Ep 178 Fluoride 1: The real tooth fairy

Is it just us, or does it seem like every other week there’s a new headline about some state or town banning water fluoridation? As it turns out, this has been going on for decades, basically since fluoride was first introduced. Why are some people opposed to fluoride? Is there any basis to their fears? What does fluoride actually do? And how the heck did we find out about it? This week and next, we’re deep diving into our first dental discussion about this revolutionary mineral. In the first of these episodes, we explore the origins of fluoridation and the outcry against it - how did tuberculosis, a gold rush town, and a dentist with an insatiable curiosity set the stage for one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century? And why has there been pushback against it since its inception? Tune in to find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is now twenty five years since the late Trenley
Dean and I journeyed by train from Washington, d C.
To Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be joined by Philip Jay
for a meeting with the mayor to gain his approval
for a water fluoridation experiment. There were no signs of apprehension,
of daring or of pioneering. There was no suggestion that

(00:22):
we were being foolhardy in subjecting a population of one
hundred and sixty thousand people to a procedure which might
have either short or long range hazards. We were merely
replicating Nature's best based on an extensive background of study
data in Nature's laboratory. In the United States alone, some

(00:43):
seven million people in one thousand, nine hundred communities had,
throughout life used drinking water which was naturally fluoridated with
a fluoride concentration of zero point seven parts per million
or more. We knew what too much floride did, We
knew what too little did. We knew what the optimum

(01:04):
amount was, and we had reassurance that one part per
million fluoride in the drinking water had the same biological
effect whether it got there from flowing over rocks or
from a feeding machine. Twenty five years ago, there were
no anti fluoridationists to becloud the issue or distort our efforts.

(01:24):
The opponents of fluoridation act collectively as merchants of fear
and doubt, implicating fluoride as either causing or exacerbating virtually
every disease and biologic malfunction known to mankind. They discovered
early that the public referendum method afforded them excellent opportunities

(01:45):
to exploit fear and doubt while posing as protectors of
human rights and religious freedom. The anti fluoridationists sought opportunities
to engage us in debate on the platform.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
On radio, and on television.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
In retrospect, it is clear that it took us much
too long to learn that these public debates, these confrontation dialogues,
increased confusion rather than understanding, and thereby helped serve the
cause of the anti floridationists. On July twenty seventh, nineteen
sixty nine, the Assembly of the World Health Organization, at

(02:20):
its annual meeting in Boston, endorsed water fluoridation. This endorsement
adds another asset of great potential use that potential will
not be activated, however, unless it engenders commitment and political
action by the proponents of water fluoridation. It has been

(02:40):
said that only a fool learns from his own mistakes.
You are invited to escape that classification by learning from
the mistakes committed by me and my colleagues during the
past twenty five years.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Aaron, Yeah, that's very interesting, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, so that is a like a reflection article about
fluoridation after twenty five years by one of the people
who led the charge, John Knutsen, and that paper was
published in nineteen seventy.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, sometime it's just it's fastating to me. I think
also the reflection of like, we made mistakes.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
We made mistakes by not being by by just.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Assuming that the public would accept facts and science, right yeah, Like, yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Have science on our side, but that doesn't.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Really do mean all that much, right Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
So it's so it was really interesting the whole the
whole paper is very interesting to read.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
I also I love that I tell my five year
old that all the time, I'm like, you could learn
from our mistake. We're just trying for you to learn
from our mistakes. So that you don't have to make
the same way. It doesn't work with the five year old.
I don't know if it works with grown ups either.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
No, certainly, not rarely. Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
And I'm Aaron Aman updight.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
And this is this podcast will kill you.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Welcome to episode one of two on fluoride.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Fluoride. There's a lot there.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
We wanted to get it all, you know, out in
the open, the full story.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
I am really excited about this. We split this episode
into two episodes, this series. We're making a series out
of it, very much like we did with raw milk.
So today I just get to listen. I'm so excited
about that. I mean, well, you tell us all about
the history of fluoridation and how we got to where

(05:27):
we are today, and then next week I'll go through
what the heck is a cavity anyway?

Speaker 1 (05:32):
What is? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (05:34):
And what do we know about the like biological effects
of fluoride?

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, wait, I am really excited.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
I mean, like it's it's very funny to me because
when I was doing this and I'll tell you more
about this like in the actual episode. Yeah, but the
parallels between raw milk and fluoride are just off the
charts where I'm like.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
I expect nothing less.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
Yeah, I feel also very anti vaccine too, Like it's
all the things and it's all the same playbook.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
Like we've talked about you and I a lot, Yes.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
The playbook. That's what I think reading that paper.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's funny because like we talk about this in our
in our presentations, where we're like, this is how disinformation spreaders.
This is the strategies they use a debate equal sides
or equal time to both sides, And I'm like, oh
my gosh, there were so many other things, just like
fear and doubt, and then I think the other scientists. Yeah,
the other thing being in action that like people don't

(06:31):
feel well informed enough about fluoride because it is a
really complex scientific topic to vote at all. So then
even if they might be pro fluoridation, they're like, but
it feels safer to not vote, feels safer to not
vaccinate despite what we know anyway, Right, there's something because.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
It feels like not doing something is like not for
taking a side, when in.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Fact it is a side.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
So yeah, it's and getting people to like be pro
flora and not just like you know, indifferent is really
like pulling teeth, is it? Eric?

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Did you like that? I was really good.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Your face was so straight when you said it.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
I was trying to find the best transition to quarantiny dime.
Oh yeah, it's quarantine It's quarantina dime.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
We're drinking, pulling teeth. I love it, pulling teeth, pulling teeth.
It is what's in it? It's delicious, it is. It's
got elderflower, liqueur mint, prosecco mint because like you know, freshness.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Persecution paste, soda water.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, bring a little toothpist. Don't consume toothpaste?

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Do you not know?

Speaker 5 (07:46):
It's a great little summary, refreshing bev and we'll post
the full quarantini recipe as well as the non alcoholic
placey Berrita on our website This podcast will kill You
dot com, as well as on all of our social
media channels, which if you're not following us on those.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
You should be shuck it out. We're there.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
We are.

