This letter was written in 2005, after I attended
an expensive PR event to promote fluoridation hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Dental
Association at the ADA's Chicago headquarters. I don’t remember if I received
a reply from now-retired dentist William Bailey who was the CDC’s
primary fluoridation promoter.
William Bailey, DDS,
MPH
Department of Oral Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, Georgia
Hi Bill
It was a pleasure speaking with you at the fluoridation symposium
even if you are on the wrong side of the issue. It's so rare that I
meet a fluoridation proponent who is as courteous as you were to me.
And I thank you for that. However, what I heard at that symposium is
disturbing.
A thread running through the delivered speeches is that you all seem
to believe that folks opposed to fluoridation disseminate
misinformation. No fluoridation opponents were speaking before this
assembled crowd. Yet lots of misinformation and improper behavior
was flowing, for example:
1) Dr. Lynn Mouden's presentation about the Arkansas fluoridation
battle maligned one of my new friends, and Mouden's fellow
Arkansasan, who was outside picketing. He also insulted Arkansas
legislators and falsely reported that State Senator Jack Critcher
voted down the fluoridation mandate bill. An Arkansas
newspaper, "The Lovely Citizen," reported Mouden's words and then
Critcher's correction of Mouden's un-truths (See:
http://www.fluoridealert.org/news/2352.html). I suggest this article
be disseminated to all Symposium attendees as a "what not to do" and
hope they don't repeat Mouden's misstatements and further malign or
embarrass Arkansas residents, legislators or themselves.
2) Several speakers dismissed Dr. Dean Burk and Dr. John
Yiamouyiannis' cancer study because it wasn't adjusted for important
variables, they said. This often-repeated criticism is false.
Burk/Yiamouyiannis did make adjustments. When fluoridation
proponents are put on the witness stand in courts of law, they are
unable to scientifically invalidate the Burk/Yiamouyiannis study.
For example, Pennsylvania Judge Flaherty presided over a case which
focused on the validity of the Burk-Yiamouyiannis study. Over the
course of five months, the court held periodic hearings which
consisted of extensive expert testimony from as far away as England.
Flaherty found "[p]oint by point, every criticism made of the Burk-
Yiamouyiannis study was met and explained by the plaintiffs. Often,
the point was turned around against defendants. In short, this court
was compellingly convinced of the evidence in favor of plaintiffs
[fluoridation opponents]."
Then fluoridationists further misinformed legislators, others and me
by reporting that Flaherty's case was "thrown out of court for lack
of evidence." So I wrote to Flaherty in 1996. This is what he
said: "My decision regarding the fluoridation of the public water
supply, made during my tenure as a trial judge almost twenty years
ago, was on appeal, purely a jurisdictional issue...That the
practice is deleterious is more and more accepted -- its utility
doubted."
3) Another speaker, Dr. George Stookey, reported that after 15 years
of water fluoridation which began in 1945, Grand Rapids had about a
50% less tooth decay rate than Muskegon, the non-fluoridated control
city. He stressed that no other fluoride was around back then.
However, Muskegon started fluoridation in 1951. So, in effect,
Stookey's comparison was made between two fluoridated cities, which
actually indicates something other than fluoridation was protecting
the teeth of Grand Rapids' children.
4) I was shocked when Missouri's Ashley Micklethwaite expressed fear
of anti-fluoridationists in her talk. She advised attendees to get
unlisted phone numbers to avoid us. It seems fluoridationists have
been so good at creating a negative image of Americans who fight for
pure water that they believe their own PR.
When my and my daughter's picture appeared in a Long Island
newspaper in the early 1980's as opposed to fluoridation, I got very
alarming phone calls directed to my then 5-year-old. I never assumed
these troubling calls were from dentists or fluoridationists.
However, Dentists don't have a monopoly on sanity. Google searches
reveal dentists who murder, rape, commit Medicaid fraud and more. We
don't judge a whole barrel by a few bad apples. So I'm surprised
your speaker expressed such a fear of us.
If only you had allowed chemistry professor Paul Connet, PhD,
Executive Director of the Fluoride Action Network to speak as he and
I requested, Ms Micklethwaite would have seen her fear was
misguided. Also, maybe Dr. Connett could have corrected your
speakers' blunders before they permeate throughout the country and
those 7 foreign countries which were represented at the symposium.
