I think I'll have another glass of NY water...
Posted on 12/18/2008 6:03:11 AM PST by nyscof
New York State's Governor Patterson is proposing extensive tax increases to offset revenue shortfalls. But I have a better idea. Stop fluoridation.
This win-win decision for all states would save multi-millions of dollars and benefit every American – except maybe legislators beholden to special interest groups.
Science shows ending fluoridation saves teeth, money, preserves health and will reduce the carbon footprint, to boot, but it would irk organized dentistry. That’s the rub.
After 60 years of water fluoridation and over 50 years of fluoridated toothpaste, tooth decay is epidemic in the United States because 80% of dentists refuse to treat Medicaid patients and over 108 million Americans lack dental insurance (1). Children have died from untreated tooth decay. (2)
Diverting attention from their greed and heartlessness, dentists focus too-willing legislators on fluoridation (adding unnecessary fluoride chemicals into water supplies in a failed effort to prevent tooth decay), as if that would solve the problem. (3)
Far from fluoridation putting dentists out of business, as was once predicted, today’s dentists work fewer hours and days doing less critical work but make more money than many physicians. (4)
Seventy-two percent of NYS is fluoridated even though statistics show it’s failing to thwart cavities. (5) New York City, alone, spends approximately $14 million or more yearly on fluoridation chemicals, equipment and manpower.(6) Yet, NYC residents have among the highest cavity rates in the nation. (7)
Unfortunately, organized dentistry’s PAC money and political might speaks louder than science.(8)
One might argue that stopping fluoridation will cause higher dental costs. But studies show that, when fluoridation ends, cavities actually go down. (9) And the most highly fluoridated states have the highest rates of tooth loss. (10) Cavity crises are occurring in most fluoridated cities and states (See: http://www.FluorideNews.Blogspot.com )
Modern science shows that fluoride ingestion confers no benefits as early fluoridationists believed. Besides, today fluoride is in virtually all foods and beverages, (11) almost all toothpastes, some medicines, many dental products and is now a known component of air pollution.
No one disputes that too much fluoride is a bad thing. And there’s loads of evidence showing that Americans are over-fluoridated. For example, the Centers for Disease control reports that 48% of 12 - 15 year olds have dental fluorosis – white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted enamel – from too much fluoride ingestion when their teeth were forming. (12) We can’t see what fluoride is doing to their bones. (13)
For this reason, both the CDC and the American Dental Association advise that infant formula NOT be mixed with fluoridated water.
The National Kidney Foundation also advises kidney patients to avoid fluoridated water as malfunctioning kidneys can allow a toxic build up of fluoride in bones causing them to weaken and break. (14)
New York State can’t afford the money to get this information out. Fluoridation is outdated, unnecessary and harmful. It must be stopped.
The remedy: Dentists have unfairly influenced our legislators to pass laws that benefit themselves (15) while neglecting those that need them the most. In return, Dentists must be required to treat a certain percentage of patients for free, on a sliding scale basis or accept Medicaid payments.
Tell your local and state legislators you want fluoridation stopped.
Tell Congress you want fluoridation stopped and Congressional hearings held about why federal officials continue to promote fluoridation in the face of growing evidence of harm and ineffectiveness: http://congress.FluorideAction.Net
END
References:
1) http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/news/pressreleases/pr_oral_52000.htm
2) “For Want of a Dentist,” by Mary Otto, The Washington Post, February 27, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022702116.html
3) How California Deceptively Passed a Statewide Fluoridation Mandate http://www.edhtelegraph.com/detail/89290.html
Louisiana Mandates Fluoridation Despite Evidence of Harm http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Louisiana-May-Mandate-Fluoridation-Despite-Evidence-of-Harm-20853-1/
4)”New Drill - Tale of Two Docs: Why Dentists Are Earning More,” by Mark Maremont, The Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 10, 2005
http://www.flapsblog.net/2005/01/new-drill-tale-of-two-docs-why.html
5) NYS Department of Health statistics show that fluoridation fails to reduce tooth decay. See chart: http://tinyurl.com/NYSchart
6) Fluoridation Does Not Save Money or Teeth
http://fluoridedangers.blogspot.com/2005/11/fluoridation-does-not-save-money-or.html
7) Evidence that Fluoridation Has Failed New York
http://www.freewebs.com/fluoridation/fluoridationfailsnewyork.htm
8) “Open Wide for $25K” NY Daily News, by Elizabeth Benjamin, July 12, 2008
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2008/07/open-wide-for-25k.html
“In Rift Among Dentist Groups, a Tale of Political Clout.”
