Posted on 12/18/2008 6:03:11 AM PST by nyscof
New York State's Governor Patterson is proposing extensive tax increases to offset revenue shortfalls. But I have a better idea. Stop fluoridation.
This win-win decision for all states would save multi-millions of dollars and benefit every American – except maybe legislators beholden to special interest groups.
Science shows ending fluoridation saves teeth, money, preserves health and will reduce the carbon footprint, to boot, but it would irk organized dentistry. That’s the rub.
After 60 years of water fluoridation and over 50 years of fluoridated toothpaste, tooth decay is epidemic in the United States because 80% of dentists refuse to treat Medicaid patients and over 108 million Americans lack dental insurance (1). Children have died from untreated tooth decay. (2)
Diverting attention from their greed and heartlessness, dentists focus too-willing legislators on fluoridation (adding unnecessary fluoride chemicals into water supplies in a failed effort to prevent tooth decay), as if that would solve the problem. (3)
Far from fluoridation putting dentists out of business, as was once predicted, today’s dentists work fewer hours and days doing less critical work but make more money than many physicians. (4)
Seventy-two percent of NYS is fluoridated even though statistics show it’s failing to thwart cavities. (5) New York City, alone, spends approximately $14 million or more yearly on fluoridation chemicals, equipment and manpower.(6) Yet, NYC residents have among the highest cavity rates in the nation. (7)
Unfortunately, organized dentistry’s PAC money and political might speaks louder than science.(8)
One might argue that stopping fluoridation will cause higher dental costs. But studies show that, when fluoridation ends, cavities actually go down. (9) And the most highly fluoridated states have the highest rates of tooth loss. (10) Cavity crises are occurring in most fluoridated cities and states (See: http://www.FluorideNews.Blogspot.com )
Modern science shows that fluoride ingestion confers no benefits as early fluoridationists believed. Besides, today fluoride is in virtually all foods and beverages, (11) almost all toothpastes, some medicines, many dental products and is now a known component of air pollution.
No one disputes that too much fluoride is a bad thing. And there’s loads of evidence showing that Americans are over-fluoridated. For example, the Centers for Disease control reports that 48% of 12 - 15 year olds have dental fluorosis – white spotted, yellow, brown and/or pitted enamel – from too much fluoride ingestion when their teeth were forming. (12) We can’t see what fluoride is doing to their bones. (13)
For this reason, both the CDC and the American Dental Association advise that infant formula NOT be mixed with fluoridated water.
The National Kidney Foundation also advises kidney patients to avoid fluoridated water as malfunctioning kidneys can allow a toxic build up of fluoride in bones causing them to weaken and break. (14)
New York State can’t afford the money to get this information out. Fluoridation is outdated, unnecessary and harmful. It must be stopped.
The remedy: Dentists have unfairly influenced our legislators to pass laws that benefit themselves (15) while neglecting those that need them the most. In return, Dentists must be required to treat a certain percentage of patients for free, on a sliding scale basis or accept Medicaid payments.
Tell your local and state legislators you want fluoridation stopped.
Tell Congress you want fluoridation stopped and Congressional hearings held about why federal officials continue to promote fluoridation in the face of growing evidence of harm and ineffectiveness: http://congress.FluorideAction.Net
END
References:
1) http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/news/pressreleases/pr_oral_52000.htm
2) “For Want of a Dentist,” by Mary Otto, The Washington Post, February 27, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022702116.html
3) How California Deceptively Passed a Statewide Fluoridation Mandate http://www.edhtelegraph.com/detail/89290.html
Louisiana Mandates Fluoridation Despite Evidence of Harm http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-1/Louisiana-May-Mandate-Fluoridation-Despite-Evidence-of-Harm-20853-1/
4)”New Drill - Tale of Two Docs: Why Dentists Are Earning More,” by Mark Maremont, The Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 10, 2005
http://www.flapsblog.net/2005/01/new-drill-tale-of-two-docs-why.html
5) NYS Department of Health statistics show that fluoridation fails to reduce tooth decay. See chart: http://tinyurl.com/NYSchart
6) Fluoridation Does Not Save Money or Teeth
http://fluoridedangers.blogspot.com/2005/11/fluoridation-does-not-save-money-or.html
7) Evidence that Fluoridation Has Failed New York
http://www.freewebs.com/fluoridation/fluoridationfailsnewyork.htm
8) “Open Wide for $25K” NY Daily News, by Elizabeth Benjamin, July 12, 2008
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2008/07/open-wide-for-25k.html
“In Rift Among Dentist Groups, a Tale of Political Clout.”
By Sam Roberts, New York Times, June 23, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/nyregion/23dentist.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
9) When Fluoridation Ends So Do Cavities
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/relatedconditions/a/flushot.htm
10) More Fluorde = Less Teeth
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1002581/posts
11) USDA Fluoride Database 2005 http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=6312
12) http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/figures/s403a1t23.gif
13) http://groups.google.com/group/Fluoridation-News-Releases/browse_thread/thread/20b328821b24dcc4/9882f8d2ce4caad5?lnk=gst&q=fluorosis+fractures#9882f8d2ce4caad5
14) National Kidney Foundation, “Fluoride Intake in Chronic Kidney Disease,” April 15, 2008
http://www.kidney.org/atoz/pdf/Fluoride_Intake_in_CKD.pdf
(15) Middlesex County Dental Society (New Jersey) President’s Message
Why would long-term use of fluoride lead to a post and crown?
