denied signing. Some had signed without
reading. Some had signed knowing the statement to be false but because they
thought fluoridation so desirable that any means were justified.”[15]
Exner
further found that of the 360 “chemists” and “authorities on nutrition” listed
in the brochure, 201 worked for 87 institutions including universities that
received over $151 million in grants. In the late 1950s a majority of such
grants originated from the foremost proponent of water fluoridation–the Public
Health Service. Another major recipient of PHS funding was the American Dental
Association (ADA). Exner’s research and data proved to be especially valuable
in lawsuits brought against the industry and fluoridation proponents. In 1978,
shortly after his death, all of his files were lost in an unusual fire.[16]
As
the pro-fluoridation propaganda campaign grew to a crescendo in the late 1950s
a collaborative surveillance campaign targeting anti-fluoridationists was
undertaken by the PHS, the ADA, and the American Water Works Association. The
National Fluoridation Information Service of the Division of Dental Health of
the US Public Health Service, an intelligence-gathering setup operating out of
the PHS-controlled National Institutes of Health, was formally established to
monitor and create databases on fluoridation critics in the medical
professions. Fluoride heretics were subject to flailing in the press or
outright expulsion from their professional organizations.[17]
Fluoridation
was finally launched in New York City in 1965 apart from popular referendum and
in the face of continued opposition by handing the choice to the municipality’s
five-member Board of Estimate. Behind the final effort to fluoridate were Mary
and Albert Lasker. The former was involved in the Committee to Protect Our
Children’s Teeth and the latter an advertising executive and associate of
Bernays who helped American Tobacco Company make Lucky Strikes America’s
best-selling cigarettes. The Laskers held an exclusive cocktail party to
celebrate the victory, with guests including New York Mayor Robert Wagner and
members of the Board of Estimate and City Council.
The
anti-fluoride Association for the Protection of Our Water Supply condemned the
undemocratic process as “government by cocktails.” “Here is a private one-sided
hearing on the most controversial subject,” the organization’s press release
read, “in a meeting by officials in an ex cathedra session. Where does it leave
the masses of citizens opposed to fluoridation?”[18]
When
the Committee to Protect Our Children’s Teeth was formed in 1957 only 5% of US
water supplies were fluoridated. Following the massive public relations
campaign that paved the way for fluoridating New York City’s water over 60% of
water across the US was eventually fluoridated. At present over two-thirds of
the US population drinks fluoridated water [19] with close to the entire
population consuming fluoride through foods and beverages processed using such
water. [20]
Maintaining the Fluoride Status Quo
When
new scientific studies emerged suggesting fluoride’s dangers to human health
the PHS hastily appointed a commission of veteran pro-fluoride figures that
proceed to shelve any new conclusions and reinforce the status quo. In 1983
when an unusual PHS-assembled panel consisting of less induced scientists
discovered that the government’s own research upholding fluoride’s safety was
almost non-existent, a recommendation of caution was handed down emphasizing
particular attention to children’s exposure.
Surgeon
General C. Everett Koop’s office issued its official report a month later
omitting the committee’s most significant opinions and recommendations. The
panel members “expressed surprise at their report’s conclusions: They never
received copies of the final—altered—version.” Countering the committee’s
advice that drinking water should contain no more than 1.4-2.4 parts per
million (ppm) for children under 10, the government inserted a statement
asserting: “There exists no directly applicable scientific documentation of
adverse medical effects of fluoride below 8 ppm.” Based on Koop’s final
doctored report the Environmental Protection Agency raised the amount of
allowable fluoride in drinking water from 2 to 4 ppm for children and
adults.[21]
Today
sodium fluoride per se is used in less than 10% of fluoridated water systems.
In its place are the fluoride variants sodium silica fluoride or fluorisilic
acid, more commonly known as silicofluorides (SIFs). In 2001 researchers found
that SIFs may cause a higher absorption of lead in children and decrease
cholinesterase, an enzyme necessary for the regulation of neurotransmitters.
Neither the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration,
or any other regulatory agency to date has researched the long term internal
effects of consuming fluorisilic acid, a by product of the phosphate fertilizer
industry that is now the predominant stand-in for sodium fluoride given its
relative low-cost.[22]
nearby.”[23]
Conclusion
In
a world made increasingly uncertain by government and corporate engineers of
reality and consent, the bureaucratic and scientific class’ responsiveness to
the public welfare is illusory. The case of water fluoridation provides a
compelling example of a plan to deceive and propagandize the masses. A full
decade before President Eisenhower’s warning of “a permanent armaments industry
of vast proportions,” the fluoridation of America’s water supplies was already
in full play with the hidden foreknowledge among those in high places that such
a campaign would almost certainly lead to the endangerment of public health for
many generations to come.
