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Title: Fluoride: A Big Mistake?
Published: 2018-04-06
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQAjWu0hBnw
Title: Fluoride: A Big Mistake?
Published: 2018-04-06
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQAjWu0hBnw
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In an age of technological innovations, with profound advancements in medicine and science, never before has there been a time like this where vast amounts of information is readily available at our fingertips, but in this age of technological breakthroughs, old dogmas die hard. And the most basic element of life itself has been neglected. Water. Without it, life on earth would cease to exist. In this report, we2/145
take an in-depth look at the deliberate addition of chemical compounds to the nation's water supply, a practice known as water fluoridation, endorsed by the government that has been in use in the United States for 70 years, despite numerous studies revealing potentially hazardous health implications. What is fluoride? Is it safe to drink? Is it safe for our children? Should we be adding fluoride to our water supply?3/145
What about fluoridated toothpaste? In this report, we speak with two men from the fluoride action network who are taking water fluoridation and the government head on with science on their side as they are currently suing the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, to end the deliberate fluoridation of water in the United States. Our two guests from the fluoride action network, Dr. Paul Connitt, who holds a PhD4/145
in chemistry and specializes in Environmental Toxicology and his son, Michael Connitt, who is an attorney at law. Michael is a member of the American Association for Justice, Public Justice, and in addition to his toxic torque practice. Michael has extensive background and expertise in the area of fluoride toxicology and has filed several administrative petitions on behalf of various consumer, environmental, and medical health organizations. Now Michael Connitt5/145
is also with the fluoride action network and is currently heading up a lawsuit against the EPA that could end water fluoridation as we know it. This is very exciting. Mr. Connitt, welcome the newsbud. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I look forward to talking. Now this is a major case, one that I'm very interested in. Before we get into that, can6/145
you tell us a little bit about fluoride action network, the team you guys have there, where the funding comes from, and the overall goals of your organization? Yeah. Well, we started the fluoride action network about 18 years ago in 2000. The idea of it was to broaden public awareness about the health effects of fluoride exposure and to bring integrity to the discussion of this issue. And7/145
we have been working to educate the public and policymakers about what the science shows about the risks and about the way fluoride actually affects the team. And because we used to believe, or was believed back in the 1940s and 1950s when they started fluoridating drinking water, that you needed to swallow fluoride. That's the way you got the main benefit. And today we now know that the8/145
main predominant benefit, whatever it is of fluoride, comes from the topical contact with the team. So there's really no compelling need anymore to be swallowing fluoride. And that's where you get the risks. We are not for profit and science-based. We don't get involved with conspiracy stuff. It's just what the science says. And trying to expose the fallacies of the government agencies and the dental lobby that9/145
keep claiming that fluoridation is safe and effective, when in fact it is neither. So in our view, United States really needs to be following the lead of Western Europe, which has ended for the most part, fluoridation of water, but still allows people to use fluoride and dental products and individual use products. And that's the way we should be going here in the United States and the10/145
fluoride action network has been trying to bring awareness to that fact and move us in that direction. Now your organization I've been familiar with for some time and you guys have been doing some great work. And right now you are taking on a major opponent, the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA and Court. The fluoride action network is currently suing the EPA. Now can you tell us11/145
a little bit about what this lawsuit is about? Yes. Well let me give you a little bit of history first of all. Back in 1986, the EPA established an absolutely ridiculous, safe drinking water standard for fluoride, four parts per million. That's nearly three times what every other country in the world and what the World Health Organization recommends for a safe level in drinking water. Mexico, Canada12/145
and most of the rest of the world, it's 1.5 parts per million. So this four parts per million, it suggests that something was very fishy in 1986 when that was set. And it was, we've since learned that it was politically determined by various entities that didn't want to pay a lot of money to remove fluoride down to a lower level. But that's a detail. My son13/145
who worked with the fluoride action network for several years, in fact he was the one that produced our wonderful health database and had many of the Chinese studies translated from Chinese to English so they were available to a Western audience. He came up with the idea of a petition under TOSCA. There is the toxic substances and control act, avoiding the safe drinking water act. If he14/145
had approached the EPA or sued the EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act, SWDA, it would have immediately gone back into the hands of the water division, which has we didn't experience, had dragged its feet for 11, 12 years on doing anything, even when the NRC, which they paid for, a study said there's a problem here and should do something better. This was useless. So obviously15/145
