January 25, 2026 Marks 81 Years of Fluoridation Fake Science

Respected, honest and science-based  fluoridation opponents were suppressed since the early days of fluoridation, according to Bette Hileman in Chemical & Engineering News (1988) who gives names and details. It hasn't stopped. 

Present day champions of safe water are detailed in the new book, Fluoride Harm: Suppressed Science and Silenced Voices, which documents the retribution endured for those openly opposing fluoridation. They followed the science, not PR or endorsements. They are dentists, MDs, PhDs, Journalists, professional water engineers, a film maker and activists, including Erin Brockovich.

Here are some of them:

Dentist Hardy Limeback, BSc, PhD, was vilified, attacked, and threatened to be de-licensed for opposing fluoridation despite his being a published fluoride researcher, preventive dentistry university professor, and a hands-on-dentist unlike most fluoridation promoters.

Robert Dickson, MD, faced the same retribution for opposing fluoridation based on the science; he had to face a Canadian tribunal trial. He was exonerated on three of four charges – 1) fluoridation science 2) free speech and 3) practicing outside the scope of his medical training.  To put the issue behind him, he conceded to, and was fined for calling public health medical/dental officers liars despite having evidence to prove it.

Dentist Bill Osmunson, DDS, MPH promoted fluoridation until some of his patients urged him to read the literature. “It was like a punch in the gut,” he says.  Now, he dedicates his retirement to stopping water fluoridation. Osmunson is honored to be invited to sit on a National Fluoridation Commission of experts, including opponents and proponents, to review fluoridation science. Dr. Osmunson was instrumental in getting the National Toxicology Program to review fluoride neurotoxicity science  and for the FDA to restrict the use of ingestible unapproved fluoride drugs. Questioning authorities on fluoridation has taken a toll on his health, family, and practices.

Dentist David Kennedy, DDS, MIAOMT, author of the book, “How to Save Your Teeth: Toxic-Free Preventive Dentistry,” producer and director of the documentary “Fluoridegate: an American Tragedy,” past president of the International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology says “By focusing on fluoridation instead of diet and dentist-access, organized dentistry allowed a national dental health crisis to occur on its watch and created a new one – dental fluorosis (fluoride overdose symptoms).”

Kathy Thiessen, PhD, a member of the US National Research Council’s panel studying fluoride’s toxic effects says, “The [2006] report considers fluoride to be an endocrine disrupter, and did not rule out a carcinogenic effect of fluoride.” EPA failed to act upon the 2006 NRC panel’s advice.

Thiessen writes, the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors (ASTDD), with input from the NYS Dept of Health, CDC and others tried to derail her career by writing to her boss suggesting that she was communicating misinformation about water fluoridation. She writes, “Ironically, a paper that ASTDD said I should use with respect to fluoride effectiveness contained essentially the same data as the paper that ASTDD objected to my using. Both papers used data from a 1986-1987 survey which, in fact, show essentially no difference in caries experience with respect to fluoride concentration in drinking water, but a very clear dose response for both prevalence and severity of dental fluorosis (Heller et al., 1997; Iida and Kumar, 2009). I just wasn’t supposed to point this out.” Her chapter is free here  https://childrenshealthdefense.org/community/suppressed-science-and-silenced-voices-book-political-corruption-water-fluoridation-chapter-26-thiessen/

Dr. J. William Hirzy Jr., PhD, retired EPA scientist and past President of the EPA Professionals Headquarters Union in Wash DC (NTEU280) which opposed fluoridation starting in 1985. Details here   He writes, “…scientists and technicians in eleven EPA unions, have been steadfast since the 1980s and ‘90s in our condemnation of politically determined fluoride contaminant levels and of the intentional pollution of drinking water with fluoridation water additives.” Dr. Hirzy says his chapter, “Malpractice: Civil Service Labor Union’s Opposition of Water Fluoridation,” is his “epistle to my countrymen and to the world on scientific integrity in organized federal labor. My final message is: Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Australia’s Dr. Mark Diesendorf, Bsc, PhD’s chapter entitled, “My Struggle for a Serious Debate about Fluoridation,” reflects his sincere desire to have an open discourse between opponents and proponents on the legitimate science of fluoridation. Instead, he writes, “Throughout my campaign, proponents of fluoridation attempted to suppress and discredit me with dishonest arguments and misrepresentation." Two case studies are in his chapter; more are here.

His experience and research exposed techniques used by the establishment for suppressing scientific and public questioning of fluoridation and for damaging the credibility of anti-establishment experts including: censorship by scientific, medical, and dental journals; intimidating professionals who have concerns about fluoridation; characterizing falsely that opponents are cranks, right wing extremists, or alternative health ‘faddists.”

Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD writes in the Forward of the book that he now recognizes some of his Harvard Medical School education verged on indoctrination, including reverence for water fluoridation. Studies from China, linking fluoride to lower IQ, ignited his concern as did Harvard’s Dr. Phyllis Mullenix’ PhD published peer-reviewed research linking fluoride to neurotoxic effects (Mullenix was fired for failing to bury this evidence) and Dr. Ashley Malin's, (University of Florida epidemiologist and psychologist) findings that “prenatal fluoride exposure was associated with increased neurobehavioral problems.”

