Water fluoridation may be health hazard
(Editor's Note: The following is a review of "A Struggle With Titans," by G. L. Waldbott, Carlton Press, $4.75.)
In an age when we are keenly aware of the debt we owe to modern medicine, it may seem illogical and even ungrateful to question such a widely promoted public health measure as water fluoridation. To many people, this "well-established" (but admittedly still controversial) procedure of adding fluorides to municipal water supplies to reduce tooth decay has become a closed issue. They need only to point to the oft-repeated endorsement of fluoridation by leading dental, medical and public health officials to conclude that the claims for its safety and effectiveness must be reliable. Not unnaturally, they find it extremely difficult to believe that respected professional and scientific organizations would continue to support and promote fluoridation if there actually were substantial evidence for adverse effects from it.
Yet there are numerous instances in the past when widely accepted but dangerous medical practices have had to be discarded in the light of subsequent findings. As early as 1847 the famous Austrian obstetrician, Ignaz Semmelweis, literally pleaded with his colleagues to correct the prevalent but unsanitary delivery room procedures which he had determined were the primary cause of childbed fever. His well-founded suggestions fell on deaf ears however, and nearly half a century elapsed before his views were generally accepted by the medical profession.
IN THE FIRST THIRD of the present century, the "unquestionably established" value of the ingestion of radium waters was subscribed to by many of the standard authorities of the day. During the mid-1920's, perceptive physicians like Harrison S. Martland who opposed this practice were severely criticized and even ridiculed by their "more enlightened" colleagues. Yet within a decade, medical councils were forced to admit they had been seriously in error when, years before, they had adopted the view that "radium has absolutely no toxic effects, it being accepted as harmoniously by the human species as is sunlight by the plant."
For 20 years, the procedure of giving premature babies high concentrations of oxygen to breathe was practically routine in many hospitals; it was only in 1954 that the practice was recognized as the cause of incurable retrolenticular blindness in many of these infants.
Thalidomide had been approved for general clinical trials and had been "tested" for nearly six years by over 1200 physicians in the United States without the appearance of a single report of serious side effects before its alarming teratogenic properties became evident.
THESE ARE JUST some of the almost countless examples of widely accepted medical and health practices that sooner or later have been found to be seriously harmful, if not actually disastrous. In citing them there is no intention of disregarding or disparaging the many genuine gains that have been made in the fields of medicine and public health. It is important to note, however, that not every "advance" that wins official approval and achieves widespread acceptance is necessarily the best or safest procedure than can be devised.
As applied to water fluoridation, these considerations make it clear that if there is sound evidence that fluoridation does cause harm, then the disputed dental benefits are necessarily only of secondary importance.
As a matter of fact, and as many people know, fluoridation has had far more vigorous, sustained and growing opposition among concerned scientists and physicians since its "unqualified endorsement" by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1950-1951 than any of the other three designated earlier measures ever had. For this reason, it is particularly timely and appropriate to give careful consideration to the evidence of harmful effects from fluoridated drinking water that has been assembled by the Detroit physician and allergist, George L. Waldbott, M.D., in his new book, "A Struggle With Titans."
FOR MANY YEARS Waldbott has been engaged in clinical research on various types of allergies and respiratory diseases. In 1949 he published the first report of a fatality due to anaphylactic shock from penicillin. In 1953 he described a reversible, asthmallike throat-and-lung ailment caused by smoking which can lead to chronic emphysema.
Since 1954 he has dedicated himself, at great personal cost and in the face of extraordinary opposition, to making known the still generally unrecognized toxic effects of fluoride in drinking water — even at the recommended concentration of only one part of fluoride per million parts of water
In "A Struggle with Titans" he presents a vivid account of how these efforts to communicate such information to the medical profession and to the public have been frequently thwarted and disparaged by powerful and determined interests promoting fluoridation.
Like the latter, it develops a forceful case against officially approved practices which are proving to be actually or potentially harmful to public welfare or individual safety. And like "Silent Spring," it will probably be accused of being "too-one-sided" and of showing "too little concern" for the serious problems whose attempted solution by indiscriminate broadscale programs it so insistently criticizes. But unlike "Silent Spring," "A Struggle With Titans" has been given almost no publicity in the major news media or by reviewers in widely circulated journals.
AS AN INTIMATE, intensely personal (but fully documented) narrative of these experiences, "A Struggle With Titans" is a fascinating book to read. Although it is not written in the haunting style of the late Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" it is tempting, nevertheless, to compare the two.
Drawing from his own extensive clinical investigations beginning in 1954 and correlating them with related toxicological findings of other workers, Waldbott develops a fairly detailed picture of the kinds of harmful effects that fluoridated water has been observed to cause in allergic and other types of susceptible individuals. It is noteworthy that some of these symptoms are also listed as side reactions of the fluoride tablets that are currently being recommended as dietary supplements for children in non-fluoridated communities.
