The Fluoride Deception [Paperback]

Christopher Bryson (Author), Theo Colborn (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: March 7, 2006

With the narrative punch of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action and the commitment to environmental truth-telling of Erin Brockovich, The Fluoride Deception documents a powerful connection between big corporations, the U.S. military, and the historic reassurances of fluoride safety provided by the nation’s public health establishment. The Fluoride Deception reads like a thriller, but one supported by two hundred pages of source notes, years of investigative reporting, scores of scientist interviews, and archival research in places such as the newly opened files of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission. The book is nothing less than an exhumation of one of the great secret narratives of the industrial era: how a grim workplace poison and the most damaging environmental pollutant of the cold war was added to our drinking water and toothpaste.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Concerns over fluoridated drinking water have long been derided as the obsession of McCarthyite cranks. But this muckraking j’accuse asserts that fluoride is indeed a dire threat to public health, one foisted upon the nation by a vast conspiracy—not of Communist agents, but of our very own military-industrial complex. Investigative reporter Bryson revisits the decades-long controversy, drawing on mountains of scientific studies, some unearthed from secret archives of government and corporate laboratories, to question the effects of fluoride and the motives of its leading advocates. The efficacy of fluoridated drinking water in preventing tooth decay, he contends, is dubious. Fluoride in its many forms may be one of the most toxic of industrial pollutants, and Bryson cites scientific analyses linking fluoridated drinking water to bone deformities, hyperactivity and a host of other complaints. The post-war campaign to fluoridate drinking water, he claims, was less a public health innovation than a public relations ploy sponsored by industrial users of fluoride—including the government’s nuclear weapons program. Legendary spin doctors like Edward Bernays exploited the tenuous link between dental hygiene and fluoridation to create markets to stimulate fluoride production and to prove the innocuousness of fluoride compounds, thereby heading off lawsuits by factory workers and others poisoned by industrial fluoride pollution. Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher

"Christopher Bryson is an excellent narrator, and he reports on recent research previously not known to me. Especially I am intrigued by the story about Phyllis Mullenix and her animal research on the influence of fluoride on behavior and brain development. . . . It is my sincere hope that his book will receive the attention it deserves and that its implications will be seriously considered." Dr. Arvid Carlsson, 2000 Nobel Prize Laureate for Medicine

"In much the same way biologist Rachel Carson warned us over forty years ago in Silent Spring about the havoc and harm being caused by the misuse of persistent pesticides, journalist Christopher Bryson here lays bare the secret story and hidden dangers of the introduction of fluoride chemicals from the cold war era into our drinking water. The irrefutable evidence of duplicity and cover-up presented in this book is hair-raising. The Fluoride Deception presents a scorching indictment of how researchers and health care officials working closely with government agencies, big industry, and their attorneys have allowed themselves to surrender their responsibility for the medical well-being of their fellow citizens." Dr. Albert W. Burgstahler, former president of the International Society for Fluoride Research and Emeritus Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Kansas

"Bryson is right on in his emphasis on the ineffectiveness of fluoridation of water with industrial wastes, and its risks of nerve and brain damage, and cancer, coupled with the long-standing industrial conspiracy to suppress this information." Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, University of Illinois School of Public Health

"The Fluoride Deception compellingly and inescapably exposes the murderous fraud that heads of state and industry have for decades perpetrated on an innocent public. Extremely well written and tightly researched, The Fluoride Deception is sure to become the ‘must read’ book in this important and burgeoning field." Derrick Jensen, author of The Culture of Make Believe and A Language Older Than Words --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press; 1 edition (March 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583227008
• ISBN-13: 978-1583227008
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Medical Books > Pharmacology > Toxicology
  • #70 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Social Policy
  • #98 in Books > Medical Books > History

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

167 of 178 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Do government and industry lie? April 26, 2004

By Follow the Money

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

With the futile search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction some Americans may just now be realizing that our government lies to us. The Fluoride Deception documents a cover-up perpetrated by a military-industrial-government complex starting in the 1930's and extending to the present day. Any person involved in the issue of fluoridation will want this excellent compendium of the history and science. The author has uncovered previously secret documents which reveal that fluoridation promotion is in the same league with "cigarette science" when it comes to distortion of science and public opinion.

After documenting all the scientific evidence for why fluoridation is a bad idea, a common response has been: "If it's so obviously bad, why do my dentist, the Surgeon General, and my toothpaste company all say it is so wonderful?" Bryson's book gives the answer. A powerful group of industries have worked behind the scenes to sell the idea of fluoridation. Their public relations campaign has been one of the most successful in history.

I long took for granted that fluoride was the reason I had much better teeth than my parents. I grew up with Crest toothpaste commercials repeating their "Look mom, no cavities!" message into my young impressionable mind ad nauseum. But not too long ago I found that rates of cavities have dropped precipitously in all industrial countries of the world over the past 50 years and most of these countries do not fluoridate their water. Countries with detailed public health records reveal the decline started before fluoride was ever added to toothpaste or water.