Speaker 4 (08:09):
Also, if you haven't yet rated, reviewed, and subscribed on
whatever platform that you love to listen where you're listening
right now, do so.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
We'd love it. It would appreciate We would appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
If you're not already subscribed to the exactly right YouTube channel,
you could do that as well too.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
We're there, We're there.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
We're also we have a website, but you listened to
episodes before you know what's there.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Let's just get still, hap it.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
This podcast will kill you dot com.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, and hello. Well we'll get started just
after this short break. Born in eighteen seventy four, Frederick

(09:02):
McKay had spent his childhood, like many others, in his
hometown of Milford, Massachusetts. He worked in his father's dry
goods store. He played in bands, he went to school.
But when he turned sixteen, he noticed that something felt off.
Maybe it was a lingering cough, maybe it was night sweats,

(09:23):
persistent fever. The diagnosis tuberculosis. Like many others at this time,
I mean tuberculosis, was rampant. He sought to cure his
disease with a better climate, dry air, so he traveled
to Colorado Springs, where he recuperated for a while until
he felt well enough to move back to Massachusetts. Upon

(09:44):
returning to the northeast, he decided on a life of dentistry,
and just as he was completing his education, McKay's tuberculosis
flared up again, driving him back west, where he set
up his dental practice in Colorado Springs in nineteen oh one.
I think he was like, there's no point in me,
Like I should just stay out west forever, right, okay?

(10:05):
And before long after his arrival there, he began to
notice an unusual pattern in the teeth of some of
his patients. And even just like talking to people around town,
he noticed this something on their teeth, and this was
not anything that he had come across in his dental training.
Their teeth were streaky with brown or yellow spots, something

(10:26):
that he called modeled enamel and that the locals called
Colorado stain or Colorado brown stain, which was a term
not entirely welcomed by city officials who were trying to
get people to come to the Springs, not repel them.
And so McKay got kind of obsessed with the mystery
of modeled enamel, like what the heck was causing it?

Speaker 2 (10:49):
And why did no one know about it?

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Why was this not in any dental textbook that he
had come across. Other local dentists knew about it, and
they weren't all that interested, and they just kind of
figured well, specific to the Colorado region. It was kind
of like, yeah, we've seen it before.

Speaker 4 (11:05):
How interesting to not to just be like, yeah, this
is how it is here. But I guess if you
have no other frame of reference, so it makes sense.
He like trained in one place, came to somewhere else
and was like this is different.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, yeah exactly. He was like, what do you mean.
This is not like, this is not what people this
is not just like yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
But when he so he briefly moved Mackay briefly moved
to Saint Louis, and that's when he was like confirmed
for him, Okay, this is not like a nationwide issue.
This is something that is specific to the Colorado region.
And so when he moved back to Colorado again tuberculosis driven,
he was like, Okay, someone's got to get to the

(11:47):
bottom of this. I guess it has to be me.
I think secretly he was like, oh my gosh, I
really want to know what's happening here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
And so the first.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Steps too solving this puzzle were raising awareness, which he
did by attending various regional and state dental meetings, sometimes
with a patient in tow to be like Colorado bound,
these teeth open up.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
And also just by getting a sense of the incidents
and the geographical scope of the issue, which he did
by examining children in Colorado Springs public schools, eighty seven
point five percent of the kids had modeled teeth.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Wow, okay, huge.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
That's a huge proportion.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
McKay's efforts made it clear that there was a real
issue here that was worth looking into. It wasn't just
like a local curiosity. This was affecting a great number
of people's lives. And as McKay cast a wider net,
traveling around the state to look for more cases and
receiving help from dentists across the country, he realized that

(12:47):
the Colorado stain was not at all limited to Colorado
or even the US. I think there was like another
term for it. I wish I'd written this down in Texas.
It was like maybe like Texas teeth or something like that.
There are for some communities that models yeah, or modeled enamel.
And so this this finding that it was like much
more widespread, and he was like, okay, there's got to

(13:07):
be what is driving this. It led him to team
up with a the dean of Northwestern University's dental school,
whose name was doctor Green Black, which is hilarious to
me that it's Yeah, and they wanted to partner to
systematically study, like what was happening with the stain at
the tissue level.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
You know, what is the stain.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Coming, where's it coming from, what is it in there? Yeah,
and then try to find its root cause. As they
collected more samples and more data on where and how
the staining occurred, one.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Thing stuck out to them.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Even though the enamel on modeled teeth was rough and uneven,
that didn't seem to make the teeth more susceptible to decay,
which is what they would have predicted. In fact, what
they noticed after examining thousands of patients was that decay
was much lower in people with modeled enamel than it
was in other populations. I mean this could be huge,

(14:07):
Like this finding had huge implications, except they still didn't
know what caused the modeling. Okay, but they had a suspicion. Okay,
it was in the water.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
In his investigations, McKay had seen that children who lived
elsewhere for the first two to three years of their
life before moving to a modeled teeth area were not affected.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
So he also noticed that basically all members of a community,
regardless of their diet, whether they were rich or poor,
where their house was, they.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
All had modeled teeth.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
He added stronger evidence to the water hypothesis when he
visited a dentist in South Dakota who had reached out
asking for McKay's advice on the modeling that he saw
in his own town. And it turned out that the
town had switched their water supply eighteen years prior. And
you could draw a sharp line between those born before
the switch, no modeling, and those born after lots of modeling.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Ooh right, really.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
And so over the next fifteen years, McKay continued his
search for the answer and had by the late nineteen
twenties accumulated ample evidence that the water held the key.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when
McKay was sent by the US Public Health Service to
a small town in Arkansas called Box Site. And this
is a mining community built for employees of the Aluminum
Company of America ALCOA. In nineteen oh nine, Box Site
had switched their water from shallow wells to a deep

(15:43):
well and kids born after the switch had extremely modeled enamel. Okay,
this was not welcome news for Alcoa, the company, the
aluminum company, who was already under fire from claims that
their aluminum cookwaar was toxic. They were like, this is
going to be used as evidence that we're poisoning the
water too.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Now, like everyone's gonna hate us even more.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
And so the chief chemist of Alcoa examined the water
for rare elements using sophisticated tech not readily available, and
he wrote to McKay about what he had found. Quote,
we have discovered the presence of hitherto unsuspected constituents in
this water. The high fluorine content was so unexpected that

(16:28):
a new sample was taken with extreme precautions, and again
the test showed fluorine in the water. They detected fluorine
at a level of thirteen point seven parts per million.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
That's very high.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
Very high.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
For context, the recommendation today is point seven parts per million,
and it used to be one, but then it was
revised downward so that point seven recommendation is enough to
protect against decay but too low to cause fluorosis.

