FAN calls for the resignation of the head of the CDC’s Oral Health Division
A public call for the sacking of a fluoride-blinkered US health official just proves our point: you don’t have to lie if your product is any good.
The history of fluoridation is littered with misrepresentations, untruths and outright lies. This path of falsehoods has been an inseparable characteristic of water fluoridation for around seventy years. In fact it seems every week we hear an Australian or New Zealand health professional or government representative making inaccurate, incorrect or blatantly false statements to prop up the ludicrous notion of adding a toxic, ineffective and health-damaging waste chemical to our drinking water. The extent and frequency of their lies or misleading statements reveal how desperate these fluoride proponents really are and that, rather unfortunately, they are more concerned about protecting their own reputations and defending a politically popular policy, than they are about the health and wellbeing of our children.
It is disappointing, for example, when a State President of the Australian Dental Association publicly and emphatically states in mainstream media that fluoride is safe and effective despite an enormous body of scientific research and evidence showing otherwise. Or when two state presidents of the Australian Medical Association just repeat their organisation’s 50-year-old mantra like two parrots, with obviously no knowledge whatsoever of the steady stream of fluoride neurotoxicity studies. But when the head of our own national health body – the National Health and Medical Research Council – either lies, or at best makes public statements demonstrating her complete ignorance of the science of water fluoridation, it is truly unbelievable!
Fluoride lies and deceptions, however, are not limited to Australia and New Zealand. In fact it would appear our health professionals merely mimic their American counterparts. This week the US-based not-for-profit group Fluoride Action Network (FAN) called for the resignation of Casey Hannan, Director of the CDC Oral Health Division, for misleading the American people about the studies associating fluoride exposure with brain damage in children.
Paul Connett, PhD, FAN’s Executive Director, said Hannan mislead the public when responding to a question he posed Hannan in writing a week before a webinar organised by the American Association of Dental Research (AADR) and the National Institute of Dental and Cranial Research (NIDCR). Connett asked Hannan if the recent studies funded by NIEHS and other US agencies that had found fluoride was linked to damage to children’s brains (loss of IQ) would lead to a halt of their promotion of water fluoridation and the establishment of a separate body at the CDC to review of these studies independent of the Oral Health Division.
Hannan responded:
From a FAN newsletter (13 April 2021):
In a new video response, Connett explains that Hannan’s answer is simply untrue and that Hannan – given a week to study the issue – should have known that this was untrue.
The truth is that four NIEHS funded studies (Bashash, 2017, 2018; Green, 2019 and Till, 2020) found damage to the brain in children exposed (either at the fetal or infant stages of life) either in fluoridated communities at 0.7ppm or at doses commonly experienced in fluoridated communities.
Whether Hannan is dishonest or incompetent, he should not be in charge of a division that influences the world on this issue. The CDC has been cited literally thousands of times in newspaper article and statements by public officials that, “Water fluoridation is one of the top public health achievements of the Twentieth Century” (CDC, 1999). In reality, water fluoridation is one of the greatest public health mistakes ever made.
Sadly, those who continue to promote fluoridation refuse to admit this. Usually they muddy the waters with PR spin, but in this case the titular head of the pro-fluoridation lobby stooped to an outright lie and he should face the consequences. No public health official should lie to the public. If they do they should be forced to resign.
What public health officials should be doing is to warn pregnant women and parents/caregivers who bottle-feed infants to avoid fluoridated water. No health agency in the fluoridated world has yet to do this. However, prominent individuals are beginning to do so. We urge anyone reading this to read the editorial by Drs. Linda Birnbaum (former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Bruce Lanphear and Christine Till.
So who do you trust more on the NIEHS-funded studies on fluoride’s neurotoxicity: Casey Hannan, head of the Oral Health Division of the CDC, or Linda Birnbaum, former head of the NIEHS and NTP?
Please visit the Fluoride Action Network’s website, sign up for their free newsletter and watch the video below.
