AMY GOODMAN: Today
we will talk about this new book “The Fluoride Deception” by
Christopher Bryson. It looks at the background of the fluoride
debate. According to Chris, research search changing fluoride
safety was either suppressed or not conducted in the first
place. He says it is a triumph not of medical science, but of
U.S. Government spin. He joins us in the studio.
Welcome to Democracy
Now!
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Thank you for having me.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you just give us the history? Is it all over
this country and why is it there?
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: It’s in about two thirds of the water supply
in the united states. However, the united states is virtually
alone in the addition of fluoride to its water supplies and 98%
of western Europe, for example, don’t add fluoride to the water
supplies in many communities. Country there is who have fluoride
in the water have taken it out.
The theory behind
fluoride is that the addition of fluorides to water supplies
will give you less cavities in your mouth. And that’s been the
prevailing wisdom of the public health establishment since 1950
when they signed off on that. My book “The Fluoride Deception,”
challenges you or requires you to think of fluoride differently.
The book under the
secret history of this book is premised on 10 years of
investigative work going into the archives of the United States
Manhattan Project, going into -
AMY GOODMAN: The making of the atomic bomb.
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Yes, the Manhattan Project with the World
War II, very secret project to make the atomic bomb. I went to
industry archives, a very large, significant industry archive
out at the University of Cincinnati and found that the very same
health researcher, Dr. Robert Kehoe who headed up the
laboratory at the University Of Cincinnati, he spent his entire
career telling the United States‘ public health community that
adding lead to gasoline was safe.
That’s now being
discredited. He was also one of two leading public health
scientists saying that adding fluoride to water was safe and
good for children. So, that’s the - some of the material that
this book gets into.
JUAN GONZALEZ: The common understanding that many of us have in
this country is that there’s been sort of a persistent,
anti-fluoridation move independent this country, but it has been
considered like the fringes of American society. Could you talk
a little bit about how the development of the atomic bomb would
involve in the whole fluoride campaign?
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that’s - it’s a
media swirl, Juan, as the grassroots citizen movement against
water fluoridation of t hat fact came into being almost
immediately... the public health service had been against adding
fluoride to water for years.
In 1950, they did a
complete about-face, a flip flop. And the citizens across the
country were outraged that this rat poison was going to be added
to the water supplies. Today the fluorides that goes in our
drinking water is almost exclusively raw industrial pollution
from the Florida Phosphate Industry.
It’s a waste that’s
scrubbed from the smokestacks and trucked in tankers and dumped
into reservoirs. That is a raw industrial poison.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second. Rat poison?
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Yes. Sodium fluoride is used as a
rat poison for a long time.
JUAN GONZALEZ: But, again, the
connection to the atom bomb.
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Sure. Atom bomb. Yeah. Sure. Let me get back
to the - in fact, the movement against fluoridation is a
precursor to the movement of today. It has many political hues,
many different groups, conservatives, liberals, republicans
across the board and it was led not by nut cases, but by
scientists and doctors with long-established pedigrees safe
guarding public health.
The leading
scientist opposing water fluoridation was a man by the name of
Dr. George Waldbott. He warned the United States about
the dangers of cigarette smoking and the allergic reaction to
penicillin. This is the background. It is not a fringe movement.
It is being marginalized by the media and hasn’t been well
reported on. My book attempts to address that.
The Manhattan
Project, I mentioned one leading fluoride researcher, scientist,
Robert Kehoe, the second was the name, a fellow a scientist by
the name of Dr. Harold Hodge. For most of the Cold War,
Dr. Hodge was the leading scientist assuring the nation of the
safety and effectiveness of adding fluoride e to water supplies.
Dr. Hodge had his public hat, he had his private hat. He was the
senior toxicologist for the Manhattan Project to build the
world’s first atomic bomb.
