The Fluoride Deception (Hardcover)

by Christopher Bryson (Author), Theo Colborn (Author) "AS SHE DROVE alongside the Charles River in the bright August sunshine of 1982 for her first day of work at the Forsyth Dental Center..." (more)
Key Phrases: fluoride workers, fluoride scientist, industrial fluoride pollution, Manhattan Project, United States, New York (more...)

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.
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Review
"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."
-Publishers Weekly

"'""The Fluoride Deception" "reads like a whodunit. There are conspiracies, cover-ups, human casualties, and broken careers. The prime suspects in this toxic thriller are compounds of fluoride; the coconspirators represent industry, the military, and the public health community. At the book's ending, the suspect chemicals are not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but we are left with compelling evidence that powerful interests with high financial stakes have colluded to prematurely close honest discussion and investigation into fluoride toxicity."
- "Sheldon Krimsky, "Chemical and Engineering News,"
August 16, 2004 Volume 82, Number 33 pp. 35"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (February 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583225269
• ISBN-13: 978-1583225264
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #73,227 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

101 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Follow the Money (Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews

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.

75 of 80 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 "Author of THE WHOLE SOY STO... (Albuquerque, NM United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The fluoride book I have been waiting for, July 23, 2004

By	Wade Frazier (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It is the book I have been waiting for since 1997, when I read his and Joel Griffiths?s article about fluoride and the Manhattan Project. Bryson?s book is a landmark in the field, and full of original material, much recently declassified. It will be prominently featured in my fluoride essay when I re-edit my site sometime in the next year (I hope!). Bryson?s book reveals matters far more horrific than I related I my original essay. There were numerous fluorine accidents during the Manhattan Project, with workers literally disintegrating at times. It was all covered up in the name of ?national security.? There were many places in the book where I had to step back and take in the institutional evil that Bryson was documenting. Plenty was hair-raising. For instance, during the Manhattan Project, the protection afforded workers was nil, and many worked in a constant mist of hydrogen fluoride (HF), one of the deadliest acids known. Where the workers were most exposed to the HF, white people were not allowed as their skin damage was too obvious. So, in the most dangerous HF environments, the only workers allowed were black.

The U.S. government took the line of fluoride polluters, spinning an extremely hazardous waste into a health product. Much of the spinning happened just as Orwell?s 1984 was being published. I am not sure what the scariest part of the book is. Is it that the U.S. government performed extensive research into fluorine?s effect in the central nervous system (and all the results are still classified)? Or perhaps that the same people performing those experiments (who also performed the notorious plutonium experiments on unwitting subjects), were the same ?scientists? who produced the ?information? that showed how harmless fluoride was for people, as well as good for our teeth?! Bryson uncovered one study that showed the deleterious effects of fluoride on animal subjects, research that was paid for by fluoride polluters in the 1960s as they tried defending themselves from pollutions lawsuits. The results were so damning they were buried for 40 years until Bryson discovered it (the study showed fluoride causing emphysema when inhaled). All in all, Bryson?s book is an amazing effort.