5 Myths You Likely Believe About Fluoride

Fluoride is arguably one of the most important public health advances of the 20th century. It has attributed to a significant drop in tooth decay in the United States (18-40% among children and adults!) [1] for a low cost of only fifty-cents a year per person in larger communities, and three dollars a year per person in smaller communities. [2]

Unfortunately, fluoride gets a bad rap in a lot of holistic, alternative medicine and natural living communities, based on widely-spread myths. But I'm here to debunk some of those myths!

1. The Nazis used fluoride in concentration camps to pacify the Jews!

No they didn't.

Patricia Heberer, a historian who specializes in the German medical community and Holocaust-era experimentation, debunked this myth. Acorrding to Patricia, none of the Nazi experimentation that she knows of involved fluoride. 

Another form of this myth is that fluoride was delivered to Jewish ghettos for mind control. However, in the final days before the Nazi take over, the water lines rarely delivered any water.

Even other anti-fluoridation groups don't believe this myth.

Paul Connett, a chemist who directs the Fluoride Action Network, said himself : "We have done our level best to discourage opponents of fluoridation from using this emotive argument. The historical evidence for this assertion is extremely weak. It is sad that the U.S. media has done such a bad job of educating the public on this issue that it is so easy for crazy ideas to fill the vacuum." [3]


2.  Fluoride is toxic

Oh, holistic lovers and alternative med-heads alike. You sure love the word toxic. You throw it around like a dog with a bone. Like a young child with a ball...

"Everything written in red is toxic!"
"But EVERYTHING is in red!"

But like everything, the dose makes the poison. Even oxygen and organic kale is deadly if you get enough of it.

But how much fluoride would you need to ingest for it to harm you? A lot. A human, adult man at 155 lbs, would need to ingest 5-10 grams of sodium fluoride all at once for it to harm him. Doesn't sound like much? It is. It's more than 10,000 - 20,000 times as much fluoride as is consumed when drinking an 8oz glass of optimally fluoridated water. So, essentially, you would have to drink 10,000 glasses of water all at once for it to harm you. [4]

3. Fluoride causes cancer!

More than 50 epidemiologic studies have been preformed in different populations and at different times since the introduction of community water fluoridation. They have all failed to demonstrate an association between fluoridation and a risk of cancer.

This myth is largely based on one study that compared cancer death rates in ten large fluoridated cities versus ten large nonfluoridated cities in the United States. However, the results of this study have been refuted multiple times, and scientists at the National Cancer Institute analysed the same data, finding that the original investigators failed to adjust their findings for variables such as gender and age differences that drastically affect cancer rates. [5]


4.  Fluoride inhibits the activity of enzymes.

In the World Health Organization report 'Fluorides and Human Health", it states:
"No evidence has yet been provided that fluoride ingested at 1 ppm in the drinking water affects intermediary metabolism of food stuffs, vitamin utilization or either hormonal or enzymatic activity."

To produce significant inhibition of enzymes in labs, the concentration of fluoride used is a hundred times greater than the concentration present in body fluids or tissues. [6] This again brings up the point that the dose makes the poison.

5.  Fluoride is a neurotoxin and can lower your intelligence / turn your brain to mashed potatoes

This myth also comes from another flawed study. This one completed in 1995 on rats.

The rats were fed fluoride of up to 125 times greater than what is found in optimally fluoridated water. The study attempted to show that rats fed extremely high levels of fluoride showed behavioral changes and cognitive deficits.

However, two scientists who reviewed the study suggested that the observations of the study can be easily explained by mechanisms that do not involve neurotoxicity.  These scientists also found severe flaws in the foundation of the experiment itself, such as not including a control group to test validity.

A seven-year long study compared the health and behavior of children from birth to age 6 in communities with optimally fluoridated water with those of children without exposure to fluoridated water. The results? There was no evidence to indicate that exposure to properly fluoridated water had any detectable effect on children's health and behavior. [7]






Sources:

[1] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (2000). Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General. National Institute of Dental Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health. Rockville, MD.