Speaker 4 (16:57):
Right, yeah, and seven that's quite quite.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
A lot higher, very very high. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
So but this was also this was not necessarily it's
kind of interesting I came across this leader, but this
is not necessarily the first time that florine had been
linked to this.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
But for some reason.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
McKay either like missed, like missed the memo on those
or just like didn't it didn't seem as compelling as
this example here, And so then McKay like this really
was like whoa, this seems like this seems pretty strong,
right at least like suggestive, right right, right, Like we

(17:37):
should look look into this, and so that's that's what
he did. He sent additional samples from other endemic areas
where there was a lot of modeled enamel, and yes,
the results were like okay, this every single one of
these places where there is high teeth like high modeling,
the fluorine levels are high either, you know, ranged from

(17:59):
two parts per million in Colorado Springs to twelve in Kidder.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
South Dakota.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
The US Public Health Service was pretty excited and worried
about these results, which like historically they were not they
didn't seem that interested in it. Ok But now this
was finally like, okay, we have we have something to
go on here.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
Right way, way, we have some data here and not
just like observational stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
And so they sent a young dental officer, doctor H.
Trendley Dean, to get a clearer picture of the relationship
between fluoride and modeling, and in his investigation he found
that not only was there a clear relationship between the
degree of modeling and fluorine concentration, which was like kind

(18:43):
of like a dose, like there was like a continuous
relationship essentially, he also observed the striking connection between florine
and dental carries. In children who lived where the water
supply had zero point six to one point five parts
per million, only four to five percent were carries free, okay,
Whereas in areas where the water was one point seven

(19:06):
to two point five parts per million, twenty two percent
were carries free.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
So like five times got it more carries.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
So the higher the concentration of fluorine than the more
kids had no cavities whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Right, the higher the protective ability. Yeah okay.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
And then there was a study of twenty one cities
that showed that children age twelve to fourteen that had
grown up in a city with point five parts per
million or less had on average more than seven decayed,
missing and filled permanent teeth.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
These are kids age twelve to fourteen.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Further studies showed that the carries protection provided by fluoride
plateaued around one part per million, which is a level
that only led to quote sporadic instances of the mildest
forms of dental fluorosis of no practical esthetic significance. So
it was like, Okay, we don't need to add more,
and we're not going to add We're not going to
get more protection if we add more.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
If we add more, we're just going to get dental staining.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (20:07):
And so Dean concluded in nineteen thirty eight, quote inasmuch
as it appears that the mineral composition of the drinking
water may have an important bearing on the incidence of
dental carries in a community, the possibility of partially controlling
dental carries through the domestic water supply warrants thorough epidemiological

(20:28):
chemical study and yeah, on board. So, nearly four decades
after a tuberculosis flare up sent doctor Frederick Mackay back
West where he embarked on unraveling the mystery of model teeth.
Dentistry in the US and around the globe was about
to undergo a massive transition where prevention now occurred alongside

(20:52):
restoration as the primary goal. Previously, it wasn't really possible,
like there wasn't enough known about what causes tooth decay
to interest and to enact any sort of preventative measures.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
So this also, like this finding also allowed for just
like preventive dentistry period period which is now like the
cornerstone of dentistry.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, But as we'll see, not everyone welcomed
this change, and some actively fought against it.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Classic classic.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
So next week erin you're going to take us through
more of the nitty gritty biology of how dental carees
forms and what floride does to reduce decay. But I
want to take some time here to talk about dental
carries over history, because what else am.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
I going to get to do this?

Speaker 1 (21:43):
And plus, like any opportunity to talk about paleopathology, even
the littlest.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Bit is fun.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
So humans and many other species have been impacted by
dental caries since well before we were humans. Of course,
fish hundreds of millions of years ago, dinosaurs tens of
millions of years ago.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
Stop it, wait wait, wait, wait, we have like fossil
dinosaur teeth with cavities.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Oh I love that, I know.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
I know also our hominid and relatives and ancestors. Wild
animals today like bears get carries. Are domestic animals like dogs.
I mean carries for all right, So let me just
take a second here to define what carries is.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Essentially, it's tooth decay. So the hard.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Enamel on the surface of a tooth begins to wear
down and the inner soft dentin gets exposed and slowly decays,
sometimes reaching the pulp cavity. The initial hit that enamel
loss is helped along by bacteria in our mouth producing
acid fluoride, by the way, acts to help strengthen that enamel.
And so that's how it protects us from carries and

(22:52):
a cavity. Just to distinguish, because I was like, what
is the.

Speaker 4 (22:55):
Difference cavity versus carry? In fact you're doing this, I
don't have two next week, okay.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I mean the cavity is essentially when that tooth decay
turns into a hole.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
So that's it. Like it's like.