Bryson has uncovered secret government and industry documents showing that the aluminum, steel, atomic weapons, phosphate fertilizer, and other industries all have been aware for more than 50 years that one of the most serious and costly pollutants these industries release is airborne fluorides. The cold war obsession with building ever more nuclear weapons to win the "arms race" cemented cooperation between government and industry to promote fluoridation. The US Public Health Service during the 1940s was still a division of the Department of Commerce and its head was a top attorney for Alcoa. Bryson found meetings and letters between the military, Public Health Service, and industry where the idea of putting a shiny public relations image on fluoride by adding it to water first surfaced.

With today's increasing revelations about drug industry manipulation of science and government campaigns of deception, maybe the time is ripe for Bryson's book. Some people won't be willing to believe that their own dentist may have been duped. They won't feel comfortable reading this book. But for everyone curious enough to glimpse into the dark side of science manipulated for profit, this book is for them.

For environmentalists this book is as essential reading as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

For dentists and public health officials ... gather up your courage and read this book.

122 of 131 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Consumer Beware! Fluoride's Even in Some Health Foods June 12, 2005

By Kaayla T. Daniel

Format:Hardcover

This book refutes the mass of commercially motivated lies and propaganda about fluoride, giving us the facts and motivation we need to make the effort to keep this poisonous substance out of our lives. The challenge is that fluoride is nearly everywhere -- not only in most toothpastes and tap water but in processed, packaged, prepared and fast foods. Most of these are either manufactured using fluoridated tap water or include it as an ingredient. Surprisingly, this is also true of some "health foods," with high levels of fluoride found in soy protein isolate, a key ingredient in energy bars, shake powders, veggie burgers and infant formula. Babies on soy formula are at special risk not only for developing dental fluorosis but the mental fluorosis of ADD/ADHD. Although the fluoride levels of both soy and dairy formulas exceed that of breast milk, only soy formulas exceed safe levels when reconstituted with non-fluoridated distilled water. The levels increase considerably when parents reconstitute soy formula with fluoridated tap water. Worse, these soy bottle-fed infants are simultaneously exposed to high levels of neurotoxic aluminum, cadmium, manganese and plant estrogens. It's bad enough to expose adults to fluoride with its well-established links to cancer, thyroid and other endocrine system disorders but unconscionable to expose infants and children whose brain, reproductive and other systems are developing. I urge readers to buy extra copies of this book, give them to public health officials, urge them to stop promoting fluoride as beneficial to our health, warn the public about its toxicity and to press for the legislation needed to remove this waste product from our water supply.

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I Couldn't Put It Down! September 7, 2006

By J. Hagg

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Christopher Bryson definitely did thorough research before writing this book. It is a startling look at the awful truth about the deadly poison fluoride. Before WWII it was used only as rat and ant-roach poison. The only reason fluoride ever got used for anything else was the need for a gas so reactive it would split uranium atoms in half. We were in a race with the Germans to develop the Hydrogen Bomb. Neither the US or Germany were having success in working with fluoride. It would blow up whatever it was housed in and set the building on fire. Finally, they were able to prevent this from happening and Hiroshima and Nagasaki are history. The real star of this event according to Bryson is not uranium, but rather fluoride.

Once WWII was over we had the cold with the Soviets to contend with. We needed to keep ahead of them in the nuclear arms race. To most Americans fluoride was still considered rat posion. Something had to be done to make it acceptable to the American people. Some flawed research in the 1950s showed that it prevented tooth decay. The rest is history.

Many court battles have been fought over the toxicity of fluoride to the soil. One famous case was fought by the New Jersey peach growers with Dupont. They were downwind from the Dupont plant. In the summer of 1943 their orchards were blighted, their poultry were dying, and their fields were often strewed with dead cattle. Some cows were so crippled they could not stand up. The horses were to stiff to work. Workers who ate the produce they had picked vomited all night and into the next day. The Farm workers sued DuPont and the Manhattan Project (atomic weapons research) for fluoride damages. Workers inside the plant were often exposed to large doses of fluoride. They often developed a fibroid condition of both lungs and chemical burns were seen.

All these human, plant and animal damages are classic signs of fluoride poisoning. Wherever a chemical, aluminum, steel or fertilizer manufacturing plant using fluoride was located the surrounding vegetation would turn brown and the domestic and wild animals would look sickly, cripple up and die. The people in and outside the factories would exhibit all the classic symptoms of fluorosis (fluoride poisoning). The military didn't want fluoride to be declared toxic and neither did the big manufacturers.

It doesn't target one part of the body, fluoride is a systemic (total body) poison. The signs of fluorosis are identical to the sign of thyroid malfunctioning. Fluoride and iodine are antagonists, so it can seem like a person is low in iodine, when actually the fluoride is preventing the iodine from being used by the thyroid. Fluoride also prevents minerals, such as calcium and magnesium from being used by the body. For more information on various body systems fluoride damages visit the "excellent" website put out by the Fluoride Action Network.