Not there to defend himself, one of your speakers took a cheap shot
at Dr. Connett. Florida dentist Robert Crawford said, "The fellow
that was out here in the book covers when you went to the
celebration of fluoridation out in the tent the other day [Paul
Connett] . They flew him in to debate us. Can you imagine what you
feel like standing up here and debating somebody standing between
two book covers." This brought laughter from the audience who,
apparently, are quite comfortable denigrating opponents of
fluoridation.
Crawford bragged about his successful Pinellas County fluoridation
strategy. He made this outrageous statement, "We identified county
officials who were anti-fluoride and we had no further contact with
them. And we cut them off, totally." In effect, Crawford cut off
anyone who doubted fluoridation; hardly a noble thing to do. Is he
protecting people or fluoridation? Would his malpractice insurance
cover him should he use the same tactics with a patient who
questions him? I found him quite disturbing.
5) A symposium attendee, during a question and answer period,
brought up misinformation disseminated on the National Institutes of
Dental Research's (NIDCR) website, where a "history of fluoridation"
said H. Trendley Dean did not find fluorosis at "optimal" levels of
fluoride in drinking water. This person called and spoke to the
writer at NIDCR who then researched his objection and agreed it
should be re-written. However, she said it was a low priority for
her and she would get around to it someday. Since the symposium and
his public revelation of this error, it has been corrected, however,
but not before the incorrect information from this "reliable
source," the NIDCR, was repeated in On Tap magazine and elsewhere.
I and others opposed to fluoridation are routinely personally
denigrated by dentists and/or fluoridation proponents in person, in
writing and on the internet, including from members of the public-
dental-health listserv (my taxes at work?). I was called a baby-
killer to my face by a dentist. Many exceedingly derogatory and ugly
comments have been and are directed towards me on the internet where
some dentists actually sign their real names and addresses, their
criticism so apparently accepted within the profession. Dentists
opposed to fluoridation are routinely tongue lashed by their
colleagues on internet mail lists and message boards.
I can only wonder what's been going on in private fluoridation
meetings and at taxpayer subsidized dental schools over the years to
provoke such hatred towards us.
This may be why California Dentist David Nelson felt so comfortable
laughing at us on Wednesday July 13, 2005, while I snapped his
picture. Nelson mockingly told me he was Kip Duchon, a federal
employee. This, by the way, is a federal crime which I reported to
his superiors, who probably will do nothing about it.
I was also offended when Dr. Nelson and two female colleagues
chuckled when the Missouri presenter made a reference to San Jose
woman writing and sending information to Missouri legislators. I
felt like I was back in Junior High School. It scares me that these
people are guardians of my health.
Fluoridation proponents have created an American myth that fluoride
is absolutely safe. The average person is afraid to overdose on the
water-soluble, relatively harmless vitamin C. But very few Americans
similarly fear fluoride. That's very odd. Since just a teaspoon of
fluoride could and has killed. That may not be your intention; but
that's certainly the reality.
As you know, very few grants are available to study ill health
effects of fluoride. And studies declaring fluoridation's benefits
are out-dated and scientifically flawed by today's standards,
according to the National Institutes of Health and the UK's York
Commission.
I hope in the future you will invite Dr. Paul Connett, Dr. William
Hirzy, Dr. David Kennedy or another equally qualified fluoridation
opponent to speak before any fluoridation meeting, symposium or
gathering. You are doing no one a service by disallowing our
participation in tax-payer funded fluoridation programs.
If your goal is to protect the health of Americans, you'll invite
one of our speakers. If your goal is just to win, you will not. If
our science is so misrepresented as fluoridationists tell
legislators in private, you'll be able to show us where we are wrong
in public.
The internet is often maligned as providing misinformation to
fluoridation truth seekers. But the truth was definitely not on
display at this government sponsored event. I fear New York State
Department of Health employees, present at this symposium, will come
back armed with misinformation, and use it to fluoridate more New
Yorkers against their will and without their full knowledge of harm,
further wasting my taxes.
However, I did enjoy our pleasant conversation about New York State.
Someday I'd like to have a pleasant conversation with you about
fluoridation.
I look forward to your response.
Yours truly,
Carol Kopf
Copy to:
Willliam Maas, DDS director of CDC's oral health program
U.S.Senator Charles Schumer
U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton
U.S. Representative Peter King
NYS Senator Kemp Hannon
NYS Senator Owen Johnson
Mayor Heartwell Grand Rapids, Michigan
Dr. George Stookey
Dr. Lynn Mouden, director of the Arkansas Health Department's Office
of Oral Health
Dr Julie Louise Gerberding, Director,Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention
Dr. Elmer Green, Director,Bureau of Dental Health, NYS Dep't of
Health
Dr. Jayanth Kumar, Director, Oral Health Surveillance and Research,
Bureau of Dental Health, NYS Department of Health
Department of Oral Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, Georgia
Hi Bill
It was a pleasure speaking with you at the fluoridation symposium
even if you are on the wrong side of the issue. It's so rare that I
meet a fluoridation proponent who is as courteous as you were to me.