Speaker 4 (23:05):
Carries the first initial bit, and then a cavity.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Carries is well okay, now I'm not entirely sure if
it's like more of a general term or just like
like carries is tooth decay and cavities is specific to
when there's like tissue loss maybe or like when there's
a whole formed.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, okay, yeah, and so.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Given that carries affects teeth and teeth stick around for
a long time after we die, we can make some
judgments on how the prevalence of carries has changed over
human history, Okay, and it certainly has in ways you
can probably predict. So in general, dental carries increased as
humans moved from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to agriculture. And

(23:51):
you can see this with different groups, like in the
same region or era. Right, So as some groups, let's
say you have like a similar region in the same
time period, some groups are still mostly hunter gathering and
some are farming. You can see within those groups even changesting.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Yeah okay, and.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
So yeah, those that incorporated more farming and carbohydrates into
their lifestyle had more.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Carries kinds of the foods they were eating exactly.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, specifically, carbohydrates like cereals and potatoes and so on.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, yep, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
And I mean things that I love so much.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
And this pattern continues today as groups adopt quote unquote
Western diets, their rates of carries increase.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Okay, so let's put some numbers to this.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
If we look at the percentage of individuals within a
population that have carries, let's say like Europe, we can
go back to around forty five hundred BCE, which is
post agricultural revolution, so rates are already higher than historically,
and around that time we around twenty nine percent of
adults impacted. Okay, this percentage rises and falls, so goes

(25:07):
up to like thirty six percent around fifteen hundred BCE,
back down to the upper twenties percentages closer to the
first century C. We see another rise in the seventh
century to fifty six percent, which is when our fine
sugar became a commercial product. Apparently interesting, and today global

(25:27):
values are over ninety five percent.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
I was going to say twenty percent.

Speaker 6 (25:32):
That sounds so love I know, yeah, wow, yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
We know that it's diet causing this, but how okay,
So I'm just gonna read you a quote because this
does it better than I could do it.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
It's from a book chapter quote.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
A caryogenic diet, as in one that produces produces more
carry carries has been defined by the following features. Frequent
intake of meals with a high content of carbohydrates, quickly
fermentable mainly sucrose, with retentive and sticky consistence that produces
repetitive lowering of pH values and changes in the ecology

(26:24):
of dental plaque end quote. More sugar, more carbs like
potatoes and cereals equals more a lesions and faster development
of lesions.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Right in different microbiome in your mouth.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Different microbiome in your mouth, totally, and so since the
advent of agriculture to the mid twentieth century, it's like
we were hurtling towards the state where carries was omnipresent
and unavoidable.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
For centuries, carries and.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Other dental woes had featured in medical texts, along with
some creative treatments, including the Ebers Papyrus, but dentists were
largely powerless to prevent the development of tooth decay, and
so their efforts focused on restoration and keeping things from
getting worse. Even after germ theory helped to make the

(27:12):
connection between acid producing bacteria and tooth decay and also
diet and acid producing bacteria. There wasn't much that they
could do to prevent carries, just treat it when it happened. Also,
I've never thought about germ theory in the context of
dental care and like knowledge about me.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Heather's right, isn't that wild?

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Love it me too?

Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah? And so so there it was mostly.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Dental care was focused on, was focused on restoration, were
even like maybe detection or measuring the rate of progress
through like X ray technology, which was new as of
the early twentieth century, late eighteen hundreds, And that was
the case until.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Fluoride, specifically water fluoridation.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Also, Aaron, there are like so many more topics that
we should do in dentistry that I like, I want
to do, like gum health and certain diseases. You Like,
I feel like I've seen that a lot braces grinding
your teeth at night.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Hello, I mean like there's just like.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
There's like so much that we could do. So that's
just my petition for more dental episodes.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
Okay, I mean, you don't have to work hard to
convince me. Although I always like doing these episodes, I
get it's so so interesting how we don't learn any
of this in medical school.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Well, that's that's another thing I would love to learn about.
When dentistry became a field.

Speaker 4 (28:44):
Right, and like, why is it so separate from quote
unquote medicine, Like the rest of your body medicine. It's
like eyes and teeth. We gotta pullmze and they're gonna
be totally separate.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
We have separate insurances for eyes and teeth. They're part
of our bodies.

Speaker 4 (28:57):
Yeah, why they're part of our overall health too, is
part of your house.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Then people come in with like a mouth complaint and
I'm like, hullo.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, we should definitely, we should definitely do that, right.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
The history of dentistry, I would love it, Yes, Okay,
but that was just the brief detour through the history
of carries. And so we left off before this little
detour in the late nineteen thirties with the knowledge that
certain levels of floride in the water seemed to protect
against tooth decay. So the obvious next step would be

(29:35):
to implement that knowledge.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
That's what I would think happens next.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, right, it is what happens next.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
So in nineteen forty two, the US Public Health Service
began talks with two cities in Michigan, Grand Rapids and Muskegon,
to conduct an experiment with artificially fluoridating the water to
one part per million, with Grand Rapids getting the fluoride
and Muskegan acting as the control.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
The experiment was set.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
To begin on January first, nineteen forty five, and within
a few days, foreshadowing what was to come in later decades,
the complaints started rolling in rashes, rapid weight gain, headaches, tumors.
I mean, fluoride was blamed for a wide variety of
health issues of the residents in the residence of Grand Rapids.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Okay, the thing was fluoridation hadn't actually started yet.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
But it was like they knew, so.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Okay, it was coming. Yeah the residents.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Did the residents like agree to this?

Speaker 2 (30:37):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
I think it was like a like I agreed upon
by the city officials.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Okay, so they didn't.

Speaker 4 (30:45):
They didn't necessarily agree, but they knew that this was coming,
and they had maybe like a start date or something
on their calendars. And then they started having complaints about things,
but they didn't actually, they hadn't actually started yet.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Right, there was there was like an unexpected delay in
the shipment or like the delivery of fluoride, and so
it didn't get added to the water until January twenty fifth.
But even before then people started to blame.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Floride right in and complain about things.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Interesting, yeah, please keep going.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
So there was no evidence, of course for the fluoride
causing these complaints because florid wasn't in the water yet.
And in fact, what the evidence did show was that
fluoride was a safe and effective way to drastically reduce
tooth decay in a population. I mean, like the first
tand account said there were seven million people who were
getting their water from naturally fluoridated sources, right, And there

(31:42):
had been a lot of studies, I don't know all
of the studies examining the different communities with and their health,
you know, aspects those who were in floridated water those
who did not have floridated water, and found pretty much
that one of the only difference was the cavity protection.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Or carry protection.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Yeah yeah, okay, So how did this experiment go fifteen
years after water fluoridation was introduced to Grand Rapids, the
rate of decayed, missing and filled teeth in fifteen year
old children had dropped fifty percent.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
Huge years.