Water
fluoridation is banned in many Scandinavian and European nations.[24] Yet it
persists in the US, Canada, Australia, and numerous other countries throughout
the world. The practice is sustained to a significant degree by the widely held
myth Bernays designed and brought forth, by affirmative medical and regulatory
authorities, and perhaps above all by a routinely unskeptical and compliant
press. Not unlike the contradictory premises upon which psycho-social existence
was predicated in Orwell’s 1984–ignorance
is strength, war is peace, freedom is slavery–in the case of the West’s 60-plus
year experiment with fluoridation, poison is treatment.
Notes
[1] New York Times, “Fluoridation Debate
Redux,” 18 March, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/fluoridation-debate-redux.html?_r=1.
See also Jane E. Brody, “Dental Exam Went Well? Thank Fluoride,” New York Times, January 23, 2012, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/dental-exam-went-well-thank-fluoride/
[2] Scorecard:
The Pollution Information Website, Chemical Profiles: Sodium Fluoride, n.d.,
GoodGuide, http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-profiles/pesticides.tcl?edf_substance_id=7681-49-4
[3] Ethan A.
Huff, “Study: Fluoridated Water Causes Brain Damage in Children,”
NaturalNews.com, December 23, 2010, http://www.naturalnews.com/030819_fluoride_brain_damage.html
[4] Fluoride
Action Network, “Fluoride & Tooth Decay: Topical Vs. Systemic Effects,”
n.d., http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/teeth/caries/topical-systemic.html
[5] Ethan A.
Huff, “Does Topica Fluoride Really Protect Tooth Enamel? Study Suggests NO,”
NaturalNews.com, March 6, 2011, http://www.naturalnews.com/031602_fluoride_tooth_enamel.html
[6] F. B.
Exner, “Economic Motives Behind Water Fluoridation—Fluoride is a Protected
Pollutant,” in F. B. Exner, G. L. Waldbott and James Rorty, The American Fluoridation Experiment (New
York: Devin-Adair, 1955), pp. 119-121. Available at http://www.fluoridation.com/exner.htm
[7]
Asia-Pacific Journal Feature, “Eco-Model City Kitakyushu and Japan’s Disposal
of Radioactive Tsunami Debris,” The
Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 24, No 6, June 11, 2012. Available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-Asia_Pacific_Journal-Feature/3770;
Michael McAteer, “Japan’s Latest Nuclear
Crisis: Getting Rid of Radioactive Debris,” The Atlantic, June 4, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/japans-latest-nuclear-crisis-getting-rid-of-the-radioactive-debris/257963/
[8] Exner,
“Economic Motives Behind Water Fluoridation.”
[9] J. Y.
Smith, “Oscar Ewing Dies; Leading Architect of ‘Fair Deal’ Program for Truman,”
Washington Post, January 9, 1980, C6;
Christopher Bryson, The Fluoride
Deception (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004). Bryson’s description of
his encounters with Bernays suggests how the spin doctor recognized the
impropriety of the former Alcoa attorney’s influential endorsement of water
fluoridation.
[10] Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, 159-160.
[11] Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, 159.
[12] Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, 161.
[13] Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, 161-162, 324f.
[14] Review of Our Children’s Teeth—A Digest of Expert
Opinion Based on Studies of the Use of Fluorides in Public Water Supplies,
by Herman E. Hilleboe, et al., American
Journal of Public Health 48 (1958): 821.
[15] Exner,
“Economic Motives Behind Water Fluoridation.”
[16] Joel
Griffiths, “Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalist Ploy,” Covert Action Quarterly 42 (1992), http://sonic.net/kryptox/history/covert.htm
[17] Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, 165.
[18] Bryson, The Fluoride Deception, 164.
[19] Center for
Disease Control 2010 Water Fluoridation Statistics, n.d., http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/statistics/2010stats.htm
[20] Brody,
“Dental Exam Went Well? Thank Fluoride.”
[21] Griffiths,
“Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalist Ploy.”
[22] Washington’s Blog, “Untested Type of Fluoride Used in the Overwhelming Majority of U.S. Water Supplies,” Centre for Research on Globalization, January 10, 2011, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22707
[22] Washington’s Blog, “Untested Type of Fluoride Used in the Overwhelming Majority of U.S. Water Supplies,” Centre for Research on Globalization, January 10, 2011, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22707
[23] St. Petersburg Times, “Acid Spill Closes
I-4,” September 7, 1994, 1B.
[24]
“Fluoridation Status of Some Countries,” Fluoridation.com, n.d., http://www.fluoridation.com/c-country.htm
James F.
Tracy is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida
Atlantic University. He is an affiliate of Project Censored and blogs at memorygap.org.
Global Research :Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/poison-is-treatment-the-campaign-to-fluoridate-america/31568
http://www.globalresearch.ca/poison-is-treatment-the-campaign-to-fluoridate-america/31568
Edward L Bernays is an interesting person. "Eddie" as he was known to his friends was a Wall St. wonder, the double nephew of Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis. Mr Bernays help sell us WWI and WWII; wars make some people a lot of money especially the Military Industrial Complex. Fluoride has been sold by Wall St. to the American public and most of us have welcomed fluoridation with open arms. A much closer look is in order, hopefully Fluoride Friday will help.
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