Dr. Limeback writes a chapter about the attacks on Dr. Christine Till, PhD, clinical neuropsychologist, and Psychology Professor at York University in Canada. Dr. Till’s research, after intense scrutiny, was published in JAMA Pediatrics. Dr. Limeback writes, “The pandemonium that followed after Dr. Till and her team published their research was similar to the lead industry’s attacks on Dr. Herbert Needleman’s, MD, lead and IQ research. This was not a scholarly debate on the neurotoxicity of fluoride. Rather, this became an attack on epidemiology followed by scurrilous personal attacks on the scientists.”

Fluoride Action Network Science Advisor, Dr.Paul Connett, PhD and author of the science based book. The Case Against Fluoride writes “A particularly nasty example of this political effort to derail science was a letter sent to Dr. Christine Till’s University in an effort to have her reprimanded or dismissed for unprofessional conduct, when in reality her only offence was to publish top quality studies on fluoride’s neurotoxicity. This blatant form of intimidation should have no place in science.”

Activist, Erin Brockovich, author of several books including Superman is not coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It, writes “what I discovered is that there are more grants and government assistance programs to promote using our community drinking water systems as medical dispensaries than to make drinking water safe to consume Why is the fluoride advocates‘ lobby so large and well-funded?” "Fluoride doesn’t belong in drinking water. Period," she writes. 

More co-authors will be listed (when time allows).

Meanwhile, pro-fluoridationists are held to very low standards. For example

Freedom of information requests by a small town in North Dakota uncovered profanity-laced emails and a misuse of CDC funds and astroturfing by fluoridationists such as Dr. Johnny Johnson, president of the American Fluoridation Society; Jim Kershaw, Bismarck, North Dakota’s water plant superintendent and others.

Dr. Johnson has lied about me to legislators, too. It's very revealing that the American Dental Association endorses his group

Voices of Fluoridation Opposition Were Suppressed Since Its Beginning & Persists Today (Part 1)

Voices of Opposition have been Suppressed Since the Early Days of Fluoridation, by Bette Hileman in Chemical & Engineering News (1988)

Ever since the Public Health Service (PHS) endorsed fluoridation in 1950, detractors have charged that PHS and the medical and dental establishment, such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Dental Association (ADA), have suppressed adverse scientific information about its effects.

Some of those who generally support fluoridation make similar charges. For example, Zev Remba, the Washington Bureau editor of AGD Impact, the monthly publication of the Academy of General Dentistry, wrote last year that supporters of fluoridation have had an “unwillingness to release any information that would cast fluorides in a negative light,” and that organized dentistry has lost “its objectivity-the ability to consider varying viewpoints together with scientific data to reach a sensible conclusion.”

The dozen or so scientists C&EN was able to contact who have done research suggesting negative effects from fluoridation agree on this aspect. They all say that fluoridation research is unusual in this respect.

If the lifeblood of science is open debate of evidence, scientific journals are the veins and arteries of the body scientific. Yet journal editors often have refused for political reasons to publish information that raises questions about fluoridation. A letter from Bernard P. Tillis, editor of the New York State Dental Journal, written in February 1984 to Geoffrey E. Smith, a dental surgeon from Melbourne, Australia, says: “Your paper . . . was read here with interest,” but it is not appropriate for publication at this time because “the opposition to fluoridation has become virulent again.” The paper poses the question: Are people ingesting increasing amounts of fluoride and can they do so with impunity?

Sohan L. Manocha, now a lawyer, and Harold Warner, professor emeritus of biomedical engineering at Emory University medical school in Atlanta, received a similar letter in 1974 from the editor of AMA’s Archives of Environmental Health. The editor rejected a report Manocha and Warner submitted on enzyme changes in monkeys who were drinking fluoridated water because of reviewers’ comments such as: “’l would recommend that this paper not be accepted for publication at this time” because “this is a sensitive subject and any publication in this area is subject to interpretation by antifluoridation groups.”

These papers were subsequently published in prestigious British journals. Science Progress (Oxford) and Histochemical Journal. Many other authors have reported similar difficulties publishing original data that suggest adverse effects of fluoridated water.

Most authoritative scientific overviews of fluoridation have omitted negative information about it, even when the oversight is pointed out. Phillipe Grandjean, professor of environmental medicine at Odense University in Denmark, wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency in June 1985 about a World Health Organization study on fluorine and fluorides:

“Information which could cast any doubt on the advantage of fluoride supplements was left out by the Task Group. Unless I had been present myself. I would have found it hard to believe.”

In his 1973 Ph.D. thesis on the fluoridation controversy, Edward Groth III, a Stanford biology graduate student at that time, concluded that the vast majority of reviews of the literature were designed to promote fluoridation, not to examine evidence objectively. Groth also noted a number of antifluoridation reviews that were equally biased.