Speaker 4 (32:19):
Also, like they're studying this fifteen years, so that's a
long this is a very long term.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yeah, thing they wanted to make sure that it was
actually worth implementing. The other thing too, is that and
I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but
systemic fluoride in order to like when your teeth and
I know you'll get more.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Into like this part of it.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
It is important in development when your teeth are developing,
and so it would have taken a long time to
see the benefits of that because these kids had to
be born and then yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
Yeah, although we'll talk more later. It's also topical, so
it's like in your mouth, yes too, but.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yes, especially for kids systemics and then if it's in
your saliva, it's washing over your teeth exactly, helping with enamel.
But like for developing kids, to see those big effects
in the reduction of carries was yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Especially because we're talking about very very low levels. It's
not very the same as like the seilance that your
dentists might be putting on your teeth, right.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yep.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
And and also just to kind of like bolster this,
these findings, the data show that the tooth decay rates
in fluoridated Grand rapids were similar to other regions with
naturally fluoridated water. So it was like this, even though
we are putting floride into this water, the effect is
the same as places that have naturally fluoridated water.

Speaker 4 (33:36):
And we're doing it at this lower level than most
of these natural sources at one part per million.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Right, optimize the level, okay, And so the cause and
effect relationship because before these I mean, these were highly
suggestive correlative studies results like where it was like, okay,
carries rates lower in area with higher floridation. But this
actually showed like a cause and effect relation.

Speaker 4 (34:03):
You're doing a random size control trial rather than just
an epidemiological observational study.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Yes, science action.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
And this was also happening in other fluoridation experiments in
cities in the US and Canada, in the UK, in
New Zealand and elsewhere around the world. Other communities were
floridating their water, and many cities and towns began floridating
their water even before the results from Grand Rapids were out,
because they felt that the safety and efficacy of floridation
had already been proven. In nineteen fifty eight, the WHO

(34:37):
released a report concluding that fluoride was an effective and
feasible public health measure to reduce dental carries, and they
followed that up a few years later with an expert
panel tasked with reviewing the safety data of floridation. I'm
going to read you a quote from their conclusion quote.
The results have shown that for the climatic, nutritional, and

(35:00):
environmental conditions under which the surveys have been carried out,
a level of approximately one part per million fluoride in
temperate climates has no harmful effects on the community. The
margin of safety is such that it will cover any
individual variation of intake to be found in such areas.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
End quote.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
So it's like someone's drinking a lot of water, they're
still going to be fine. Someone's drinking not very much,
They're still going to be fine.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
Yeah, yeah, yep.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
And so, starting in the nineteen sixties, with these promising results,
cities and towns across the US and the rest of
the world began floridating their water. Some states issued like
a blanket fluoridation mandate, while others allowed communities to exempt
themselves by popular vote. In nineteen eighty nine, one hundred
and thirty five million Americans, So sixty two point one

(35:51):
percent of the population we're getting fluoridated water from public
systems at optimized levels. There were some more that were
getting Florida Florida from or floridated water from naturally fluoridated
but I don't know if it was like controlled or optimized. Yeah, okay,
the goal, so that was nineteen eighty nine, sixty two
point one percent. The goal for nineteen ninety was to

(36:11):
get ninety five percent of the population on optimally fluoridated water. Obviously,
this was not achieved, and the new goal was revised
down to seventy five percent. By two thousand. We're still
not quite there, but we are close, although we'll see
what happens because of stuff that's been happening.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah, because they're trying to take it, take it all away.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
In the nearly eight decades since water fluoridation began, the
health benefits have become clear. An average drop of thirty
five to fifty percent in Carrie's rates in floridated communities.
This translates also to economic benefits. Less money spent on
restorative dental care in communities with fluoridated water, less time

(36:57):
missed from work having to go to dental appointments. Not
to mention, like, I know you'll get into some of these,
like bigger picture, how dental health is health and how
it like there are so many other systemic effects of that,
and then there's like the self esteem and so on,
like to have dental repair. Yeah, and I know that
next week you're also going to get into more of

(37:19):
like the some of the claims that people are making. Yeah,
but from my reading, water fluoridation at the recommended level
has not been linked with data to any negative health outcome.
Of course, over consumption of fluoride can occur, which can
be harmful, but at the recommended level, like what it

(37:40):
is in our water, it is safe and effective. So
why has there been such a strong and sustained opposition
movement to fluoride?

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah, let's get into it.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
I also, I don't think that I knew that it was.
I mean, it's this podcast We Kill You. I'm not
surprised that there's been like opposition from the get go,
and like you know, like so strong and whatever.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
But I I.

Speaker 4 (38:07):
It's the same thing as so many other things that
we're hearing so much more about today, where like I
never thought about it for so long and now I
can't stop hearing about it everywhere.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah yeah, and it's not just like it like people
are actually talking about it more. I mean yeah, like
RFK is talking.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
About it more. So you can't.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
You can't not talk about it.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
When it's flag yeah, literally, like on the news from
the people who are the highest up making the decisions
about our health in this country.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
And I mean and like those other things like vaccines,
like pasteurization, water fluoridation has long had its fair share
of detractors and which have also like raw melk and
vaccines have been growing in number as of late. And
the ven diagram of these three groups is like a circle.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Basically. It's just.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
So we can trace the origins of the anti floridation
movement to Wisconsin in the nineteen forties. Okay, the Grand
Rapids Muskegon experiment was on the horizon, but there was
one outspoken Wisconsin dentist, doctor John Frish, who didn't want
to wait fifteen years for his communities to start fluoridating.
He had followed the work of Mackay and Dean and

(39:23):
concluded that fluoride at an appropriate level was safe and
effective and they should get started right away because he
was a dentist and he cared about his patients and
wanted them to not have cavities and carries, right Like.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, he's like, we can, we can prevent this.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Right, which is also, Oh, I know, are you gonna
talk about like big fluoride?