RECAUSE THE FLUORIDE ion has such a broad spectrum of protoplasmic activity, and because people show considerable variation in their consumption of water as well as their sensitivity to fluoride, it is not surprising that a wide range of ill effects from fluoride has been reported.
Apart from dental and skeletal effects which are ordinarily associated with higher levels of intake, these side effects from water containing the recommended 1 ppm of fluoride are reported to include such familiar ailments as the following: migraine-like headaches, gastrointestinal distress, lower urinary tract irritation, excessive dryness in the throat, disturbances of the retina, arthritic pain and stiffness in the joints, unusual tiredness and weakness, and various skin disorders.
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ill effect on normal individuals, thus confirming that fluoride and not something else in the water was responsible.
Staunch proponents of fluoridation are not inclined, of course, to accept these reports of such reversible ill effects from fluoridated water as valid. Critics claim that Waldbott's findings have a psychosomatic rather than a chemical origin, that his blind tests were not conducted properly, and that his results have not been confirmed by others.
With these and other objections, Waldbott deals at length; and in his presentation of cases of illness from fluoridated water, he gives full details as well as references to the medical literature where the reports were originally published.
HE ALSO DESCRIBES, with meticulous documentation as to names, dates, and circumstances, the manner in which leading proponents of fluoridation have attempted to ignore or discount not only his findings but also virtually all other adverse reports that have appeared in reputable medical, dental, and other scientific journals.
Other means by which fluoridation has been and continues to be promoted are also considered in this book. Instances are cited of "group-pressure" methods through which dissenting dentists and physicians have been held in check. Details are given on how the rank-and-file members of the medical and dental professions have been kept literally in the dark concerning the various cumulative side-effects that have been reported to occur from naturally as well as artificially fluoridated water.
Because these are such common complaints, their possible relationship to fluoridated water is ordinarily overlooked. Many of them often reflect glandular or nutritional disturbances that have other causes. But in every instance in which fluoride was responsible, the symptoms were found to disappear (and not to return) within a few days or weeks after the patient changed to nonfluoridated water for all drinking and cooking and avoided high-fluoride foods.
It should also be noted that, despite years of extensive investigations throughout the world on the acute and "threshold" toxicity of fluoride to plants and animals, there are still many gaps in our clinical knowledge of how and to what extent low levels of fluoride in food, air, and water exert chronic toxic effects on the human organism.
FINDINGS SUGGESTIVE of at least occasional implication of fluoride in birth defects, arthritis, cataracts, stomach ulcers, kidney impairment, tumor growth, vascular calcification, thyroid disturbances, and even aging, all require a great deal more study.
WHEN THE PATIENT was fully recovered, the symptoms were readily and consistently reproduced in carefully controlled "blind" tests with milligram amounts of fluoride in distilled water taken in dosages having no
2
Since modern medicine is not satisfied—and rightly so—with only the partial prevention or reduction of other diseases of microbial origin, it is difficult to see why it should be willing to aim for anything less than the complete elimination of tooth decay in its efforts to promote good dental health. Even apart from the evidence for its toxic hazards, fluoridation falls far short of this goal. It cannot do more because it is contrary to the sound principles of balanced nutrition that have been found to produce teeth that are immune to attack by caries.
Daily Kansan
editorial page
Friday, April 15, 1966
Hence, if we are "to be constantly on our guard against suppressing by mistake some great discovery," we ought to give this book a fair hearing and take a careful look at all available evidence bearing on the alleged safety and effectiveness of fluoridation.
In "A Struggle With Titans" these and many other important aspects of fluoridation are considered and weighed. Numerous errors and shortcomings in conflicting research designed to "prove" fluoridation safe are clearly pinpointed and critically analyzed. In the end, the thoughtful reader cannot help but be impressed not only by the substantial nature of the evidence against fluoridation but also by the awesome dimensions of the issues involved.
If there is any area where critics might feel this book is deficient, it is in the comparatively small emphasis it gives to the seriousness of the problem of tooth decay in the modern world. However, this is not the primary concern of the book. Yet it does stress what has been known for some time, namely, that the composition of our modern cariogenic diets, particularly in regard to critical mineral deficiencies and imbalances, along with excessive consumption of sugar products, is the primary cause of increased tooth decay, rather than the absence of a specific amount of fluoride in the drinking water. Even the most ardent supporters of fluoridation acknowledge that at best it offers only partial protection against dental caries.
S
Albert W. Burgstahler Professor of Chemistry
"I'm A Pious Man Of The Whole Cloth"