Let's See That Fluoride Smile!

"So much is at stake. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe -- from Brazil to Australia -- live in homes that receive fluoridated drinking water."
"Hundreds of millions of people use toothpaste or other products with fluoride."
"Many millions of children receive topical fluoride treatments."
(signed) Chair Royal Society for Public Health, U.K. Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law, former chief dental officer for England, and more...

"We're scientists. We let the data tell us the story and still people don't believe it."
"As a neuropsychologist, I care about brain development. I care about effects that we cannot treat."
"At least with cavities you can treat them."
Christine Till, professor of psychology, York University, Toronto

"[Tooth decay is caused by numerous factors and water fluoridation alone] isn't a panacea."
"But [the Till study] said that this is a neurotoxin and that it will lower children's IQ and that, unfortunately, is undermining public health policy that has been widely advocated by the U.S. federal government, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and many others for decades."
Dr.Scott Tomar, professor, University of Florida School of Dentistry

"[I was taught during professional training that those opposed to fluoride] were a bunch of whack jobs and there's absolutely no science at all to suggest that fluoride is dangerous."
"[The York study] was sort of an eye-opener for me."
"[Proponents of fluoridation would] trash it, because they just don't want to believe the findings."
Dr.Dimitri Christakis, editor, JAMA Pediatrics

"We’re scientists. We let the data tell us the story and still people don’t believe it,” said the fluoridation study’s senior author, York psychology professor Christine Till.  Getty Images

As editor-in-chief of a world-renowned, highly reputable scientific journal out of the U.S. Dr. Christakis struggled with whether or not to publish a new study out of Canada that asserted the potential of pregnant women's imbibing of fluoridated water risks subtle damage to their child's brain. But he did publish the study, and then sat back in trepidation of what was most surely to follow; a storm of reaction from the medical-scientific community in defence of an additive to municipal drinking water sources meant to protect children's teeth from dental caries.

He envisaged anti-fluoridation advocates excitedly citing the study's findings as proof positive that their campaign to oppose the addition of fluoride to potable water is right on the money. Just as those within the world of science who are advocates of the use of fluoride as a preventive, and the municipal authorities wedded to its use, would slam the findings as harmfully inaccurate. The 'findings' have certainly added fuel to the anti-fluoride campaign whose activists are demanding a moratorium, an end to the "human experiment on millions of children".

For their part, respected and high-profile academics have launched their own protest by sending an appeal to the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, signed off by a in impressive number of highly-knowledgeable elite public figures and members of the scientific community. Their argument centers on forcing the release of the study's data to undergo independent review to either validate or to put to rest the conclusion leading to distrust of such a highly regarded health measure to prevent children's dental cavities and related dental disease.

The suggestion that children born to women exposed to higher levels of fluoride during pregnancy will be beset with lower IQs, according to the appeal, is full of inconsistencies and "incongruities", through focus on a significant portion of its text on boys as a "subgroup", failing to take into account the mother's own IQ scores, using invalid measures in determining just how much fluoride exposure relates to such an assumed outcome.

The confusion caused by the study's publication could, the group insists, influence public policy (which, presumably, it is meant to do). Proof enough seen in York psychology professor, Dr.Christine Till, senior author of the study, stating it to be a "no brainer" that pregnant women be advised to reduce fluoride intake during pregnancy to avoid an outcome of bearing a child with a slightly lowered intelligence, influenced by the effect of fluoride.

Studies show more cavities in Calgary children. Gavin Young / Postmedia

In Calgary, which has for years withheld fluoridation from its water system and which is in the process of reconsidering its eight-year moratorium on its use, the release of the study's data would most certainly have its intended negative effect. Dentists in Calgary have been exposed to more aggressive cavities in children's teeth since the phase-out of fluoride from the city's tap water in 2011. "The amount of decay that we're seeing is just startling", Calgary pediatric dentist Dr.Kari Badwi asserted.

And since untreated teeth can become abscessed and infected this is no slight matter of inconvenience. Dr.Badwi described treatment of a six-year-old recently who had half her teeth "just rotted down to the gums". Bacteria is able to "get into the brain, it can get into different organs and it can cause death", warned Calgary dentist Robert Barsky.

A case in point was a situation in Timmins, Ontario which does not fluoridate its tap water. In 2012 a case was reported in the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association, where an eleven-year-old Timmins boy suffered a brain abscess resulting from bacteria felt to have originated from an infected molar. Rushed to hospital when his mother discovered the boy screaming, lying on the floor in agony, he was airlifted to Toronto by helicopter, to undergo two brain surgeries followed by months of rehabilitation.


Dr.Christakis spoke of a four-point drop in a child's IQ not representing a significant impediment, yet taken in whole at a population level the total cognitive loss "would be a different story". When he first read the York study, "I was like, 'hold on a minute, is this Wakefield'?" in reference to the British physician who published a 1998 paper that claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, proven to be hugely inaccurate, retracted, with Wakefield losing his licence.

Concentrations in fluoridated tap water are deemed safe. ALASTAIR PIKE/AFP

However, Professor Till refuses to release her study's raw data, arguing it doesn't belong to her, but rather to a Canadian biobank with over 200,000 biological samples from thousands of mothers who gave birth between 2008 and 2012.The data, she points out, is meant to remain in Canada, although it is available for study to researchers in Canada and outside as well as long as it is acknowledged it will remain within the country. A doctoral student was hired by Professor Till to run "every single diagnostic test she could" to validate the results, offering the student a bonus should she find an error.

"It has major drawbacks in terms of how the measurements have been made. The results are very borderline in terms of statistical significance."
"[The self-reported consumption was not linked directly to levels of fluoride measured in bodily fluids, and the sex difference in IQ — the drop observed for boys but not girls] makes no sense."
"If you see a gender difference claim for this type of association, it’s far more likely to be a spurious finding rather than something true."
John Ioannidis, Stanford University meta-scientist