Stephen Barrett and Wikipedia’s support of Fluoride: Who’s the “Poisonmonger”

By Gary Null PHD, and Neal Greenfield. Esq.

 

For the past fifty-plus years, there has been a series of debates and differences of opinion on public health issues. We are not talking about trivial matters. These issues have enormous implications for the public and the environment. And herein lies the problem. On one hand there are major corporate industries — the tobacco industry, the nuclear power industry, the agricultural industry, the pharmaceutical industry. Governmental agencies, most members of congress, and the White House, irrespective of Republican or Democrat, have consistently sided with and supported the industries causing our health and environmental problems. Consequently, clear and present dangers to the public, which could have taken months to resolve, are taking decades. 

 

Specific examples of industry propaganda include: Cigarette smoking does not cause cancer and is not addictive; Nuclear power is clean and safe; DDT, glyphosate, neonicotinoids, and pesticides do not destroy bees and do not harm our environment or endanger health; Sugar and the amount we are consuming does not cause cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes; the average American meat-based diet is necessary; Anthropogenic climate change does not exist. It is a myth. And even if it did exist, it wouldn’t impact us for the next hundred or two-hundred years; Vaccines are the biggest human health discovery in history. They prevent disease and the more vaccines a person takes, the safer society is. Vaccine resisters should be in prison. They endanger the rest of society. Therefore, we need more vaccines. It is always better to give government agencies the right to dictate what a person puts in his or her body because the public cannot be trusted to make decisions. After all, Paul Offit, a leading expert for the vaccine industry says a baby can safely handle ten thousand vaccinations at a time with no harmful effects. We are constantly told we need more drugs and antipsychotics prevent depression and anxiety. We should not have freedom of speech, the press, or internet because we are not scientists with doctorates and medical degrees, therefore we should have no say in how we manage our health. Hence, we should ban all opinions on alternative and complementary health and anyone who challenges the words of government, industry, or spokespersons is a social threat. We are expected to accept and believe. Sound a little Orwellian? 

 

Here is the problem and it’s not an existential problem it is a very real problem. Everything I have just laid out may seem Orwellian or like an intellectual screed against the establishment, but it is not. The media, government, and industry have been wrong on every single one of these issues. Activists, bioethicists, physicians, and victims have ultimately been proven correct. Johnson and Johnson just settled a $500 million lawsuit for intentionally harming six-thousand people in Oklahoma. Monsanto has lost three lawsuits for hiding the cancer risks of its bestselling glyphosate herbicide. Eighteen thousand more suits are currently pending. Fukushima is poisoning the Pacific and its negative consequences are being seen in California, Oregon, Washington, and Canada. There is a large body of medical research indicating that vaccines are neither safe nor effective to reach any kind of theoretical herd immunity. 

 

There are also the cases of the CDC having engaged in racist human experiments, such as the Tuskegee experiment that intentionally infected African Americans with syphilis. A senior scientist at the CDC, William Thompson, released documents showing the agency knew that the measles vaccine increased the risk of autism in African American boys and covered up that fact. We have irrefutable proof that Google and Facebook have been censoring factual information on health issues and political debate, favoring Hillary Clinton and Democrats against conservatives. The government has done nothing to prevent disease and all its agencies and industries backed by the mainstream media passes along industry propaganda as viable truths. Consequently, the US is the sickest nation on the planet. And our government is not only not stopping pollution, it is increasing it by supporting natural gas hydrofracking, oil, nuclear power, and by repealing and rolling back regulations that have held in check the full destruction of the quality of the nation’s water and soil. And the number one most dangerous information source on health topics is Wikipedia. In our opinion, Wikipedia is a dangerous propaganda machine driven by malignant ideologies, personal biases, and by profiteering as did Joseph Goebbel’s ministry of propaganda in the 30s and 40s. We believe the encyclopedia is incapable of telling the truth or presenting an alternative approach to disease with any fairness. It is a million times more malignant than the New York Times with its rapacious information on alternative and complementary medicine and its condemnation of CAM practitioners. So, it would seem that we are at a state of virtual incompatibility with truth in our society and those who seek the truth are now viewed as domestic terrorists. Another example of corporate propaganda is the debate on fluoride’s safety, and we will use one person’s power to deny the clear and present dangers of fluoridation. As an example of someone who is considered an arbiter of truth by the mainstream is Stephen Barrett. 