these people in the hands of, or let me put it a simple way, they are subservient to the much larger agency called the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. And the National Institutes of Health have had a policy pro-floridation. Since 1950, 1950 was when the public health service in the United States endorsed water floridation, incidentally an extraordinary endorsement because in 1950, they only halfway through the16/145
trials, they had no evidence, really significant evidence on effectiveness, and they certainly didn't have any evidence of health effects. The only thing that they admitted then, and many in the gentle lobby, only abit it now, that the only harm that floridation causes is dental therosis of mothling discoloration of the enamel. Okay, so we didn't, he didn't want to go that route because he, it was a17/145
self-fulfilling prophecy, they would have dragged their feet, they would have ignored everything. But under Tosca, any citizen can sue to, or petitioned to have the EPA ban a substance which was damaging to health, which was presented in an unreasonable risk to health. So Michael put a petition together, very, very well documented with over 200 studies, we wish we'd delivered hard copies to the EPA. Petitioning for18/145
the EPA to stop the deliberate addition of floridation of drinking water, because it posed an unreasonable threat to health. And the unreasonable threat is a defects on the brain. The lowering of IQ in children is the issue that we focused in on. There are many other tissues that we think are harmed by florid, the thyroid gland, bones, the kidney and so on. But now we focused19/145
in on the tissue for which there was most evidence. We, in fact, there's over 300 studies which indicate the fluid damage is the brain in animals, biochemical, behavioral studies, 52 studies now that it lowers IQ in children. It would put it, let's be scientifically correct here. There is an association between high exposure to florid, they're not so high. Florid exposure to florid and lower IQ in20/145
children. And studies which have come from China, from India, from Iran and from Mexico. We put all those studies together and presented them. The EPA had 90 days to respond to that petition. And after 90 days they said, no, it doesn't, essentially, doesn't cause any harm. These studies are not adequate or weak or whatever. They just dismissed the petition. However, they did us a favor. They21/145
didn't dismiss it on jurisdictional grounds. What we thought they were going to do is to say, we are not the agencies you should come to, you should go to the water division of the EPA, which you would have put it right back into the court of the people that have shown no, I might have you, no scientific integrity whatsoever. They didn't do that. They didn't claim22/145
jurisdiction issues. They said they rejected it on the substance of our petition. As that allowed us to then go to court and sue them and have this issue adjudicated by a federal judge. Right now is the battle of your life. It seems like at this point you're taking on a major opponent, the EPA, the environmental protection agency, which one would assume would have the full support23/145
and backing of the federal government on any type of issue, especially a legal one. The EPA, most of its work on fluoride historically has been done through the office of drinking water. That's the agency that we've primarily communicated with and dealt with in the past. The office of drinking water has really failed to take protective timely action on fluoride. The key example here is that in24/145
2006, the National Research Council, which is part of the National Academy of Science, produced an extensive report which concluded that the current safe drinking water for fluoride is unsafe and needs to be lowered. That was 12 years ago. The EPA's office of drinking water has still not lowered the safe drinking water standard for fluoride. They're not taking action. They're dragging their feet. TASCA provided an opportunity25/145
to have the issue addressed by a different section of the EPA. A section that really hasn't dealt with fluoride before. We liked having a different audience, if you will. There was another component to TASCA that was very attractive. It remains very attractive to us, which is that TASCA, the statute, which is toxic substances control act, provides that when you challenge the EPA in federal court, which26/145
we're now doing, you are entitled to what's going to happen. It's called a daynovo proceeding. That's a bit of legal jargon, but it's a very important phrase and concept. What it means is when you challenge the EPA, the court, typically when you challenge a federal agency in court, you are dealing with what's called the arbitrary and capricious standard, where the court is only going to overrule27/145
the agency. If the agency acted just completely irrationally like one plus one equals three, something that is so clear-cut that anyone looking at the record could see it. But normally, when you're challenging EPA and you're dealing with questions of scientific judgment, things like that, the courts are extremely deferential and they just let the EPA make whatever decision they want to make. Here a daynovo proceeding means28/145
that the federal court does not give difference to the EPA's judgment. The federal court is going to look at the evidence a new independently and make up its own determination as to what the facts are without difference to the agency. Not only that, but as we got a very significant ruling in February of this year confirming that we're not just limited to the information in the29/145
