Posted on 04/24/2006 10:05:05 PM PDT by Coleus
Young boys who drink fluoridated tap water are at greater risk for a rare bone cancer, Harvard researchers reported yesterday.
The study, published online yesterday in a Harvard-affiliated journal, could intensify debate over fluoridation and mean more scrutiny for Harvard’s Dr. Chester Douglass,accused of fudging the findings to downplay a cancer link.
“It’s the best piece of work ever linking fluoride in tap water and bone cancer. It’s pretty damning for (Douglass),” said Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group, which filed a complaint with the National Institutes of Health against Douglass.
Douglass, an epidemiology professor at Harvard’s School of Dental Medicine, is paid as editor of the Colgate Oral Care Report, a newsletter supported by the toothpaste maker.
Harvard and the NIH are investigating whether Douglass misrepresented research findings last year when he said there was no link, despite extensive research to the contrary by one of his doctoral students. The NIH gave Douglass at least $1 million for the research.
That student, Dr. Elise Bassin, wrote in yesterday’s Cancer Causes and Control that boys who drink water with levels of fluoride considered safe by federal guidlines are five times more likely to develop osteosarcoma than boys who drink unfluoridated water. About 250 U.S. boys each year are diagnosed with osteosarcoma, the most common type of bone cancer and the sixth most common cancer in children. Bassin notes that more research is needed to “confirm or refute this observation.”
Douglass, in a letter to the editor published in the same issue, said Bassin’s study was a “partial view of this ongoing study,” and urged readers to be “especially cautious” when interpreting the findings.
And the dentist was so adament that it was good for me.
Virtually everything is linked to cancer, especially being a human.
He works for Colgate? Why doesn't he oppose municipal water fluoridation, because that way Colgate will have a bigger market for its fluoridated toothpaste.
But think of the money that transparent teeth would save in dental X-rays.
Any one remember when being, in any way against, or even questioning the wisdom of the government putting Fluoride in all drinking water was proof your were a "right wing nut job"
"Young boys who drink fluoridated tap water are at greater risk for a rare bone cancer, Harvard researchers reported yesterday."
Damn, if Frank Burns wasn't right after all.
OMG...the BIRTCHERS strike again. LOL
It's a Soviet plot to control our body fluids.
I do. :-)
LOL
It was a communist plot to slowly lower the nation's IQ over the years. I would say it worked...
You should meet some people from west Texas. Lots of them have brown stains on their teeth from the fluoride.
Is the whole article published here on FR? I went there, and they said that there was a charge.....
At one time, the Delaney Amendment kept a number of useful food additives and agricultural chemicals off the market because tests -- often administered by far-from-impartial laboratories, at dosages hundreds of times what would be typical human exposure -- produced tumors in rats.
Imagine that.
Flouride is naturally occurring in the water supply in some areas of the country. Elsewhere, it's injected as a medication, based on AMA reports and political do-goodism. The jury's still out on whether the massive treatment of children through drinking water is the more cost-effective way to prevent tooth decay. There are other means, such as topical applications at the dentist -- and flouride toothpaste, which is all you can get unless you go to a health foods store.
In a free society, risks have to be weighed, decisions made, and responsibilty taken . . not by the government, which can only operate in a clumsy way, with a meat cleaver instead of a scalpel . . but by individuals and families.
Letting bureaucrats decide "for greater good" leads to places I don't believe we'd want to go: health-care rationing, euthanasia, abortion, eugenics, forced sterilization, lobotomies, you name it.
Science is not perfect, much to the consternation of some politicians who seem to think it is. Part of the reason science doesn't progress as fast as we'd like to see is evident in the article: scientists like to please their customers, just like we all do.
BUMP
The research I've done on my own says that naturally occuring flouride is calcium flouride, not the sodium flouride put in drinking water. Sodium flouride is a byproduct of manufacturing processes and is poison, even at relatively small doses. Calcium flouride is chemically quite different, not harmful even in much larger doses, and not shown to cause cancer. So why do they use sodium flouride instead of calcium flouride? It's cheaper.
My kids have never drunk flouridated water nor had flouride treatments. At 12 and 9, neither has ever had a cavity. I, on the other hand, a well-flouridated child of the sixties, had a mouth full of cavities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.