[2] http://www.ada.org/en/public-programs/advocating-for-the-public/fluoride-and-fluoridation/fluoridation-faq - "Why would communities want to fluoridate tap water?"

[3] http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/oct/06/critics-water-fluoridation/truth-about-fluoride-doesnt-include-nazi-myth/

[4] http://www.ada.org/~/media/ADA/Member%20Center/FIles/fluoridation_facts.ashx - "Question 27. Is fluoride, as provided by community water fluoridation, a toxic substance?"

[5] http://www.ada.org/~/media/ADA/Member%20Center/FIles/fluoridation_facts.ashx - "Question 28. Does drinking optimally fluoridated water cause or accelerate the growth of cancer?"

[6] http://www.ada.org/~/media/ADA/Member%20Center/FIles/fluoridation_facts.ashx -  "Question 29. Does fluoride, as provided by community water fluoridation, inhibit the activity of enzymes in humans?"

[7] http://www.ada.org/~/media/ADA/Member%20Center/FIles/fluoridation_facts.ashx - "Question 36. Does ingestion of optimally fluoridated water have any neurological impact?"


If you'd like to learn more about fluoride safety, visit the following:

• http://www.ada.org/~/media/ADA/Member%20Center/FIles/fluoridation_facts.ashx
• http://www.ada.org/en/public-programs/advocating-for-the-public/fluoride-and-fluoridation/fluoridation-faq
• http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/fluoride.cfm
• http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/faqs/
• http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation
• http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/oct/06/critics-water-fluoridation/truth-about-fluoride-doesnt-include-nazi-myth/
• http://www.oda.on.ca/personal-oral-care/fluoride-in-your-tap-water
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=water+fluoridation
• http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/naturalhazards/en/index2.html
• http://www.health.gov/environment/ReviewofFluoride/default.htm
• http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11571&page=R1
• http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301857

10 Strangest Medical Conspiracy Theories

Over half of Americans believe in medical conspiracy theories. Some are only a little strange. Others are outright bizarre.

Seven years ago, I was working at a heath food store and heavily pregnant with my first child, when I was approached by a regular customer. I knew she was eccentric-- she had thirteen children and was looking for fertility-boosting herbs so she could have more-- but I didn't know just how eccentric she was until she urged me to avoid having my child tested for PKU in the hospital.

"When they draw the blood, they don't actually test for diseases," she informed me quietly, "The nurses actually steal the blood and sell it to witches to use in spells."

I wasn't sure at first if she was joking.

"Newborn baby blood is very valuable on the black market," she added.

Well, I consented to having my kids' blood drawn by those evil witches at the hospital, yet, to date, neither of them have fallen victim to a mysterious curse.

That conspiracy theory is pretty far out there, but it's not too different from the many bizarre conspiracy theories you can find just by poking around on the internet for a few minutes. Here are some of the others I've encountered.

1. The Government is Hiding the Cure for Cancer

This one is everywhere. Over a third of people believe it. It's launched tens of thousands of articles, hundreds of websites, and dozens of books-- and it's no truer now than it was a hundred years ago, when it first popped up. You'd think that the cancer-related deaths of people who believed this conspiracy, such as The Cure for All Cancers author Hulda Clark , might be a red flag for these conspiracy theorists, but the belief persists.

2. "They" Are Lying About Ebola

There were a few dozen variations of this conspiracy theory. One of the more popular claims was that ebola is a manufactured virus deliberately given to people for "population control" or other purposes. The claims echo similar legends in the 1980s about HIV. Another common rumor was that ebola doesn't exist at all, or that the government was hiding a cure until it spread to the industrialized world. An unintentionally hilarious conspiracy theory even speculated that The Simpsons were in on it.

"Is there something we are not being told? Is it by pure chance & coincidence that the Simpsons would do predictive programming? There has been numerous predictions from The Simpsons which revealed futuristic events which came to pass. What of the Ebola recurrence in 2014? Is it planned or is it just by natural means? Ebola was not in the 90's, but it happened long ago in the mid 70's... But The Simpsons reveal in late 90's Ebola virus... Interesting right?" 