administrative record, we can get discovery against the EPA. We can request certain documents. We can depose their experts. Incredible. Just what we've wanted for years, an independent person, a qualified person, reviewing our science, their science, and we've never had a judge in jury before. The whole issue of fluoridation, you're not against science, you're against power. The other side has the power. The other side uses public30/145
relations, public relations techniques and lots of money to persuade the media, persuade the public that there's not a problem. The fluoridation is safe and effective, safe and effective, safe and effective. They produce a whole bunch of organizations that endorse fluoridation, etc., but not good science. This is going to be a true trial where we're going to have our experts taking the stand and testifying. The EPA31/145
is going to have its experts taking the stand and testifying. We're going to get internal documents. We don't know what they are, but we'll see and we'll be able to bring that evidence to bear. It's going to be a real unique and unprecedented opportunity to really have the evidence heard by an independent umpire, if you will. We are looking forward to that and this is something32/145
that for once we'll get this issue out of the monopoly, if you will, of the federal health agencies which have been dragging their feet for a long time and have been so invested in the fluoridation policy that they've really performed the role of cheerleader versus umpire. They really, the federal health agencies, I think, really have acted to see their role as promoting fluoridation versus soberly assessing33/145
the new science to see if it really is safe, if it really is effective, and if it really is a wise idea for us as a nation to be doing this. There are two big victories already and now my son is in the process of getting the best experts that we can find and can afford to present our case in a to convince the judge. And34/145
if we're successful for that and I do strongly believe that the sciences in our in our favor and I'll explain why I believe that in just a moment, it will be the end of fluoridation. If you see at the amount of science that we have, a reasonable judge is going to rule in our favor. I'm not sure yet whether we're going to have a judge in35/145
jury or just a judge. So this is very exciting and I explain why we're particularly excited at this moment and in incident you can see all this on our webpage, fluoridalert.org. This webpage, the revolving mastheads of which they're 10 cover our lawsuits. So it's very easy to find and also cover what I'm about to talk to you about a very important study that came out in36/145
September of last year, September the 19th, 2017. And why I remember that date so easily is that we had just had our annual fan conference in Washington, DC. And it was the day after our conference we were still in the hotel waiting to come home when this came across the wires that this study that I'm about to tell you about was published. Published in environmental health37/145
perspective, which is one of the leading environmental health journals in the world. What was the study? The study was funded. Let me give it the funders because this is incredibly important. The funders of this study, this multi-million dollar study was the National Institute of Health, remember, they are pro-fluoridation, have promoted it ever since 1950 by one of the more of that agencies. Two, the National Institute38/145
of Environmental Health Sciences, which for me is one of the best scientific agencies in the US government. And thirdly, the environmental protection agency. So the very agency that we are seeing actually paid for a study which shows that we are right, vindicated our position. And I'll explain why it vindicated our position. This study, as I said, was 12 years. It was done by a team that39/145
between them had over 50 studies, cognitive effects of children relating to environmental pollutants, layered mercury and so on. So the people that did this research had the credentials, the world's leading experts in this kind of study. That is also very important. They came from very prestigious institutions, the University of Toronto, the Mount Sinai, medical people, Harvard, Michigan, Indiana and University of Mexico. And the study was40/145
done in actual Mexico. Most of the researchers in American and Canadian, and what they looked at was 300 mother child pairs. They looked at the mothers during pregnancy and measured how much fluoride exposure that they were getting. And the measurement was fluoride in the urine. And that was important because there are many sources of fluoride and fluoride in the urine picks up all those sources. So41/145
it doesn't tell you whether it's from water or from toothpaste or from food or whatever. It just tells you how much fluoride the mother is being exposed to during pregnancy. Wow, that's a good start. And then they measured the IQ of these children, the offspring at four and between six and twelve. And they found a very strong correlation between exposure to fluoride in utero, in during42/145
pregnancy, and the IQ, a loss of IQ in those children. And here it gets even more important and striking because the exposure levels as measured in this study in Mexico are virtually the same as adults are exposed, including pregnant women, are exposed to in the United States. So the current exposure levels to fluoride in the United States, based on this study, would predict a loss of43/145
on average six IQ points in the population. Now that is incredibly significant because important because a drop of six IQ points would halve the number of very bright children in society, the number of geniuses in your society. These are the children with an IQ above 130. And would have increased by about 50 percent the number of children who are mentally handicapped, mentally challenged. That's an IQ44/145