Fluoride is a key
ingredient in industry used for making aluminum. It’s used for
making steel. It is used for producing high-octane gasoline, to
name a few industries the dental story is a minor story. The
real issue is pollution outside these industrial plants and
pollution inside the plants. Industries are on the hook for
millions and millions of dollars for potential damage for
injuries to workers.
There’s a medical
study commissioned by industry at the University Of Cincinnati .
In the 1950’s which shows that fluoride is profoundly injurious
to lungs and lymph nodes in experimental animals. That study was
buried. The significance of that study, had it been shown to the
standard setters, the fluoride that men and women workers in
these industrial plants breathe, the threshold levels would have
been set much lower.
That is a crime.
What that means is that tens of thousands of workers in
factories have been injured as a result of this suppression of
this medical information. Anyway, to return to your question.
The Manhattan
Project needed fluoride to enrich uranium. That’s how they did
it.
The biggest
industrial building in the world, for a time, was the fluoride
gaseous diffusion plant in Tennessee the Manhattan Project and
Dr. Hodge as the senior toxicologist for the Manhattan Project,
were scared stiff less that workers would realize that the
fluoride they were going to be breathing inside these plants was
going to injury them and that the Manhattan Project, the key -
the key of U.S. Strategic power in the Cold War Era, would be
jeopardized because the Manhattan Project and the industrial
contractors making the atomic bomb would be facing all these l
lawsuits from workers, all these lawsuits from farmers living
around these industrial plants and so Harold Hodge assures us
that fluoride is safe and good for children.
Very hard to get a
public doctor, an expert witness in a court to say if it’s good
for children. How can it be harmful for workers?
JUAN GONZALEZ: In essence, the uranium and fluoride that was
necessary for enriching of the uranium and produced this
by-product and obviously this waste of fluoride in my mind it
sounds very similar to
the issue of depleted uranium,
again, being a by-product of the nuclear industry and the need
then to sanitize these waste products from our nuclear industry,
for the public to get rid of them in other words, right?
So, it’s - could you
talk a little bit about the role of
Edward Bernays, the father
of propaganda or public relations in America in convincing the
public about this?
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Yeah. Edward Bernays is a legendary
figure in the 20th century. He was Sigmund Freud’s nephew and
Bernays, he was married to a feminist and he was very attune to
the liberal currents in the 20th century and he was a
Machiavellian genius. He is the father of public relations.
He understood that
you could harness that liberal sentiment for commercial gain and
he had women march in 1916, he had Suffragettes march in The
1916 Easter Parade In New York City holding cigarettes as
torches of liberty. He was working for the American Tobacco
Company and George Hill.
He was - so, my book
“The Fluoride Deception,” uncovers for the first time
correspondence between Bernays and the New York City Health
Commissioner, Dr. Leona Baumgartner in which he says that
helping out on the fluoride campaign in New York in the early
1960’s interested him because it related to problems of
engineering consent.
So he was the
Wizards of Oz behind the curtain.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute to go. I wanted to ask how
fluorides ended up in the water of each community where did the
decision get made and how did those debates play out?
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: The public health service endorsed it in
1950 and by and large, it is not given over to referendum. This
is a democracy issue. When it is submitted to the votes, far
more often than not, voters give it the thumbs down. Mostly it
is by fiat or dictate. In New York City, for example it was the
board of estimates that signed up for it, that gave it the green
light. So, that’s -
AMY GOODMAN: Where does it come from?
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Fluoride?
AMY GOODMAN: Where do they ship it in from? Do they have to dump
it on a regular basis in the reservoirs?
CHRISTOPHER BRYSON: Yeah the fluoride comes up - we were talking
about 9/11.
Since
9/11, there has been a lot of
concern about the safety of these fluoride tankers. So toxic are
the contents of the fluoride tankers coming from the Florida
Phosphate Industry to New York City or all over the country that
there is a fear that the tankers high jacked.
AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Bryson, we have to leave it there.
Author of “The Fluoride Deception.”
This is Democracy
Now!
