New study finds sugar industry distorted science to promote fluoridation from the 1930s to today
Big Sugar’s science manipulation strategy adopted by tobacco industry
Hidden conflicts in German review that dismisses fluoridation’s harm to child IQ
The sugar industry has been suspected of pushing fluoridation so people could “have their cake and eat it too”. You could eat sugary foods and drinks without worrying about tooth decay because fluoridation would be the “magic bullet” that prevents cavities.
A new study published today in the journal Environmental Health by FAN’s science director Chris Neurath uncovers internal industry documents revealing the distorted science paid for by the sugar and allied food industries. Neurath said:
“After thousands of pages of sugar industry documents became available a few years ago, and the dentist Cristin Kearns showed the sugar industry ran a campaign to shift blame for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease away from sugar, I was curious if the documents also showed the industry was involved in promoting fluoridation.
I was astounded to learn how entangled the industry was with fluoridation from the earliest days right up through the present. They originated many of the science manipulation tactics we associate today with the tobacco and chemical industries. What I discovered helps explain the question many people have when they learn of the health risks and increasingly questionable dental benefits of fluoridation:
How could this practice have gained hold and why does it continue?”
Key findings of the new paper:
1930s
Sugar industry funds chemist Gerald Cox to study tooth decay in rats, hoping to downplay sugar’s role in tooth decay, or failing that, to find some “magic bullet” that controls tooth decay without needing to reduce sugar consumption. Cox at first disappoints sugar industry by confirming sugar’s major role in cavities but then “discovers” fluoride and becomes the first person to propose fluoridating drinking water in 1939. However, his rat studies were fatally flawed, with some experiments even finding more tooth decay in the groups receiving fluoride than in any of the non-fluoride control groups.
1940s
In 1944, before any trials in humans, the sugar industry secretly funded a symposium in New York City attended by over a thousand dentists, extolling water fluoridation. The industry then paid for 100,000 copies of a written record of the symposium to be printed and mailed to every dentist in the US, as well as pediatricians, public health officials, and dental schools. This was all done under the cover of a dental group with no mention of sugar industry funding. The word “sugar” never appears in the 62-page booklet. These activities jump-started enthusiasm for fluoridation amongst dentists and public health officials.
Sugar industry representatives met with American Dental Association (ADA) leaders and are appointed to ADA committees setting policies. The editor of the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) who became long-time head of ADA also meets with sugar industry people and agrees to cooperate. Previous ADA and JADA positions that cautioned about risks of fluoridation and emphasized sugar and nutrition’s role in tooth decay were reversed. The ADA became the first organization to officially endorse fluoridation in 1950, a position it has staunchly maintained through today, always dismissing accumulating scientific evidence of harms and ineffectiveness.
1950s to 2020s
Promotion of fluoridation consolidates, with hidden funding and help from the sugar industry. Frederick Stare, head of the Harvard Nutrition Department, and one of the first grantees of the Sugar Research Foundation, becomes leading public promoter of fluoridation. He solicits tens of millions of dollars from sugar industry and food industries to fund his Harvard Nutrition Department. From 1960s to 1970s he launders 2 million dollars from tobacco companies to a Nutrition Department employee who devotes all his time to defending cigarettes. The apologist’s theory: Smokers are genetically prone to both smoke and get heart disease, so it is their genes that are the cause of their heart disease, and their smoking is just coincidental. This money laundering arrangement was done by request of the Tobacco Institute Research Committee science director and former Sugar Research Foundation science director, chemist Robert Hockett. After 10 years manipulating sugar and fluoride science, including funding to Frederick Stare, Hockett had switched to the tobacco industry. In his 1952 application for the tobacco job he boasted of his accomplishments defending sugar from causing health harms. The sugar and tobacco industries’ product defense campaigns have been deeply intertwined.
The sugar industry compromises the National Academies of Science (NAS). Sugary foods and beverage companies including Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s cereals donate tens of millions of dollars to NAS and get paid-for scientists with undeclared conflicts of interest onto committees reviewing fluoride. Since 1951, the NAS has issued at least 10 reports discussing fluoride with almost all endorsing its safety and/or effectiveness.
2020s
The latest manipulation of fluoride science comes from a German committee review that exonerates fluoridation of lowering children’s IQ. None of the 31 committee members declare any potential conflicts of interest. But the senior author and long-time chair of the committee, Gerhard Eisenbrand, was found in a required declaration for an unrelated different committee to have listed over a dozen connections with food and pharmaceutical companies and associations, including a pharmaceutical company marketing fluoride toothpaste. Most troubling, though, is his conflict as director of an organization called ILSI Europe. ILSI (International Life Sciences Institute) is a food industry front-group, founded and funded by Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, and a Who’s Who of transnational processed food, pharmaceutical, and chemical companies. ILSI also has connections to Frederick Stare and other sugar industry scientists.
In the past several years, dental and public health organizations seeking to defend fluoridation cite the German review to try to counteract the growing evidence of neurotoxicity. In 2021, the US CDC, long the world’s foremost government fluoridation advocate, quietly reached out to the authors of the German review for help. The emails obtained under a Freedom of Information request revealing this contact are heavily redacted.
Neurath’s study documents the details of the sugar industry’s efforts over 35 pages, with 355 references, and 31 extended footnotes. It is the first time the sugar industry’s major role in distorting science to promote and defend fluoridation has been thoroughly documented. The article ends with this question:
When will the dentists and government public health officials who promote fluoridation realize they have been misled by powerful industries working behind the scenes from the very earliest days of fluoridation?
More details of the extensive evidence trail disclosed by internal industry documents and reported in Neurath’s article will be given in future bulletins. Revelations will include:
How fluoridation was tested on mental institution patients without their consent.
A Swedish candy company funded a study that forced mental patients to consume so much sticky toffee candy that they got rampant decay that was left untreated and caused agonizing pain.
Early trials where cities were secretly fluoridated without the resident’s knowledge.
Connections between sugar industry scientists and the Manhattan Project atomic bomb project scientists where fluoride’s toxic effects on workers and nearby farms were being covered-up.
“Interlocking directorates” between the ADA, sugar industry representatives, and scientists from fluoride-polluting industries.
This and more is in the full paper, which is available online free through Open Access publication.
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