less than 70. So you could imagine the social and economic ramifications of doing that to a whole population. And that incidentally is one of the problems of this ridiculous practice of fluoridation because if you put a medicine or a treatment in the water, it goes to everybody, it goes to your whole population, your whole population is being exposed to this toxic substance. And if you expose45/145
the whole population, you can predict upfront that if that some people in the population are going to be sensitive to that fluoride, they're going to be at one end of the normal distribution curve, they are going to be hurt, they are going to experience side effects. That's totally predictable, it's totally scientific to say that. Some people will be hurt. The only question is how many and46/145
to what extent? When you essentially medicate an entire population through the water supply, it's not really very controlled, is it? The dosage, how do you control the dosages? You can't. It's the most clumsy thing we've ever done in medicine. People promote as a fluoridation, love, just love to quote the center of disease control as saying that fluoridation is one of the top 10 public health achievements47/145
of the 20th century. It is one of the top 10 most misguided public health policies, the most fraudulent public health practice. It's a massive deception of the public. That's what it is. And you're right, I'm surprised any doctor subscribes to fluoridation. For these reasons, you're right. Once you put a medicine in the drinking water, you can't control the dose. And no, no. Every pharmacist knows you48/145
have to tell what dose, the patient's what dose to take. There's no control over dose. There's no control because you can't control how much water people drink. You can control the concentration most of the time, but because you're controlling the concentration at the public water works, not controlling the dose. For people are not only getting some people drink a lot of water, and in the tissue49/145
you're getting fluoride from toothpaste and some food and tea, pesticides, so on. Secondly, you can't control who it goes to. It goes to sick people. It goes to people with poor nutrition. It goes to people with other medical complaints, this may make it worse. Some people have poor kidney function, and the kidney gets rid of about 50% of the fluoride you take in each day. Those50/145
people with poor kidney function can't do that, so they are impacted more than the average person. And then some people have low iodine impact. So if fluoride impacts the thyroid gland, this would make that condition far worse with low iodine. So yeah, and then thirdly, another reason it's a lousy medical practice is because you are violating the individual's right to informed consent. This is in the51/145
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You can't do this. You can't force medicine on people. It's a major plant in modern medical ethics. Every doctor in the United States and around the world should know that if before you give medicine to somebody, before you give a treatment in some medical way, you have to get their consent. You have to tell them what it's good for, what it52/145
could help with, and you have to tell them what the side effects are, what the downside is. And then the patient should make up their own decision, their own decision. And if they violate that, they could lose their license, really. There's only a few exceptions to that. Like if somebody is mentally incapacitated, then the doctor may have to act without their consent, or even then they53/145
should get a guardians consent. So it's extraordinary to me that doctors have stood by and allowed their dental colleagues to push this foolish practice on the whole population without stepping in and say, a moment. You shouldn't be doing that. You haven't got your form consent. So basically what it comes down to is that when a community flouries, whether it's a town, state, or a country, you're54/145
doing to everyone what an individual doctor can do to no one. And that is ridiculous, but it's been going on for 70 years. And the problem is, for us, they had the power. We're talking about government health agencies. We're talking about local health boards. We're talking about the WIC program. We're talking about state health board state health departments. We're talking about the federal government, the center55/145
of disease control. These all plumish, promote it. It's safe and effective, safe and effective, safe and effective, safe and effective, like a broken gramophone record. The degradation today in the United States is a dogma. It's a medical dogma. And medical dogmas die hard. They don't just go away. You really have to work to really change the paradigm. And when you're dealing with many people in the56/145
dental profession have spent their careers promoting fluorination. And it's not easy to change your mind when you've invested so much of your professional work promoting something. So that is a barrier. That's one of the stumbling blocks that we face. Now I always point to the Western European experience. There were countries in Europe like Germany, part of Switzerland, part of Finland, Netherlands, that were flirting their water57/145
supplies but have stopped. So it's possible. We can do it. The United States unfortunately has been the most enthusiastic and active proponent of fluorination. So this is sort of the home of the beast, if you will. And so that does make it more difficult. And then the second plank of the Stranglehold is that the major media have put this off the radar that they won't touch