There, fixed it for you.
My insurance pays 85% for crowns, etc. MY cost for a single gold crown was $381.40. You're trying to tell me that the hour the dentist worked on my tooth was worth $2000 minus the $94.13 I paid for the gold? Yeah, right.
That's anti-capitalist hogwash. Any time a price is higher than someone thinks it should be (based on nothing, really), then it's called "gouging".
Are you "gouging" your employer when you get a raise? After all, you're costing your employer more than he'd like to pay you.
If a dentist's prices are higher than they "should be", then another dentist could undercut him and get more patients. Or, you could pay to go to dental school for a few years and become one yourself, getting in on all the free money pouring in.
If it weren't for meddling by government and government-constrained insurers, those two alternatives would be one and the same thing. I don't blame the dentists.
Your sarcasm alert shows either your ignorance on the subject or your professional interest in the profit aspect. As you may or may not know, many dentists are profiting from the damage caused by fluorides by replacing the broken or cracked teeth that have been made brittle and prone to breakage.
Root canal work followed by fitting a crown to the tooth's root or a post is expensive by anyone's standards. My last root canal, post, and crown was done about five years ago and cost well over $2000. My dentist tells me that today the same combination of his services and the crown itself would cost roughly 50% more than it did back then.
As a weekday resident of NYC, I’ve never seen a low-income child drinking tap water (probably because I don’t spend time inside their homes) and rarely if ever seen one drinking bottled water (because neither they nor their parents are interested in drinking anything that isn’t extremely sweet). These kids are guzzling soda and sugary “fruit” drinks by the gallon, and I doubt that tap water drinking fountains are available in the public schools — if they get water at school, I think it’s all bottled. Very few of them think of water as something one drinks. I can’t imagine how they’d be ingesting fluoride in sufficient quantities to cause them to absorb more lead.
You said “Those dentists must be getting huge kickbacks for “forcing” fluoridated water upon the masses. /sarcasm”
In effect, they actually are. There is a synergistic relationship between corporations who profit from tooth decay such as Colagate, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, etc and organized dentistry. Without the money these corporations pour into organized dentistry coffers, dentists would never have the money to have the political influence that they do. The NY Times reported that almost every bill the NYS Dental Society puts forth gets passed.
And also they give a huge amount in political donations. Of course, you would say that’s just a coincidence.....
In effect dentists are the frontmen for the sale of fluoride. If fluoridation really hurt their bottom line, they would be the ones telling you how bad it is for your body - even if it does make the teeth stronger.
Cavities form when teeth demineralize faster than they remineralize. It’s a simple process. The bacteria in your mouth eat the same sugars that you eat, but they turn the sugar to an acid. The acids dissolve the minerals (calcium, fluoride, etc) out of your enamel. Your saliva (and fluoridated products like toothpaste, rinses, and drinking water) put minerals back into the teeth. If the minerals come out of the tooth faster than they go back in, you get a cavity.
Fluoride is a terrific “remineralizing” agent because not only is it readily absorbed (remineralized) back into the tooth, it is harder and less soluble than calcium to the acid effects of the decay process. Voila! Fewer cavities.
Your teeth don’t get brittle from fluoride. Fluoride is a much tougher mineral than calcium, and since enamel is made up of 96% minerals, fluoride actually strengthens teeth. It does not weaken them.
If you had a tooth that broke, it is most likely due to the fact that you had a very large amalgam (mercury/silver) filling in the tooth coupled with parafunctional habits like bruxing or clenching. Fluoride didn’t break your tooth.
What your saying might be true - except that the American Dental Association and most of its state and country constituent dental societies lobby vigorously against any group that is capable of infringing on their lucrative monopoly.
Case in point: Dentists won’t work or live in rural Alaska. As a result, Alaska allowed Dental Health Aide Therapists to do simple dentistry. They were trained in New Zealand. The ADA and the Alaska Dental Society spent $1 million trying to stop them. Thank goodness they lost and now DHATs are allowed to work only in Alaska.
There are many dentist shortage areas in the US where people would welcome Dental Therapists. But organized dentistry is using it’s political might and money to keep them from helping out people who need dental work and at lower prices.
Dental Therapists have worked for decades in other developed countries as successfully and efficiently as dentists.
Besides who among us doesn’t have a dentist-horror story
As a dentist, I see the first-hand destruction from caries in patients suffering from post-radiation or pharmacologically-induced xerostomia. Their saliva dries up, the protective benefits (ie—remineralization) are lost, and rampant decay occurs. I provide these same patients with fluoride-carrying trays that they wear 10 minutes/day, and the decay process completely stops...particularly root surface caries.