And I thank you for that. However, what I heard at that symposium is
disturbing.
A thread running through the delivered speeches is that you all seem
to believe that folks opposed to fluoridation disseminate
misinformation. No fluoridation opponents were speaking before this
assembled crowd. Yet lots of misinformation and improper behavior
was flowing, for example:
1) Dr. Lynn Mouden's presentation about the Arkansas fluoridation
battle maligned one of my new friends, and Mouden's fellow
Arkansasan, who was outside picketing. He also insulted Arkansas
legislators and falsely reported that State Senator Jack Critcher
voted down the fluoridation mandate bill. An Arkansas
newspaper, "The Lovely Citizen," reported Mouden's words and then
Critcher's correction of Mouden's un-truths (See:
http://www.fluoridealert.org/news/2352.html). I suggest this article
be disseminated to all Symposium attendees as a "what not to do" and
hope they don't repeat Mouden's misstatements and further malign or
embarrass Arkansas residents, legislators or themselves.
2) Several speakers dismissed Dr. Dean Burk and Dr. John
Yiamouyiannis' cancer study because it wasn't adjusted for important
variables, they said. This often-repeated criticism is false.
Burk/Yiamouyiannis did make adjustments. When fluoridation
proponents are put on the witness stand in courts of law, they are
unable to scientifically invalidate the Burk/Yiamouyiannis study.
For example, Pennsylvania Judge Flaherty presided over a case which
focused on the validity of the Burk-Yiamouyiannis study. Over the
course of five months, the court held periodic hearings which
consisted of extensive expert testimony from as far away as England.
Flaherty found "[p]oint by point, every criticism made of the Burk-
Yiamouyiannis study was met and explained by the plaintiffs. Often,
the point was turned around against defendants. In short, this court
was compellingly convinced of the evidence in favor of plaintiffs
[fluoridation opponents]."
Then fluoridationists further misinformed legislators, others and me
by reporting that Flaherty's case was "thrown out of court for lack
of evidence." So I wrote to Flaherty in 1996. This is what he
said: "My decision regarding the fluoridation of the public water
supply, made during my tenure as a trial judge almost twenty years
ago, was on appeal, purely a jurisdictional issue...That the
practice is deleterious is more and more accepted -- its utility
doubted."
3) Another speaker, Dr. George Stookey, reported that after 15 years
of water fluoridation which began in 1945, Grand Rapids had about a
50% less tooth decay rate than Muskegon, the non-fluoridated control
city. He stressed that no other fluoride was around back then.
However, Muskegon started fluoridation in 1951. So, in effect,
Stookey's comparison was made between two fluoridated cities, which
actually indicates something other than fluoridation was protecting
the teeth of Grand Rapids' children.
4) I was shocked when Missouri's Ashley Micklethwaite expressed fear
of anti-fluoridationists in her talk. She advised attendees to get
unlisted phone numbers to avoid us. It seems fluoridationists have
been so good at creating a negative image of Americans who fight for
pure water that they believe their own PR.
When my and my daughter's picture appeared in a Long Island
newspaper in the early 1980's as opposed to fluoridation, I got very
alarming phone calls directed to my then 5-year-old. I never assumed
these troubling calls were from dentists or fluoridationists.
However, Dentists don't have a monopoly on sanity. Google searches
reveal dentists who murder, rape, commit Medicaid fraud and more. We
don't judge a whole barrel by a few bad apples. So I'm surprised
your speaker expressed such a fear of us.
If only you had allowed chemistry professor Paul Connet, PhD,
Executive Director of the Fluoride Action Network to speak as he and
I requested, Ms Micklethwaite would have seen her fear was
misguided. Also, maybe Dr. Connett could have corrected your
speakers' blunders before they permeate throughout the country and
those 7 foreign countries which were represented at the symposium.
Not there to defend himself, one of your speakers took a cheap shot
at Dr. Connett. Florida dentist Robert Crawford said, "The fellow
that was out here in the book covers when you went to the
celebration of fluoridation out in the tent the other day [Paul
Connett] . They flew him in to debate us. Can you imagine what you
feel like standing up here and debating somebody standing between
two book covers." This brought laughter from the audience who,
apparently, are quite comfortable denigrating opponents of
fluoridation.