 

In his article entitled “Fluoridation: Don’t Let the Poisonmongers Scare You,” Barrett warns readers about half-truths told by fluoride opponents who he calls “poisonmongers.” Yet, it is Barret who tells half-truths. “Yiamouyianni and Burk issued several reports claiming that fluoridation causes cancer. Experts concluded that these reports were based on a misinterpretation of government statistics,” he writes. (Barrett 303)

 

What Barrett doesn’t tell readers is that in order to settle the question of whether or not fluoride is a carcinogen, a Congressional subcommittee instructed the National Toxicology Program (NTP) to perform an investigation. The study was supposed to have been released in 1980 but didn’t reach the public for another decade. When the NTP study results became known in early 1990, the President of NFFE Local 2050, Dr. Robert Carton, who worked in the EPA’s Toxic Substances Division, published a statement. It read, in part:

 

“Four years ago, NFFE Local 2050, which represents all 1100 professionals at EPA headquarters, alerted then-Administrator Lee Thomas to the fact that the scientific support documents for the fluoride in drinking water standard were fatally flawed. The fluoride juggernaut proceeded as it apparently had for the last 40 years—without any regard for the facts or concern for public health. EPA raised the allowed level of fluoride before the results of the rat/mouse study ordered by Congress in 1977 was complete. Today, we find out how irresponsible that decision was. The results reported by NTP…are…not surprising considering the vast amount of data that caused the animal study to be conducted in the first place….Four years ago we realized that the claim that there was no evidence that fluoride could cause genetic effects or cancer could not be supported by the shoddy document thrown together by the EPA contractor…If EPA had done [an in-depth, independent analysis], it would have been readily apparent-as it was to Congress in 1977-that there were serious reasons to believe in a cancer threat…”

 

According to Barrett, “Another favored tactic [of poisonmongers] is to misquote a profluoridation scientist…” But this accusation falls on its face because this scientist represented over 1100 professionals at EPA headquarters. I suppose those professionals were neither pro- nor anti-fluoridation; rather they were professionals concerned about public health and science.

 

Barrett also writes, “The antifluoridationists (“anti’s) basic technique is the big lie… It consists of claiming that fluoridation causes cancer, heart and kidney disease, and other serious ailments that people fear. The fact that there is no supporting evidence for such claims does not matter. ” But Dr. Carton’s statement suggests that there is evidence. Who are we to believe: Stephen Barrett or 1100 EPA scientists?

 

We have written a comprehensive article on fluoridation and here are the known and scientifically proven dangers of fluoridation: 

 

Dental Fluorosis

Effect on Intelligence

Endocrine Function

Reproduction

Cytotoxicity

Skeletal Fluorosis

Bone Fractures

Poisoning

Cancer

 

All of these dangers are supported by high quality literature published in peer-reviewed journals. More recently a Mount Sinai Medical School study published in the August 2019 issue of Environmental International revealed a connection between young people’s kidney and liver health with chronic low-level exposure to fluoride. And this same month we discovered JAMA Pediatrics reporting on a York University study in Canada that low-level exposure to fluoride in pregnant women resulted in measurably lower IQs in children evaluated at the ages of 3 and 4.

 

In the past we have published extensive investigative reports about fluoride’s health risks and the diseases associated with its consumption. 

 

Why Does Wikipedia Recommend Fluoride

https://prn.live/wikipedia-recommend-fluoride/ 

 

The Fluoride Controversy Continues, Part 1

https://prn.live/the-fluoride-controversy-continues-an-update-part-1/

 

The Fluoride Controversy Continues, Part 2

https://prn.live/the-fluoride-controversy-continues-an-update-part-2/ 

 

The Fluoride Controversy Continues, Part 

https://prn.live/the-fluoride-controversy-continues-an-update-part-3/

 

Orwell’s 1984 has arrived.

 

Barrett writes, “Although fluoridation’s safety is established beyond scientific doubt, well-planned scare campaigns have persuaded thousands of communities not to adjust the fluoride content of their water to prevent cavities. Millions of innocent children have suffered as a result.” Have innocent children suffered as a result? If fluoridation does not reduce tooth decay, how can this be right? Have innocent children and adults suffered because of fluoridation? Yes. And no, Dr. Barrett, fluoridation’s safety has not been “established beyond scientific doubt.” 

 

Perhaps it is prudent to exercise caution before defending the addition of a toxic substance to water supplies. It seems as if the fluoridemongers are engaging in the exact tactics that they accuse the antifluoridists of using. Half-truths. Making the simple statement that fluoride works. Lying about there being no supporting evidence for the dangers of fluoride.