Our supporters will recall that for several months I have been attempting to get the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) to take a second look at its promotion of water fluoridation. The US-government funded studies that have provided very strong evidence that fluoride damages the developing brain of both the fetus and the bottle-fed infant (Bashash 2017 and 2018; Green 2019, Till 2020) were the impetus.

• On May 3, 2021, FAN sent a letter signed by over 100 professionals to the new Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky, asking for an objective internal review of the fetal and infant neurotoxicity science.
• On June 15, 2021, Dr. Karen Hacker, Director of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the CDC, responded with an email reply.
• On June 23, 2021, FAN responded by urging the CDC to organize a meeting between Dr. Hacker and a collection of leading independent fluoride neurotoxicity experts.
• On July 15, 2021, Dr. Hacker responded to our suggestion, expressing interest in organizing such a meeting, but asked us to remind her at a later date due to COVID being a higher priority for her office at the moment.
• On August 4, 2021, FAN sent a reply agreeing to follow up in several months, but pointing out that the CDC ought to suspend their aggressive promotion of fluoridation until they could learn aboutthe new science on fluoride’s neurotoxicity.

In our first letter to the CDC we urged them to create an internal panel to gather new information on fluoride’s neurotoxicity.  To help the CDC speed up this process, while they were dealing with the pandemic, I made contact with several scientists who co-authored many of the recent studies and had a comprehensive understanding of the topic. I asked Dr. Bruce Lanphear and Dr Christine Till (two of the key authors of the fluoride-IQ papers); Dr. Philippe Grandjean (author of the Benchmark Dose Analysis), and Dr. Linda Birnbaum (former director of the NIEHS (2009-2019), if they would accept an invitation from the CDC to meet with Dr. Hacker and others to discuss their and others work on this issue. They all said they would accept the CDC’s invitation if offered.

When communicating with these scientists, I made it clear that my desire was only to help the CDC gather the latest objective research by asking key scientists if they would accept a CDC invitation to present their work.  The neurotoxicity science is strong, consistent, and speaks for itself, so I didn’t even consider suggesting what should be discussed, leaving it up to the CDC and the scientists to decide how the meeting would go.

Of course, there has been a growing chorus of concern in recent years about fluoride’s neurotoxicity from the scientific and medical communities. I knew from an editorial that Lanphear, Till and Birnbaum had written, that they were among the best informed who, not surprisingly, supported the need to get warnings to pregnant women to avoid fluoridated water, which FAN has been advocating since the Bashash paper published in 2017.  Though, who else in the world would be more appropriate for the CDC to meet with than these researchers? These were the actual authors of the most recent studies, and not public health pundits.

Finally, the good news!

Dr. Karen Hacker agreed to coordinate an information-gathering session with members of her staff and Drs. Lanphear, Till and Grandjean to hear them give details of two papers (Green 2019 and Grandjean 2021). The 30 minute meeting took place on November 1st via Zoom. On the call, in addition to Drs. Hacker, