At least Willamette Week pretends to not have a conflict of interest and inherent bias when they cover the fluoride issue.

.... How's the money from the "Healthy Kids Healthy Portland" ads been you've been running treating ya???

Yes. I've been pretending all along not to have written several columns/posts about fluoridation, starting last fall:

"I SUPPOSE it was generous of the Portland City Council to hold a lengthy public hearing less than a week before it was scheduled to vote on something that (sorry, inbox!) makes sense and is entirely overdue: the fluoridation of Portland's water supply."

http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/ha…

Fluoride ingestion does NOT reduce tooth decay as it was thought to when fluoridation began in 1945. It was also wrongly believed to be an essential nutrient required for healthy teeth. Consuming a fluoride-free diet does not cause tooth decay Therefore, fluoride is a drug which changes a body part in ways nature didn't intend Like all drugs, fluoride has side effects which affect different people in different ways There's no scientifically valid reason for adding fluoride into water supplies or into Portland residents bodies.

Oh geez, why perpetuate any of the crap the anti-flouride wacko's spew anyway?

The sky is falling....the sky is falling!!

Fluoridation is NOT an outdated system of public health means of combating dental decay. As a dental practitioner, I have learned how to prevent decay in a non-fluoridated community. My two daughters, ages 29 and 25 are cavity free. As with any young person growing up in Portland who is also cavity free, they've enjoyed the "EPA" of dental prevention: Education, Prevention, and Access to care. If you have all three, there's a very good chance that one will not have to experience the pain and suffering of oral disease. If you are not as fortunate as those that have enjoyed "EPA", your risk of oral disease is greatly increased.

Public Health is about treating a population, not an individual. Some people, who don't understand this fact, have a difficult time with the idea of adjusting the existing level of fluoride concentration in Bull Run upwards to the 0.7 ppm level that is considered optimal for dental health. Fluoridation is egalitarian access to oral care.

Yes, someone is going to feel inconvenienced when it is implemented. In the late '60's, Seattle went through a contentious fluoridation campaign over fluoridation. Today, when I visit my daughter in Seattle, I go out to dinner with her and see folks drinking fluoridated tap water, standing in line at Starbuck's to buy a latte made with fluoridated water, and drinking many local microbrews brewed with fluoridated water, and no one gives it a second thought.

The personal choice issue has been strongly articulated here in Portland, but I would like to respond to that by sharing a quote by Dr. John Harris of the U. of Manchester in the U.K:

“We should ask not are we entitled to impose fluoridation on unwilling people, but are the unwilling people entitled to impose the risks, damage & costs of the failure to fluoridate on the community at large? When we compare the freedoms at stake, the most crucial is surely the one which involves liberation from pain and disease.”

I work 2 days a week volunteering dental care to mostly low-income children. They didn't get to choose who their parents are or what socio-economic class they were born into. Who advocates for them, mystixa?

Charity is not a health care system, and if we lived in a perfect world, we wouldn't need safety net dental clinics or fluoridation.

We don't live in that world.........................

I saw Dr. Strangelove. Don't be puttin' no damn fluoride in the water and makin' us go to war with the commies!

Authoritarian Kurt L Ferré thinks pumping a toxic chemical like hydrofluorosilicic acid into the public's drinking water, without any independent scientific review, without any regard to the specific medical circumstances of an individual, and with zero means of controlling the dosage is a not a grievous violation of an individual's natural rights, but a public health obligation. Uh huh....

You see, If you or I did this, we would be arrested and tried as either terrorists (because contaminating the water supply is an act of terrorism) or felons for practicing medicine without a license. But when Authoritarian's, like Kurt L Ferré, do it on behalf of special interest's who are spending hand over fist, through their PAC or course, for the least amount of transparency, it's no problem.

But hey, what's not to trust about the hush-hush coalition of more than 50 high-profile organizations who were quietly lobbying Portland's City Council to fluoridate in secret and off the City Council's public calendars, violating the city’s lobbying and reporting requirements? And all at the low low cost of $5million for the treatment plant and $500k annually to purchase the chemicals.

What was that about a $25 million budget shortfall, oh nevermind.

Dentists are Fluoride-Misinformed

Most dentists are trained to use politics and not science to promote fluoridation, according to Armfield and Melbye in the Journal of the American Dental Association . The researchers write: "Studies of dentists' attitudes about water fluoridation suggest that a lack of knowledge and preparedness are barriers to discussing the topic ... more than one-half of the respondents believed they needed more information and training on the issue.

Armfield and Melbye postulate that: "Dentists' lack of self-efficacy with respect to critically evaluating scientific literature may help to explain their reluctance to promote water fluoridation in their clinical practices." Other studies how dentists don’t keep current on new fluoride science, e.g. this research y by Yoder http://tinyurl.com/Yoder

Research shows that 57% of Texas dentists incorrectly identified primary effect of fluoride. 'Makes enamel stronger while tooth is developing prior to eruption' was the most commonly cited wrong answer (44%). Only 5% identified that posteruptive effect exceeds any preeruptive effect.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2291801…

I am allergic to fluoride (proven in a double-blind clinical study). Do I have any rights? Are my needs going to be met if the water is polluted with industrial waste fluoride chemicals? Isn't the prescription of such by dentists for (internal use) malpractice? The FDA has not approved these chemicals as a drug for human treatment and the dentists pushing it are not qualified to prescribe an whole body drug to a mass of people. I guess the Mercury (ironically mercury is another poison contained in the chemical brew used to fluoridate water supplies) does not care about those who are allergic and would rather take pro-fluoridation advertising money instead of doing real investigative reporting.

Well that added a new one to the fluorophobic list of ailments. . fluoride induced macular degeneration. Sure why not . .drank fluoridated water, got macular degeneration, start a campaign to get that poison out of the water.