Speaker 2 (39:42):
And I was like, well, it's.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
Interesting to think about in the context of, like, in
the context of a profession where at the time their
main source of business was restorative dentistry, you might think
that a dentist would want less fluoride because then their
patients would have more cavities and they would have more business.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
It's like somebody coming in to it's like a family
med doctor being like, ooh, my patients have diabetes and
heart disease.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
This is great for me, and it's like it's not. No,
it's not exactly that. And that's the point, right.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
It's like the people who go into these fields do
it because they want to help people, because they care
about people's health because they want for their patients to.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
To be better, to have healthy teeth. Like, but but.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Raking in that dough.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, I honestly it's I mean it's it's baffling but
not surprising. Yes, just like there's no logic, but but
never need to begin with Yeah. So the sentence was like,
I'm hyped about floride. Let's do this, Like, let's we
don't need to wait for that. We've already we have
had decades of people collecting data that show that this
is like a good.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Thing to do, okay.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
And so he started this like very active and enthusiastic
campaign for water floridation across the state, and within a
few years many communities had started adding floride to their
water after this, because you.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Know, he was like gung ho. And so when in nineteen.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Fifty the US Public Health Service approved floridation for all
communities in the US, Frish declared victory in a letter
that he wrote to Mackay cease firing. The war is
over direct quote from that, yeah, okay, which turned out
to be a bit of a premature celebration. Frish's very
vocal campaign won many over to the side of floridation

(41:37):
and raised awareness overall, but it also attracted some critics,
especially the very outspoken Alexander Wallace, who was a resident
of Stephen's Point, Wisconsin and self appointed watchdog of the
public treasury, local poet, and author of many letters to
the editor. Notice how I didn't mention any scientific or

(42:00):
dental training because I don't believe there was any. Right.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
I also just can picture one hundred.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
I mean basically, I'm picturing like parks and rec and
like someone who goes to one of the town halls.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
Yeah, I'm picturing my parents' neighbor who is not too
far away. I will not mention names, but has run
for the board multiple times, et.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Cetera, on the platform of anti florid.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
No, just on the platform of anti fun mostly.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Oh got it.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
Okay, Yeah, I don't like the swim team, and they
don't like that anything anyways.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Letters to the editor, Yeah, letters to the editor. Well
they're important, Okay.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
They are, we love them sometimes. But yeah, his his stance,
this guy, Alexander Wallace. His stance was that floride was poisoned. Okay,
he you know, and and his evidence ranged from the
misused like for instance, the USPS, the US Public Health
Service at the time, still classified flora as experimental, and

(43:01):
then it did not stay.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
But he said it was totally untested, right.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
Classic, it's a classic thing. Yeah, totally untested.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Uh huh exactly, mRNA, I forget it. And then a
lot of the time he just manufactured evidence, right, Like
he said, fluoride is rat poison and will cause irreparable harm.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Oh, he should listen to Strick nine.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
That's what I was gonna say. I'm like, strychnine is
rat poison. We don't put that in the water.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
And so, despite not having any scientific evidence to support
his claims and the fact that existing evidence refuted them,
in fact, his opposition was highly publicized and ultimately successful.
He set the precedent for this debate to be held
in kind of a public forum, with him on one
side and the data on the other.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
So interesting erin, so classic erin.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Naturally, this equal viewpoint representation confused the general public, who
were led to believe that Wallace had as much data
supporting his side as the scientist did as the dentist did.
In September nineteen fifty, the citizens of Stephen's point rejected floridation,
the first to do so in a monument to anti science,

(44:16):
anti expert. This proved to not be a one off
as pro floridationists had hoped. The outcome was plastered across
national headlines and served as encouragement to other opponents of floridation.
The message was who needs science and facts when you've
got fear and doubt. They realized it was a heck

(44:36):
of a lot easier to instill doubt and fear than
dispel it. The anti floridationists of the nineteen fifties were
a motley crew, mostly quote unquote independent thinkers like Wallace,
alternative medicine advocates, supplement brands, really supplement brands, not surprising,
but also just like.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Like, could you be more basic?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
You know, it's like predictable.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Then there were chiropractors and groups like the John Birch Society,
which if you haven't heard of it is a right
wing libertarian conspiracy theory anti communist group that is also
an inspiration to the current administration, and the ku Klux Klan.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
The KKK was big in the anti fluoride movement in
the early Yes.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
I could see that I could see that yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:31):
I was very like, wait, what what It's one of
those where you go and then when you think about it,
because this is something that's working on the public health,
and so it's going to be helping everyone, right, all
including people quote unquote undesirable and in fact maybe more
So we'll talk more about that next week for sure.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yeah, yes, okay, that is I mean, and that is
like a big I think part of the like the
point is also cruelty.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, yeah, we.

Speaker 4 (46:05):
Should withhold this withholding from people who don't deserve it,
because if you can afford it, you can just buy
fluoridated toothpaste. If you can afford it, you can just
get tried zelans, right, if you can afford.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
It, yep, okay, And so that is one big motivator
for why people were and are anti fluoride, but there
were many other reasons as well, and so you know,
just like raw milk, these groups are not a monolith
or like this anti fluoride movement is on a monolith,

(46:38):
and there's a mix of people who have been preyed
upon and those who are doing the praying looking into
the perpetrators or originators of this miss and disinformation The
reasons they give for why fluoride is bad have evolved
over time, and they can generally be split into three categories,
sometimes overlapping. All right, you've got number one fraudulent health claims,