By Sam Roberts, New York Times, June 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/nyregion/23dentist.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
9) When Fluoridation Ends So Do Cavities
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/relatedconditions/a/flushot.htm
10) More Fluorde = Less Teeth
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1002581/posts
11) USDA Fluoride Database 2005 http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=6312
12) http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/figures/s403a1t23.gif
13) http://groups.google.com/group/Fluoridation-News-Releases/browse_thread/thread/20b328821b24dcc4/9882f8d2ce4caad5?lnk=gst&q=fluorosis+fractures#9882f8d2ce4caad5
14) National Kidney Foundation, “Fluoride Intake in Chronic Kidney Disease,” April 15, 2008
http://www.kidney.org/atoz/pdf/Fluoride_Intake_in_CKD.pdf
(15) Middlesex County Dental Society (New Jersey) President’s Message
“Annual nutcase attack on good teeth”
He is a liberal troll that fills the internet with his fluoride agenda, check his Huffington Post profile and look at who his favorite bloggers are, Barbara Ehrenreich for one.
He has over six years of posts here, everyone of them on fluoride.
Just shows to go you what the powers that be think about us.
What's worse, fluoride makes calcium structures "stronger" only in the ignorant sense of the word, more accurately, or in addition, it makes them more brittle, which they love because now as we age our teeth break easier and expensive and easy to do (from the denti$t point of view) cap$ are sold.
“...precious bodily fluids...”
Before fertilizer, Dupont used flouridation to get rid of their waste from the uranium hexaflouride that was used to create the atom bomb.
I don’t have a dog in the flouride fight. I will say that I spoke to a dentist about it once. He claimed that tooth decay had a sharp increase, after bottled water became popular, because people weren’t getting flouride from the water anymore.
Personally, I drink distilled water, because of taste issues in my water. I haven’t noticed an increase or decrease in cavities.
There are lots of options out there, if you are that opposed to flouride. We actually drink a fairly small amount of water each day...and it can be bought @ $0.79 a gallon in Wal Mart and cheaper through a local distributor who sells 5 gallon bottles.
I just don’t think there’s that much to get upset about.
Wonderful idea. Here's one better: Fluoridated sugar.
This is the only part of the article that I disagree with. No one, not dentists, physicians, lawyers, bricklayers, mechanics, butchers, or people of any other profession or trade should be required by government to accept patients, clients, or customers against their free will. If government can usurp powers over the people that the Constitution does not grant to it then we may as well stop pretending that it is anything more than an interesting museum display.
OTOH, I am adamantly opposed to fluoridation of public water systems. Fluoride has now been proven beyond doubt to be a major factor in what has become a virtual epidemic of osteoporosis in the elderly population of North America where fluoridation of public water systems has been common for many decades. (Osteoporosis is the thinning of bone tissue that causes most of the serious and often fatal fractures that are so prevalent in the elderly segment of the population).
A few years ago the president of the CDA, the Canadian counterpart of the American Dental Association, resigned from the association because he could no longer in good conscience support the association's position on fluoridation. In his resignation speech he cited the statistics and medical research that now shows beyond question that fluoridation of public water supplies is a major cause of osteoporosis.
There are many brainwashed parents who still believe that fluoridated drinking water is beneficial to children's teeth in spite of the growing stack of evidence to the contrary. And if those people want to have fluoride in their children's water there is no shortage of enterprising merchants who will be happy to provide it for them. But if the popular catch phrase, "freedom of choice" means anything at all, government should not be given the power to force a noxious compound on those who don't want it.
Fluoridated sugar.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
An even better idea!