Interestingly enough, there’d be more money in it for me if I did *not* prescribe the fluoride trays, because I’d be doing dozens of crowns, fillings, and root canals on their teeth for years to come.
But if you want to don your tin-foil hat, and talk everybody out of using fluoride, have at it. Hopefully the people you talk to are smarter than that though.
“Alaska allowed Dental Health Aide Therapists to do simple dentistry. “
Their definition of “simple dentistry” included injecting a drug (local anesthetic) into someone’s body and filling a cavity in a tooth.
That sounds pretty simple...until the patient has an anaphylactic reaction, or goes into v-fib from the epinephrine in the injection. Or perhaps they develop an infection that needs a root canal or antibiotic. Which antibiotic and why? Will it interact with their other medications? What if the patient has reduced kidney function? Can you still use the same dose of antibiotic? What about high blood pressure? Local anesthetic with epi still OK? How much is OK? Is that lesion on the side of the tongue next to the tooth a traumatic ulcer from biting the tongue? Or is it benign migratory glossitis? Or perhaps invasive squamous cell carcinoma?
I went to four years of college, followed by four years of dental school, and took a two-day written National Board exam, followed by a three-day hands-on state board exam. All to do “simple dentistry”.
When you go to your physician’s office, you might be content seeing the nurse or nurse practitioner. I want to see the Dr.
Off topic but since you seem to know what you’re talking about — what is the connection between meth use and tooth decay? Is it a result of the diet going south or is it a chemical thing?
Maybe you need to shop. My dentist did porcelain crowns for me for $450.00 each, and took about an hour each time. Add in professional insurance, rent and salaries.
Do you buy a loaf of bread for the cost of the wheat?
In addition, you’re subsidizing the existing Medicaid patients.
Find a new dentist; the world is full of people more than willing to work cheap.
“I believe there is no question that fluoridation is responsible for most, if not all, of those crowns.”
Sorry, but that’s absolutely absurd. Your teeth developed at a time when water wasn’t fluoridated, so if anything, lack of fluoridation is to blame.
*raising my hand*
I have had nothing but good experiences, personally. I think their rates are pretty reasonable too, considering the education requirements and such. Certainly beats rotting teeth. :-)
As a dentist, you are probably prescribing fluoride correctly as all drugs should be prescribed - based on individual needs with the benefit/risk factored in and monitored for side effects
Fluoride has its place in dentistry - just not in the water.
Any dentists I know of who has taken the time to read the current fluoride toxicology literature is shocked that science never actually supported fluoridation.
Even the Centers for Disease Control admits that fluoride’s beneficial effects are topical and not systemic. So fluoridation should have its place in history pretty soon
Which dentists claim they care for low-income people? My dentist makes special deals and terms with people who are poor to avoid Medicaid.
This is just good business for her. She is a professional.
I have no problem with removing fluoride from the drinking water. In fact, I don’t believe even government-mandated anything.
But the other anti-fluoride person on here is convinced that fluoride caused his root canals, posts and crowns...which is best described as “absurd”.
J Am Dent Assoc, Vol 139, No 11, 1530-1535.
Assessment of Treatment Provided by Dental Health Aide Therapists in Alaska
A Pilot Study
Kenneth Anthony Bolin, DDS, MPH
Background. Dental health aide therapists (DHATs) in Alaska are authorized under federal law to provide certain dental services, including irreversible dental procedures. The author conducted this pilot study to determine if treatments provided by DHATs differ significantly from those provided by dentists, to determine if DHATs in Alaska are delivering dental care within their scope of training in an acceptable manner and to assess the quality of care and incidence of reportable events during or after dental treatment.
Methods. The author audited the dental records of patients treated by dentists and DHATs who perform similar procedures for selected variables. He reviewed the records of 640 dental procedures performed in 406 patients in three health corporations.
Results. The author found no significant differences among the provider groups in the consistency of diagnosis and treatment or postoperative complications as a result of primary treatment. The patients treated by DHATs had a mean age 7.1 years younger than that of patients treated by dentists, and the presence or adequacy of radiographs was higher among patients treated by dentists than among those treated by DHATs, with the difference being concentrated in the zero- to 6-year age group.
Conclusions. No significant evidence was found to indicate that irreversible dental treatment provided by DHATs differs from similar treatment provided by dentists. Further studies need to be conducted to determine possible long-term effects of irreversible procedures performed by nondentists.
Clinical Implications. A need to improve oral health care for American Indian/Alaska Native populations has led to an approach for providing care to these groups in Alaska. The use of adequately trained DHATs as part of the dental team could be a viable long-term solution.
I haven’t read the specific studies. I practice in an area with a more-affluent, educated, and elderly patient base. I haven’t seen any cases of meth mouth. The closest that I’ve seen was an exact replica of “meth mouth” in a young adult on Ritalin. The only two causative agents that I could guess at were: 1) dry mouth from the Ritalin, and 2)constant night-time snacking because she would sometimes go days without sleeping.
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