3.  Products You Use Every Day Contain Dead Babies

If you go to pretty much any anti-vaccine website, you'll encounter this one. Some writers go so far as to claim that pregnancies are aborted for the sole purpose of using the fetuses to manufacture food, cosmetics, and medicine, even though no pregnancy has ever been aborted for such purpose and no approved foods or vaccines have ever contained fetal cells. This conspiracy theory was so prevalent that it actually led to a lawmaker pushing to ban fetuses in food. Glad our tax dollars are going to such good use.

4. You're Full of Worms

Conspiracy theorists love to blame medical problems on parasites that "they" are trying to hide. The cult of parents who treat autism with bleach enemas claim that rope worms-- chunks of intestine that come out when they fill their kids with bleach-- are behind autism, even though there is no such parasite. Assorted quacks on the internet, from Natural News to Organic Olivia to Modern Alternative Mama, give all sorts of advice amounting to, "You're full of parasites and they're causing all of your diseases." The idea can be traced to Hulda Clark... you know, the one mentioned above, who thought all cancer was caused by worms and then died of cancer.

5. The Government's Hiding a Scary Skin Disease

Delusional parsitosis-- the delusional belief that you are infested with parasites that aren't there-- is a condition that may be as old as humanity itself. Sure enough, it's the reason behind medical conspiracy #4. But its newest form, dubbed Morgellons disease, is a bit less known. Natural News and other conspiracy theorist websites claim that the condition, which involves feeling like you're covered in bugs, scratching yourself up, and getting little fibers from Band-Aids, blankets, and clothing in the scratches, say that it's a parasitic infection caused by GMOs and chemtrails, and that the CDC was involved in a cover-up to conclude that it was psychological.

6. Antidepressants Are Designed to Make You a Mass Murderer

One common medical conspiracy posits that SSRIs are a "gateway drug" designed to turn patients into violent monsters, either as part of a depopulation measure or to somehow churn more profits for Big Pharma. The evidence they give is that some murderers were taking antidepressants. You'd think that with all that money and research, Big Pharma would have done a better job coming up with pills to create killers. More than one in ten Americans takes an antidepressant, yet very few of us end up committing mass murder.

7. Mental Illness Doesn't Exist and They're Trying to Poison You

The sad reality behind this is that mentally ill people are by far the most likely people to fall for conspiracy theories and by far the most likely to be harmed by them.Take, for example, this conspiracy theorist, who says that bipolar disorder isn't real and that it was invented to push drugs on children. Or this one, who says the same thing about oppositional defiant disorder. Or the hundreds who have said it about ADHD. Or this guy, who says that he is the messiah and that his diagnosis of schizophrenia is part of a conspiracy to hide that. Need I say more?

8. Jews Are Killing and Experimenting On You

I touched on this a bit in Antisemitism in the Anti-Vaccine Movement, but the conspiracy theory runs much deeper and wider than the anti-vax movement itself. For example, conspiracy theorists often claim that routine infant circumcision is part of a Jewish conspiracy (strange, since Judaism doesn't command circumcising anyone besides Jews). They often blame specific Jewish families, like the Rothschilds and Goldman-Sachs, for all the world's ails. Failing that, they'll point to the State of Israel. One prominent medical conspiracy theorist blames pretty much every possible conspiracy on Jews, who he says worship Satan, poison dissenters with odorless gas, and control the medical industry through "biomedical terrorism."

9. The World is Being Depopulated

Supposedly, we are all being subjected to a "slow kill" to depopulate the Earth. This involves a number of intricate and intertwined conspiracies, from chemicals dumped out of airplanes to fluoride in our drinking water to birth control in our food. Some go so far as to claim that "they" are putting chemicals in our food to make people gay, thereby limiting birth rates. You'd think that all the world's leading scientists working together could do a better job: birth rates continue to climb worldwide, with no sign of a population crash any time soon.