Crawford bragged about his successful Pinellas County fluoridation
strategy. He made this outrageous statement, "We identified county
officials who were anti-fluoride and we had no further contact with
them. And we cut them off, totally." In effect, Crawford cut off
anyone who doubted fluoridation; hardly a noble thing to do. Is he
protecting people or fluoridation? Would his malpractice insurance
cover him should he use the same tactics with a patient who
questions him? I found him quite disturbing.
5) A symposium attendee, during a question and answer period,
brought up misinformation disseminated on the National Institutes of
Dental Research's (NIDCR) website, where a "history of fluoridation"
said H. Trendley Dean did not find fluorosis at "optimal" levels of
fluoride in drinking water. This person called and spoke to the
writer at NIDCR who then researched his objection and agreed it
should be re-written. However, she said it was a low priority for
her and she would get around to it someday. Since the symposium and
his public revelation of this error, it has been corrected, however,
but not before the incorrect information from this "reliable
source," the NIDCR, was repeated in On Tap magazine and elsewhere.
I and others opposed to fluoridation are routinely personally
denigrated by dentists and/or fluoridation proponents in person, in
writing and on the internet, including from members of the public-
dental-health listserv (my taxes at work?). I was called a baby-
killer to my face by a dentist. Many exceedingly derogatory and ugly
comments have been and are directed towards me on the internet where
some dentists actually sign their real names and addresses, their
criticism so apparently accepted within the profession. Dentists
opposed to fluoridation are routinely tongue lashed by their
colleagues on internet mail lists and message boards.
I can only wonder what's been going on in private fluoridation
meetings and at taxpayer subsidized dental schools over the years to
provoke such hatred towards us.
This may be why California Dentist David Nelson felt so comfortable
laughing at us on Wednesday July 13, 2005, while I snapped his
picture. Nelson mockingly told me he was Kip Duchon, a federal
employee. This, by the way, is a federal crime which I reported to
his superiors, who probably will do nothing about it.
I was also offended when Dr. Nelson and two female colleagues
chuckled when the Missouri presenter made a reference to San Jose
woman writing and sending information to Missouri legislators. I
felt like I was back in Junior High School. It scares me that these
people are guardians of my health.
Fluoridation proponents have created an American myth that fluoride
is absolutely safe. The average person is afraid to overdose on the
water-soluble, relatively harmless vitamin C. But very few Americans
similarly fear fluoride. That's very odd. Since just a teaspoon of
fluoride could and has killed. That may not be your intention; but
that's certainly the reality.
As you know, very few grants are available to study ill health
effects of fluoride. And studies declaring fluoridation's benefits
are out-dated and scientifically flawed by today's standards,
according to the National Institutes of Health and the UK's York
Commission.
I hope in the future you will invite Dr. Paul Connett, Dr. William
Hirzy, Dr. David Kennedy or another equally qualified fluoridation
opponent to speak before any fluoridation meeting, symposium or
gathering. You are doing no one a service by disallowing our
participation in tax-payer funded fluoridation programs.
If your goal is to protect the health of Americans, you'll invite
one of our speakers. If your goal is just to win, you will not. If
our science is so misrepresented as fluoridationists tell
legislators in private, you'll be able to show us where we are wrong
in public.
The internet is often maligned as providing misinformation to
fluoridation truth seekers. But the truth was definitely not on
display at this government sponsored event. I fear New York State
Department of Health employees, present at this symposium, will come
back armed with misinformation, and use it to fluoridate more New
Yorkers against their will and without their full knowledge of harm,
further wasting my taxes.
However, I did enjoy our pleasant conversation about New York State.
Someday I'd like to have a pleasant conversation with you about
fluoridation.
I look forward to your response.
Yours truly,
Carol Kopf
Copy to:
Willliam Maas, DDS director of CDC's oral health program
U.S.Senator Charles Schumer
U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton
U.S. Representative Peter King
NYS Senator Kemp Hannon
NYS Senator Owen Johnson
Mayor Heartwell Grand Rapids, Michigan
Dr. George Stookey
Dr. Lynn Mouden, director of the Arkansas Health Department's Office
of Oral Health
Dr Julie Louise Gerberding, Director,Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention
Dr. Elmer Green, Director,Bureau of Dental Health, NYS Dep't of
Health
Dr. Jayanth Kumar, Director, Oral Health Surveillance and Research,
Bureau of Dental Health, NYS Department of Health
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