3/3/21 AARP comment

Below is the content of my 3/3/21 AARP comment which contains several links to supporting documentation.  This link provides additional resources to help understand and refute anti-science arguments.

BillO, CarryAnne, rs5526, WillardO:  Remarkable! 

  1. You continue to dodge my questions and divert attention away from the fact that a significant number of major science and health organizations (over 100) continue to support fluoridation and none support your anti-F opinions. I will continue to ask, where is the evidence that any major science or health organizations support your anti-F opinions??? 
  2. You also continue to make false, unsupportable claims that there is relevant, legitimate scientific evidence proving fluoridation is harmful and ineffective that major science and health organizations worldwide are selectively ignoring.
  3. It is informative that CarryAnne’s 02-02-2015 H. Limeback claim  that “The evidence that fluoride [with no context of exposure level]  is more harmful than beneficial is now overwhelming…” is still as misleading, false and unsupportable, in the context of community water fluoridation, as it was back then. 

BillO, 03-01-2021 10:17 PM:
 The levels of a number of chemicals in drinking water are regulated by the EPA to ensure the health benefits of drinking the water are maximized and any potential risks are minimized. You seem to confuse the abbreviation EPA with FDA. The widely used disinfectant chlorine, for example, has been used as a chemical weapon, and it creates a number of byproducts like chloroform which, to use the out-of-context lingo of fluoridation opponents (FOs), are highly toxic. “Some people drink very little if any water and others drink 10 times average.” So, according to your “logic” you should be as opposed to disinfection as fluoridation. Actually, by your logic, water should be banned, since according to the Mayo Clinic adults should drink 2.7-3.7 liters of fluids a day. Drinking ten times that amount, 27-37 liters (7-9.8 gallons) will probably be lethal – water, after all, is a poison – to use a typical anti-F, out-of-context claim.

True, “There has never been a prospective randomized controlled trial of fluoride ingestion and they could be done.” Perhaps you could outline specific details of a fully blinded, randomized trial that would expose a few hundred families to either optimally fluoridated or low fluoride-level water – all other factors in their lives being similar &/or carefully monitored – for five to 10 years. The 2015 Cochrane Water Fluoridation Review stated, “…research questions where evidence from randomized controlled trials is never going to be available due to the unfeasibility of conducting such trials. Community water fluoridation is one such area.” FOs have had over 75 years to conduct a scientifically valid randomized trial…

So, for 25 years you accepted the scientific consensus of the 74 organizations listed – not to forget the state health organizations and over thirty dental organizations worldwide, and then you suddenly had an epiphany and decided to abandon the processes of science and attack fluoridation based on your “new interpretation” of “evidence” that had been rejected by the scientific community. Wow, that’s an interesting confession!

Regarding the FDA: Most rational individuals, who aren’t trying to manipulate reality to fit their agenda, will understand that the FDA does not regulate any water treatment chemical added to protect the health of citizens. Rational individuals also understand there is a significant difference between fluoridated bottled water (0.7 ppm F-) which is regulated by the FDA as a “Food For Human Consumption”, and fluoridated toothpaste (over 1,000 ppm F-) which is regulated by the FDA as an “Over the Counter Drug”. Your arguments about “approval processes” are based only on your specific interpretation of “reality” – confirmation bias.

I understand enough quite about scientific research and “primary evidence” to fully appreciate how FOs manipulate that evidence to support their inflexible opinions – regardless of the cost. Frankly, I trust the organizations worldwide that support fluoridation over the opinions of a small minority of individuals who can provide no legitimate scientific evidence to support their opinions.

Three questions:

  1. Do you have any evidence to prove your claim that all the organizations that support fluoridation “do not review science to develop policy”? My conclusion is these organizations have, in fact “kept up on the more than 60 human studies on developmental neurotoxicity of fluoride”, and have come to the same conclusion as the NTP and the NASEM I quoted – that the studies are not relevant to fluoridation. FOs don’t bother with that detail.
  2. Do you trust any science-based conclusion about public health (like the efficacy of vaccination to protect people’s health) from the organizations that also support fluoridation? If members of these organizations are as dumb as you seem to believe, no health recommendation by the WHO, the AMA, AAP, NHMRC, BMA, CMA, CPS, EFSA, FSAI, HC, NZMA, U.S. DoHaHS, U.S. NIH, U.S. PHS, and dozens of others could be trusted.
  3. Again, can you provide the names of any respected science/health organizations in the world that support your interpretation of fluoride-reality?  Oh that’s right your other identity, WilllardO, listed the IAOMT and AEHSP which seems a bit short of the more than 100 actual science-based organizations that support fluoridation. 

