The Case against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There
*Starred Review* On the eve of the new millennium, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), listed water fluoridation as one of the twentieth-century’s 10 greatest public-health achievements. Yet according to the authors of this painstakingly researched exposé of fluoridation’s overall ineffectiveness and toxicity, endorsements such as these from the CDC and other health organizations are motivated more by face-saving politics than credible research. Fluoridation advocates who have previously branded detractors as conspiracy theorists and shills for “junk science” will be hard pressed to debunk the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and sound scientific reasoning presented here. In demonstrating fluoridation’s ineffectiveness, the authors cite exhaustive evidence proving fluoride’s only benefits are topical, as in toothbrushing, as opposed to swallowing. But the case against fluoride’s alleged safety, even in small doses, is more alarming, with multiple studies showing fluoride’s probable complicity in lowered intelligence scores, thyroid dysfunction, hip fractures, and the ominously rising incidence of osteosarcoma in boys. The authors’ academic, hyperbole-free writing style serves them well in marshaling a series of facts that, all by themselves, expose fluoridation as a false panacea. It remains to be seen, however, whether the public-health community will give this landmark work due credit or continue to rubber stamp an outdated policy that, like bloodletting and trepanation, properly belongs on the scrap heap of sham medical interventions. --Carl Hays