(47:01):
Number two feelings of personal freedom violations slash conspiracy theories,
and number three claims that fluoride doesn't work slash economics.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Oh yeah, well yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
So the first concrete fraudulent health claim that proved to
be quite sticky was that fluoride causes cancer, and I
think this is still touted today occasionally. This misconception originated
from leaked preliminary results of an animal study out of
the University of Texas that was specifically looking at this question,
and early results seemed to suggest that mice that drank

(47:34):
fluoridated water developed cancer earlier than those that did not,
and the press ate that story up. Of course, they
ran with it before any closer examination. I mean, these
are preliminary, preliminary results. It didn't matter, right, And then
once once the researcher who was involved in this did
like a closer examination, it was revealed that the experiment

(47:57):
was totally invalid. All of them, both the experimental and
control groups were being fed chow that had a fluoride
level of forty two parts per million, which like all
of them, all of them, both the experimental and so
it was like it was dear water.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
It was too late, like this, this correction was too late.
The follow up was not nearly as widely publicized as
the initial results, and even if people came across the correction,
the association between cancer and floride would be in their
minds already, where it's like, I'm not saying that fluoride
causes cancer, you know what I mean. Or they would
be like I read a news story about florid and cancer,

(48:40):
but I can't remember what is the.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Thing that, yeah, right, totally, and you're.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Like, I'm not sure what it was. So I'm just
gonna err on the side of caution. Caution, yeah yeah.
And then reputable studies.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
So like since then, since those that experiment and that
news story, reputable studies, there have been so many of
them because the fear was so high that examined cancer
and floride have found no association, But that didn't stop
the anti fluoridationists claiming that fluoride causes cancer. And again
we're talking about the levels that are the optimized levels

(49:14):
in public drinking water. And cancer was far from alone,
and being blamed or florid was far from alone. Cancer
was one of many things.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
There we go, one of many ill health effects. Yes,
that was blamed on fluorid.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Oh so many.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
And I know that you're going to go into more
next week. But like vaccines, floride has been held responsible
for whatever health threat preoccupied the general public at a
certain time, you know, like at one point it was Alzheimer's,
another time it was blamed for AIDS, IQ, infertility, brittle bones,
take your pick. The more fringe ones were oily sweat, undue,

(49:54):
financial anxiety, and nymphomania.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Okay, isn't that Yeah, all of it's bizarre.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
I know, I know I should undo financial anxieties. Yeah,
okay on a daily just I was gonna say, like
undo undo?

Speaker 3 (50:12):
Is it undue? Is it undo? Right?

Speaker 1 (50:16):
And occasionally they ventured into the more conspiracy side of things,
especially with the anti communism fears so widespread during the
nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. And I think that's also
where the KKK got involved, where it was like, we
don't like this is communism. Essentially, this is socialized medicine.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
And right there, we don't do that on us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Some people genuinely believed that it was like a Soviet
plot designed to harm the American public, and this belief
was parodied in the nineteen sixty four movie Doctor Strangelove.
Or it was a strategy, one person claimed, and I'm
sure this was not just one person's opinion.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
There was a strategy to quote unquote weaken the Aryan race.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Again, the parallels with raw milk are astonishing, but not surprising.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
So interesting, Aaron.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
And so this is kind of where these health concerns
bleed over into the personal freedom conspiracy side of things. So,
from the beginning of fluoridation, one of the leading complaints
was that fluoridation in water represented a violation of personal freedoms,
that parents should be able to choose what to feed
their children, and that fluoride was mass medication, starting us

(51:25):
on a slippery slope where the government could put whatever
they wanted into the water without our knowledge or consent,
or just that it represented a deadly step towards socialized medicine,
where people could you know, where health is a right, right,
or healthcare is a right, and this seemster we even
imagine that possibility. This seems to be a consistent sentiment

(51:47):
motivating people at the ballot box seventy years ago as
well as today, like these are all things that are
still around.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
The mass medication.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Complaint arose and gained traction at a time where things
like DDT or asbestos were found to be highly toxic
after decades of use and like being freely used in
everyone being reassuring.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
That no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Right where tholidamide slipped through the cracks and where a
quote unquote back to the soil, natural movement was taking hold,
and so to some fluoride represented yet another chemical we're
adding to our bodies without enough research.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
And I think what I find truly.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Fascinating about that is that fluoride is in so many
sources of water naturally, right, it's in water.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
It's interesting to look at it in that way, like, oh,
this is something that we're adding. This is something that
is naturally quote unquote naturally found in so many sources,
sometimes at such a high level that it is causing
potential ill effects. But then putting it into our water
at lower levels is seen as potentially harmful when it's

(53:02):
really just trying to replicate something that exists in nature.
I mean, yeah, and it and it's and it is
valid that we have.

Speaker 6 (53:08):
Done things one hundred thous a lot of data, right like, yeah, yeah,
it's we have done things that.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
Are quite harmful, So it makes sense to I don't know,
it's so complicated Aaron.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Well, and I think the other facet of that too
is that, you know, going back to naturally fluoridated sources
of water, is that that that have been shown that
have been linked to you know, whether it's teeth modeling
or something else. Anti fluoridationists don't make any effort to
reduce to the florid that occurs naturally. If they think
that fluoride is such a big problem, really, then they

(53:41):
don't really seem I shouldn't be surprised concerned with helping
to remove or limit florid in communities with naturally overflorid water. Yeah,
they're just like, it's only don't put florid in my water.

Speaker 4 (53:51):
Don't put it in my water. But if you move
to Colorado Springs, you're on your own.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Well, I think I think I think they take this
out of Yeah, I'm sure they do, not to hate
on Colorado space.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Yes, I'm sure they're doing fine.