According to Robert J. Carton, an environmental scientist at EPA., the scientific assessment of fluoride’s health risks written by the agency in 1985 “’omits 90% of the literature on mutagenicity, most of which suggests fluoride is a mutagen.”

Several scientists in the U.S. and other countries who have done research or written reports questioning the benefits of fluoridation or suggesting possible health risks were discouraged by their employers from publishing their findings. After their paper had been rejected by the editor of Archives of Environmental Health, Manocha and Warner were told by the director of their department not to try to publish their findings in any other U.S. journal. NIDR had warned the director that the research results would harm the cause of fluoridation. Eventually, Manocha and Warner were granted permission to publish their work in a foreign journal.

In 1982, John A. Colquhoun, former principal dental officer in the Department of Health in Auckland, New Zealand, was told after writing a report that showed no benefit from fluoridation in New Zealand that the department refused him permission to publish it.

In 1980, Brian Dementi, then toxicologist at the Virginia Department of Health, wrote a Comprehensive report on ‘Fluoride and Drinking Water” that suggested possible health risks from fluoridation. This 36-page study has been purged from the department’s library even though it is the only one the department has prepared on the subject. According to current employees, no copy exists anywhere in the department. Spokesmen say the report was thrown away because it was old but also say the department will be preparing another report on the subject soon.

Carton: EPA document omitted 90% of mutagenicity studies

An ADA white paper written in 1979 states: “Dentists’ nonparticipation [in fluoridation promotion] is overt neglect of professional responsibility.” An ADA spokesperson says this is still the association’s official policy. In recent years, several dentists who have testified on the antifluoridation side have been reprimanded by their state dental officers.

ADA and PHS also have actively discouraged research into the health risks of fluoridation by attacking the work or the character of the investigators. As part of their political campaign, they have over the years collected information on perceived antifluoridation scientists, leaders, and organizations. Newspaper articles about them are stored in files, as are letters about them from various proponents of fluoridation. Little or no effort has been made to verify the accuracy of this information. It is used not only in efforts to counteract arguments of the antifluoridationists, but also to discredit the work and objectivity of U.S. scientists whose research suggests possible health risks from fluoridation.

One example is the false information about the late George L. Waldbott, founder and chief of allergy clinics in four Detroit hospitals, that ADA disseminated widely to discredit the validity of his research. Rather than deal scientifically with his work, ADA mounted a campaign of criticism based largely on a letter from a West German health officer, Heinrich Hornung. The letter made a number of untrue statements, including an allegation that Waldbott obtained his information on patients’ reactions to fluoride solely from the use of questionnaires. ADA published Hornung’s letter in its journal in 1956 and distributed a news release based on the letter. ADA later published Waldbott’s response to this letter. But the widely disseminated original news release was not altered or corrected, and continued to be published in many places. As late as 1985, it was still being quoted. Once political attacks effectively portrayed him as “antifluoridation,” Waldbott’s work was largely ignored by physicians and scientists.

In November 1962 and 1965, ADA included in its journal long directories of information about antifluoridation scientists, organizations, leaders, and others known to be opposed to fluoridation. Listed in alphabetical order were reputable scientists, convicted felons, food faddists, scientific organizations, and the Ku Klux Klan. Information was given about each, including quotes from newspaper articles, some of which contained false data. The information was published for use by proponents of fluoridation in local fluoridation referenda.

John S. Small, information specialist at the National Institute of Dental Research, is quite willing to talk about the files he keeps on antifluoridation organizations and their leaders. “Of course, we gather information,” he says. ‘”These people are running all over the country opposing fluoridation. We have to know what they are up to.” Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has a different view of this activity. He calls it an “institutionalized witch-hunt.”

It is easy to understand why research on risks of fluoridation has never been more vigorously pursued. Most of the individuals and agencies involved have been promoting fluoridation publicly for nearly 40 years. Research that suggests possible harm threatens them with a loss of face. For example, PHS has historically been the principal source of funds for fluoride research: but ever since June 1950, PHS has been officially committed to and responsible for promoting fluoridation. Thus, the agency has a fundamental conflict of interest.

Colquhoun, now teaching the history of education at the University of Auckland, offers another explanation for what appears to be the suppression of research. He notes that the editorial policy of scientific journals has “generally been to not publish material which overtly opposes the fluoridation paradigm.” Scientific journals employ a referee system of peer review. But when the overwhelming majority of experts in an area from which the referees are selected are committed to the shared paradigm of fluoridation, Colquhoun notes, the system lends itself to preservation and continuation of the traditional belief that fluoridation is safe and effective. This results in “single-minded promotion, but poor-quality research, and an apparent inability to flexibly reassess in the presence of unexpected new data,” he says.

https://fluoridealert.org/content/hileman-sidebar03/

Part 2 will reveal modern day opponents who been, not only vilified, but threatened with loss of their licenses or jobs. Some were fired for telling the truth. Most are detailed in the book "Fluoride Harm: Suppressed Science and Silenced Voices" with profits going to environmental groups http://tinyurl.com/FluorideHarmBook