WillardO, 03-02-2921 02:23 PMb style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">: The EPA 4.0 MCL is nearly six times the optimal fluoridation level and has nothing to do with optimally fluoridated water.  1.5 ppm is twice the optimal level in fluoridated water.  Why are you not opposing water chlorination since high levels of disinfection byproducts, like chloroform, can also be harmful to health?  Fluoridation levels are currently set at 0.7 ppm to maximize reduction of dental decay (which can have well-documented negative health consequences) and reduce the risk of mild fluorosis, which is the only documented negative consequence of drinking optimally fluoridated water – as confirmed and recognized by respected science and health organizations worldwide. 

There are many reasons that many European countries don’t fluoridate their water, but even respected organizations like the European Food Safety Authority and the European Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER) recognize the benefits of fluoridation and don’t list any proven risks.
The IAOMT is a strange choice to list as a reputable health organization.  Last year, 9/20, defrocked British doctor Andrew Wakefield, whose study linking vaccines and autism (which fueled anti-vaccination passion) was exposed as fraudulent, and Judy Mikovits, a former biochemist who starred in a viral video that promulgated a litany of false information on the coronavirus spoke along with Christine Till.

The “American Environmental Health Studies Project” is an activist group ([cofounder] Cliff, who had grown up in an activist family , spending much of his formative years helping his mother run for Congress and sue the NRC…”)  which, like R.F. Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccination/Anti-F activist group CHD, uses science denial and selective reporting of “evidence” to promote their ideologies.  

You continue to confuse EPA fluoridation regulations with FDA F-supplement regulations.

CarryAnne, 03-02-2021 08:44 AM:

  1. So, all of the organizations worldwide who don’t support your opinions have caved in to “political pressure to protect fluoridation policy”? That’s an excellent excuse when you have no supporting evidence.
  2. Of course, “People have different fluoride exposures based on their water consumption habits…”, just as they have different exposures to other chemicals in drinking water (residual disinfectants and disinfection byproducts, for example – unlike fluorine, most of them are not beneficial to health at any exposure level. The safe exposure levels for all residual chemicals are carefully regulated. Can you list some specific kidney organizations that have concluded that fluoridation causes kidney issues?
  3. Can you provide the name of any reputable science or health organization that has concluded community water fluoridation causes “fluoride toxicity in their [senior citizens] bones, bodies and brains.”?

The fact is, “The pattern revealed in the high-quality studies identified by the NTP is undeniable…” The pattern in those studies, even if determined by the majority of relevant experts to be “high-quality” does not come anywhere close to proving fluoridation lowers IQ or causes any other harm.
However, first, the majority of relevant scientists (not just in the NTP) must conclude that the studies are “hhigh quality”. There has actually been unprecedented criticism of many of the studies from experts from around the world – particularly for the 2019 Green, et al. study. 

Anyone with a moderate understanding of statistics can see that there is huge data scatter – which means that (1) any potential association between fluoride exposure and IQ is extremely weak, and there are other, far more important and unmeasured associations that could be responsible for the observations. (2) even a strong correlation between two things does not prove causation. In the graphs below, for example, there is clear evidence that increased sales of ice cream can increase murder rates and death by drowning, a higher income causes higher IQ and living in hotter climates lowers IQ.o:p>

rs5526, 03-02-2021 11:49 AM:

  1. Provide specific references that prove drinking optimally fluoridated water causes “substantial pain”, bone damage or other issues.
  2. So, you also believe the organizations I referenced have all supported fluoridation for over 75 years “based on anecdotal unproven observation”.  Do you trust any of the science-based health recommendations of any of those organizations – or do you just believe the unsupported anti-F opinions?
  3. How many of the studies fluoridation opponents use to try and support their opinions are published for free in reputable journals?
  4. Provide specific evidence that proves the “FDA has always opposed the ingestion of fluoride”.  I have never seen such a claim, and as noted, the FDA regulates fluoridated bottled water as a “Food for Human Consumption” not a drug – and there are no warnings required on fluoride-containing bottled water.