Speaker 4 (54:05):
Yeah, No, that is it is interesting, And I think
that just kind of points out It's like who. I
think what it shows is like, who is it that
is the one perpetuating these claims and what is the
intent behind what they are doing it for? Are they
using any data that may or may not be legitimate? Maybe,
but what is the intention behind that? And is it

(54:26):
just to discredit science? Because that's what it often comes
down to.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yeah, I mean, and it also like, again, I think
it comes back to those who are hearing this information
and buying into it and those who are originating it
and perpetuating it. So there are different motivators I think
for that. And so the final argument against fluoride was
that it doesn't work, or that the benefits of florid

(54:51):
can be achieved solely through fluoride containing products such as
toothpaste and mouthwash is topical fluoride. Following that, the argument
goes that water fluoridation is wasteful since only a small
proportion is actually ingested, as opposed to being used to
like wash dishes, or shower, Okay, and I know you'll
get more into the details. So systemic versus topical fluoride,

(55:13):
but systemic fluoridation does make a difference, as we discussed
in the prevention of tooth decay, and in fact, Calgary
in Canada had previously voted to stop fluoridation around ten
years ago and then recently voted to put it back
in since the rate of tooth decay in children increased. Yeah,
it seems like from where I'm standing that the trend

(55:35):
has been more often than not in the other direction,
with states like Utah banning fluoride in the water, which
means that even if a community wanted to fluoridate, they couldn't.
And so now if you want systemic fluoride in Utah,
you have to get a prescription. And so of course, yes,
you have to get a prescription from whom you can

(55:56):
go to the dentist. I think you can get one
from a pharmacist, your doctor. And so, of course, just
like with every other personal freedom medical issue, this disproportionately
impacts those who are the most disadvantage, who lack access
to a dentist or can't afford supplements. But that rarely
concerns anti fluoride activists who are more than happy to

(56:17):
sell you their purification systems or their book outlining how
to eliminate fluorid from your diet. When it comes to fluoride,
it's more of the same with what we see for
raw milk and vaccines, a focus on deregulation, on privatization,
and redefining expertise. And this debate over fluoride has continued
because it has been framed as a debate with science

(56:41):
and evidence on one side and sentiment on the other.
And again, like we get it right, the historical opposition especially,
I'm not sure just how many health outcomes were evaluated
in naturally fluoridated versus unfluoridated communities before they started artificially fluoridating.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Did they look at every possible outcome right.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Or probably not? Yeah, but at that time. No.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
It has been eighty years, eighty years since water was
since fluoridated water was started in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
And that means that.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Over those eighty years, we have collected a wealth of
data that would allow us to detect an association between
fluoride and so many things, and we haven't really found
those associations, and people are still looking. People are still
continuously evaluating because that is what science does, that is
how it works. But when you've got tiktoks and forums

(57:38):
claiming that fluoride is harmful for your kid or it's
giving you cancer, it's hard to shake those fears that doubt,
especially when the pro fluoride movement is much quieter. I mean, like,
I knew so little about how fluoride worked before we
picked this as a topic. I did know that it
was like in a development. I just thought it was like, oh, mouthwash,
that's fine, right, And I can't but think that the

(58:01):
lack of awareness and understanding is contributing to the gains
that the anti floridationists have made in the past few years.
Despite being named as one of the top public health
achievements of the twentieth century, the top ten, it's in
the top ten.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Wow, floride does not have enough hype.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
People talking about how many teeth have been saved, how
much less people have had to spend all thanks to
a relatively straightforward and inexpensive solution. Florid Tell you.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
What, tell you what?

Speaker 4 (58:35):
Yeah, you're right, Aaron, I don't really hear any florid
hype people. I know, I can't remember a florid hype
person me either.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
And I think that it's because, like, on an individual level,
you go to the dentist and you get floride. Like,
where is the political activism from pro floridation. It's just
a really interesting thing, and I think that Florida doesn't
really get the attention it deserves in the public health
arena as like a way to prevent Okay, it's like, okay,
dental carries. It's actually the significance of that is much

(59:06):
bigger than we think it is.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
Well, it's also like, like we've said many times on
this podcast, aarin, when public health is working well, you
don't know that it's working at all. I don't know that, right, Yeah,
when we're preventing carries with you didn't even know that
your water was fluoridated and you have less carries than
a community that doesn't have floridated water. You don't think

(59:30):
about it, right, And then if you start hearing that
something is bad, that's when you then start questioning, Ye,
what are you doing to me without my knowledge, without
my consent, who made this decision?

Speaker 3 (59:42):
What data are you using?

Speaker 1 (59:45):
We've been doing this for eighty years and it's but
it really seems like gains are being made for the
anti floridationists.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
And there's a lot more to say erin about what
we know about about the effects of fluoride negative neutral,
how is it working, what's up with carries.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
What half carries?

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
Yeah, and we're going to get into all of that
next week and I cannot wait.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Oh my gosh, yeah me, I am really excited. I
feel like this was just a teaser to be like,
now florides.

Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
So good to set the stage of like this is
how you know what I mean, especially as we talk
about like what is the evidence? Now we can also
look at like this is how long things have been
going on for.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
So well, in the meantime, if you would like to
read more, I did got some sources. Okay, So there
was a book called Fluoride and Carrie's Prevention by John
Murray published nineteen eighty two. Maybe a paper by Ripa
from nineteen ninety three, A half century of community water

(01:00:55):
fluoridation in the United States, A great paper by McNeil
nineteen eighty America's Longest War, the Fight over Fluoridation, And
if you want to learn more about, just like carries
in generally and over a time. Caselts nineteen ninety eight
carries ancient plague of humankind.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Ancient plague, And I've got so.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Many more, honestly, but those are the ones that I'm
going to shout out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
So yeah, take a look at our website.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
If you want to see all the sources for this
episode and all of our episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
This podcastmikill you dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Yeah, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for
this episode and all of our episodes.

Speaker 4 (01:01:32):
Thank you to Tom and Leanna and Brent and Pete
and Mike and all of exactly right, Jess, thank you all.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
We have so many people that help out with this
and we really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Yeah, we do. Thank you also to our listeners. We
hope that you enjoyed this episode. Did it answer some
of your questions?

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Any of your questions and you have more questions?

Speaker 4 (01:01:54):
Yeah, well answer them, I think maybe. And as always,
as special shout out to our patrons. Thank you so
much for your support. It really does mean the world
to us.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
It does well. Until next time, wash your hands

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
You filthy animals.