Even my dentist of many years, whose moral integrity I greatly respect btw, agrees that some aspects of America's dentistry profession are becoming something that could almost be called a racket. He says that at the more recent annual dental association conventions he has attended it seems to him that more emphasis is being placed on ways to increase the profitability of a dental practice than on advancing new and improved dentistry techniques. An old friend of mine who has owned and operated a dental lab for most of his adult life tells me pretty much the same thing regarding the dental lab operator's annual conventions he attends.
I am not by any means saying that all or even most dentists and/or dental lab operators are putting profit ahead of sound practice, but I think it's true that some, hopefully a minority, are.
I would agree with you (about not forcing dentists to treat people) if they weren’t the ones forcing fluoride into us, against the will of those of us who know better and those who don’t know any better.
For example, one dentist just convinced a whole Montana tribe to fluoridate their drinking water. I’m sure he gave them misleading information.
http://www.goldentrianglenews.com/articles/2008/12/17/glacier_reporter/news/news6.txt
Organized dentistry forced a state-wide fluoridation mandate in California in 1995, very quietly, so no one could object, and when the whole world and almost every reporter was more interested in the OJ story.
Last year both the Louisiana and Nebraska Dental Associations instigated a fluoridation mandate law in those states giving only positive information backed up with a “trust me; I’m a dentist” rhetoric.
So it’s very hard for me to feel sorry for any dentist who contributes to any dental association that forces fluoride into people without informed consent.
Actually, I believe that those who want fluoride should be the ones buying it.
Fluoridated tap water is used for bathing, cooking, in cold mist humidifiers and to make many of the foods and beverages people consume. But there is no fluoride information on the labels.
Those for and against fluoridation agree that too much fluoride is dangerous and that everyone should monitor their daily fluoride intake
One place to start is the USDA fluoride database:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/Fluoride/Fluoride.html
Dispensing fluoride based on thirst without concern for need, overdosage, side effects or lack of teeth, is irresponsible and wasting my taxes.
Further, studies indicate that silicofluorides added to water supplies cause children to absorb more lead from their environment.
High blood lead levels are linked to higher rates of tooth decay which is probably one of the reasons that low-income children in fluoridated big cities have high rates of tooth decay
I just don’t think there’s that much to get upset about.
Why should those of us who don't want fluoride in our drinking water have to go through the inconvenience and expense of buying our drinking water at Walmart, while the people who want fluoride, or far more likely know nothing about the danger it poses to them and their kids in later life, have it conveniently delivered to their homes practically cost free via the public water system? When I say "practically" cost free I mean that the added cost of fluoridation is a very small part of the average water bill.
As for being upset, I'm only upset that I was denied the truth about fluoridation until it is now too late. At 71 years I have had numerous root canal procedures, and I now have more expensive posts and crowns in my mouth than natural teeth. I believe there is no question that fluoridation is responsible for most, if not all, of those crowns. So far I have not been diagnosed with osteoporosis, but I'm afraid that it's only a matter to time until I add that to my growing list of age related health problems.
Of course fluoridation is not the only cause of osteoporosis, aging is the primary culprit. But it is obvious to anyone who has taken the time and made the effort to study the issue from an unbiased viewpoint, which excludes most advocates for fluoridation, that it is a significant contributing factor.
2 weeks ago one of my teeth was hurting and especially
sensitive to cold fluids.
My dentist advised me to use fluoride mouth rinse.
My tooth pain has got a lot better with the fluoride rinse.
And you don't need dental insurance, which is a rip-off and doesn't cover anything except x-rays & exams. Pay dentists in cash and you'll get a great deal and a great smile (Cue white sparkle from teeth)
I suppose you're right, my comment was just my latent libertarian streak showing through.
without informed consent.
That's the crux of my argument against mandated fluoridation of public water systems. The general public is still being denied the truth about the dangers of fluoridation by those who profit from their ignorance. The people who are most at risk should at the very least be given all of the the known and relevant facts on both sides of the issue.
If you were to continue using the fluoride rinsefor a long period of time (measured in years, not weeks or months) the pain would eventually go away completely. Because by then the natural tooth will probably have been replaced by a very expensive post and crown.
But then if your drinking water is fluoridated the result will likely be the same whether or not you continue using the rinse.
Those dentists must be getting huge kickbacks for “forcing” fluoridated water upon the masses. /sarcasm
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