Article written by Dr Paul Connett released today The ‘Hollow Men’ of New Zealand In NZ, Sir Peter Gluckman, chief scientific advisor to the Prime Minster of New Zealand and Sir David Skegg (President of the Royal Society of New Zealand). In August 2014, in response to a number of local communities voting out water fluoridation in NZ, Gluckman and Skegg published a review titled the “Health Effects of Water Fluoridation: a Review of the Scientific Evidence.” A press report can be viewed on FluorideAlert.org’s website.1 As far as the science is concerned, this review is inaccurate, selective, and superficial. However, because of the prestige of the authors and the positions they hold, this is likely to be very influential with the NZ media, which are equally inaccurate, selective, and superficial on this issue. Here is one section of the report, which clearly demonstrates the authors’ apparent willingness to pass on the analysis of fluoridation propagandists rather than to read the cited studies themselves. In a section titled “Effects on IQ,” Gluckman and Skegg write: “Recently there have been a number of reports from China and other areas where fluoride levels in groundwater are naturally very high, that have claimed an association between high water fluoride levels and minimally reduced intelligence (measured as IQ) in children. In addition to the fact that the fluoride exposures in these studies were many (up to 20) times higher than any that are experienced in New Zealand or other CWF communities, the studies also mostly failed to consider other factors that might influence IQ, including exposures to arsenic, iodine deficiency, socioeconomic status, or the nutritional status of the children. Further, the claimed shift of less than one IQ point suggests that this is likely to be a measurement or statistical artifact of no functional significance. A recently published study in New Zealand… revealed no evidence that exposure to water fluoridation in New Zealand affects neurological development or IQ. We conclude that on the available evidence there is no appreciable effect on cognition arising from CWF.” (Emphasis mine) Response: It should be incredibly embarrassing for both the NZ Prime Minister and the Royal Society of New Zealand to have their names associated with such an inaccurate and biased summary of the literature on fluoride’s impact on children’s intellectual development. Mistaken and Misleading Claims 1.Gluckman and Skegg mistakenly claim “a shift of less than one IQ point” in the 27 studies reviewed by Choi et al. (2012). What they have done here is to confuse the drop of half of one standard deviation reported by the authors with the actual drop in IQ, which was 6.9 points. Such an elementary mistake would not have been made by Gluckman and Skegg if they had actually read the report, instead of relying on what fluoridation propagandists were saying about it. 2.Gluckman and Skegg’s claim that “fluoride exposures in these studies were many (up to 20) times higher than any that are experienced in New Zealand or other CWF communities” again indicates that they didn’t read the report (or read it carefully). Only two out of the 27 studies had the “high-fluoride” village concentrations going up to 11 and 11.5 ppm respectively (Yao, 1996, 2-11 ppm, and Wang, 2007, 3.6-11.5 ppm). More relevant to NZ (and other countries with water fluoridation programs in the range of 0.6 to 1.2 ppm) is the fact that 8 of the reviewed studies had concentrations in the “high-fluoride” village of less than 3 ppm. 3.Moreover, when harm is found, toxicologists do not normally focus on the highest level but on the Lowest Observable Adverse Effect Level (LOAEL). In one of the studies (Xiang et al., 2003 a,b) the authors sub-divided the children in the “high-fluoride” village into 5 groups with increasing fluoride concentrations in their well water from 0.75 to 4.3 ppm. They found that as the fluoride concentration increased, the mean IQ was lowered in a linear fashion. The lowest level at which IQ lowering occurred was 1.26 ppm. This offers no adequate margin of safety to protect all children drinking artificially fluoridated water between 0.6 and 1.2 ppm. 4.This lack of an adequate margin of safety gets worse when one notes that in two respects, NZ children are likely to get higher fluoride doses than the rural Chinese children in this study, because a) they are more likely to use fluoridated toothpaste and b) more likely to be bottle-fed, with levels of fluoride about 200 times more than breast milk (0.004 ppm). 5.Gluckman and Skegg claim that of the 27 studies, most “failed to consider other factors that might influence IQ, including exposures to arsenic, iodine deficiency, socioeconomic status, or the nutritional status of the children.” However, the fact that some of the studies did not control for all of these factors does not obviate the need to examine the studies that did. For example, Xiang et al. controlled for lead, iodine, and more recently arsenic. 6.Gluckman and Skegg’s use of a single recent IQ study from NZ to rebut these 27 IQ studies (Broadbent et al., 2014) further reveals their bias. The Broadbent study is incredibly weak because the authors were unable to identify any children who had neither been exposed to fluoridated water nor fluoridated supplements. In other words, they had no control group 7.It is the weight of evidence on fluoride’s neurotoxicity that should make responsible scientists and health officials more cautious than Gluckman and Skegg. While none of these individual IQ studies is absolutely conclusive (although Xiang’s study comes very close), the overall consistency of the 27 IQ studies is remarkable, considering they were done by different research teams in different countries (China and Iran), and over a very wide geographical area in China. The results are also consistent with many other animal and human studies indicating the fluoride is neurotoxic. For example, out of 32 studies, 30 have shown that animals perform less well in learning and memory experiments when exposed to fluoride.2 A more comprehensive critique of the NZ “whitewash review” has been written by Dr. Kathleen Thiessen, one of the panelists for the NRC (2006) landmark review of fluoride’s toxicity. articles.mercola/sites/articles/archive/2014/12/09/fluoridation-hollow-men.aspx
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 08:22:32 +0000
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