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January 11, 2008
A letter to the editor in a Gold Coast newspaper registers objection to the proposed fluoridation of drinking water. It quotes in full another letter to the editor printed in the Malibu Times objecting to the fluoridation of tap water there. The letter within the letter is signed Martin and Janet Sheen.
"Yes, that's him" writes the Gold Coast resident. "Martin Sheen of Apocalypse Now and more recently West Wing fame".
So there you go. Fluoride must be bad if President Bartlet says so. Does that make Julie Andrews an expert on childcare? Should William Shatner be running NASA?
Sheen may very well know about fluoride. He may even have learned about it while preparing to pretend to be the president. He probably knows the difference between himself and the role he played, and might very well expect readers of his letter to know the difference as well. But I wonder whether his letter would be quoted by an Australian if he was, say, Frank Burns from MASH? Or Donny Osmond, Paris Hilton or Michael Jackson?
President Bartlet would know all about fluoride. President Bartlet is a good guy who would know what to do with Queensland water. Apparently.
The stage managed, constructed nature of politics is a central theme of The West Wing. Spin is carefully constructed and fed to the public via a compliant media. The news cycle is central to the conduct of business at the White House. In one episode a serious investigative journalist is miffed at being assigned to political reporting where he is effectively reduced to gossip columnist. Nobody challenges his argument.
This is the world we live in. Anna Bligh says we're getting fluoride and the local paper publishes an objecting letter citing an actor as an authority, whose legitimacy comes from his role in a show clearly depicting the illusion that is politics.
We can't show you this man's face, because he's a dentist. But we can show you this other man's face because he's an actor pretending to be a dentist. He will now proceed to sell you a toothbrush.
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“Second Thoughts about Fluoride,” reports Scientific American
New York - January 2, 2008 -- “Some recent studies suggest that over-consumption of fluoride can raise the risks of disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland,” reports Scientific American editors (January 2008). “Scientific attitudes toward fluoridation may be starting to shift,” writes author Dan Fagin.
“Fluoride, the most consumed drug in the USA, is deliberately added to 2/3 of public water supplies theoretically to reduce tooth decay, but with no scientifically-valid evidence proving safety or effectiveness,” says lawyer Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation.
Fagin, award-wining environmental reporter and Director of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program, writes, “There is no universally accepted optimal level for daily intake of fluoride.” Some researchers even wonder whether the 1 mg/L added into drinking water is too much, reports Fagin.
After 3 years of scrutinizing hundreds of studies, a National Research Council (NRC) committee “concluded that fluoride can subtly alter endocrine function, especially in the thyroid – the gland that produces hormones regulating growth and metabolism,” reports Fagin.
Fagin quotes John Doull, professor emeritus of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, who chaired the NRC committee thusly, “The thyroid changes do worry me.”
Fluoride in foods, beverages, medicines and dental products can result in fluoride over-consumption, visible in young children as dental fluorosis – white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted teeth. We can’t normally see fluoride’s effects to the rest of the body.
Reports Fagin, “a series of epidemiological studies in China have associated high fluoride exposures with lower IQ.”
“(E)pidemiological studies and tests on lab animals suggest that high fluoride exposure increases the risk of bone fracture, especially in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and diabetics,” writes Fagin.
Fagin interviewed Steven Levy, director of the Iowa Fluoride Study which tracked about 700 Iowa children for sixteen years. Nine-year-old “Iowa children who lived in communities where the water was fluoridated were 50 percent more likely to have mild fluorosis… than [nine-year-old] children living in nonfluoridated areas of the state,” writes Fagin. Levy will study fluoride’s effects on their bones.
Over 1200 professionals urge Congress to cease water fluoridation and conduct Congressional hearings because scientific evidence indicates fluoridation is ineffective and has serious health risks. Support them; write your representative here:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2477/t/2782/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=21960
(or http://www.FluorideAction.Net )
“(G)enetic, environmental and even cultural factors appear to leave some people much more susceptible to the effects of fluoride,” writes Fagin
“What the [NRC] committee found is that we’ve gone with the status quo regarding fluoride … for too long… and now we need to take a fresh look,” Doull says, “ In the scientific community, people tend to think that its settled… But when we looked at the studies that have been done, we found that many of these questions are unsettled and we have much less information than we should, considering how long this [fluoridation] has been going on. I think that’s why fluoridation is still being challenged so many years after it began, In the face of ignorance, controversy is rampant.”