10. Everyone's Getting a Tracking Device
This one started circulating decades ago, when microchips and GPS first came into existence. It picked up even more steam when the Affordable Care Act rolled out, leading many people to accuse President Obama of mandating microscopic tracking devices on all American citizens. This led to reignited fears of immunization, with many anti-vaxxers claiming that flu shots contain GPS trackers also used in war and even secret mind-control computers. Don't worry, though: other conspiracy theorists have plenty of suggestions for nullifying the effects of these tiny computers.

Start Here.

Dr. Tenpenny, Autistic Adults "Wearing Diapers and Helmets" are Right Here.

Notorious anti-vaccine quack Sherri Tenpenny posted a meme on Facebook today. It’s a picture of Yoda from Star Wars with the statement, “If autism today is because of better diagnosis, where are all the 30-year-old autistics wearing diapers and helmets?”

I’m not sure what version of Star Wars Dr. Tenpenny has seen that includes Yoda talking like that, but I’m not terribly surprised that a woman who is so revoltingly unfamiliar with science-fact is also unfamiliar with science-fiction.

Tenpenny's question follows less scientific reason than my infant son's "Throwing The Spoon On The Floor Again" experiment and shows a willful dismissal of scientific evidence surrounding autism-- not to mention a tremendous disregard for the lives and dignity of autistic individuals.

Autistic adults are out there. I know many of them. Some of them have jobs and spouses and children of their own. Some of them are non-verbal and communicate through typing or sign language. Several of them live with their parents and a few need assistance from home-health services. A couple of them might be incontinent, but that's none of my business and none of my concern.

One hundred percent of them are human beings.

Absolutely none of them are autistic because of vaccines.

Most were not diagnosed with autism as children.

Don't believe me? A study in 2006 looked at a large amount of data collected from various studies and epidemiological records. They found strong evidence that the increase in diagnosed autism were purely because of changes in diagnostic criteria, and no evidence whatsoever that rates of autism are actually increasing. The authors of the study stated:

"There is a strong genetic component which, along with prenatally determined neuro-anatomical/biochemical changes, makes any post-natal 'cause' unlikely [...] There has (probably) been no real increase in the incidence of autism. There is no scientific evidence that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine or the mercury preservative used in some vaccines plays any part in the aetiology or triggering of autism, even in a subgroup of children with the condition."


That same year, another study was published examining the effects of "diagnostic substitution" in the apparent increase in autism rates. The scientists behind the study found that rates of other diagnoses have been declining at exactly the same rate that diagnoses of autism have been increasing. The vast majority of adult with nonverbal autism "in helmets and diapers," as Dr. Tenpenny so insultingly puts it, were diagnosed as children with mental r*tardation without further specification. As I discussed in a blog a few weeks ago, my own autism-like symptoms, such as obsessive interests and phobic avoidance of certain foods and clothes, were diagnosed in the 1990s as pediatric OCD. Many so-called high-function autistics were believed to have OCD, AD(H)D, and various learning disabilities, and were not accurately diagnosed with autism until adulthood, if ever.

As for where they all are? Well, Dr. Tenpenny, autistic adults are among you, but the vast majority don't fit your stereotype, so you're not seeing them. That's because, rather than being in "nonverbal" and in "diapers and helmets," over  80% of autistic people learn to communicate verbally. Nearly 100% learn to use the toilet without assistance. I have so far never met a single autistic person, adult or child, who needed to wear a helmet. Autistic adults are generally indistinguishable from anyone else, other than seeming a bit eccentric.

Some of our brothers and sisters with autism, most of whom were diagnosed with mental r*tardation, have been shipped away to institutions where they are hidden from the public eye and won't be noticed or insulted by people like Dr. Tenpenny. Others live with their parents and don't get out much, or when they do, it's among peers who would be less judgmental than Dr. Tenpenny. If she'd be willing to take a minute to actually get to know the autistic community, Dr. Tenpenny would find that many people who are stereotypically "low-function" would be happy to communicate with her online about their experiences as autistic individuals. They're out there. And their lives and experiences matter.
There is no autism epidemic. There is no increase in the actual rate of autism, and wild and offensive speculation about the supposed absence of autistic adults won't magically undo the insurmountable evidence that autism has always been part of the human experience. Dr. Tenpenny's bullying of the autistic community needs to stop.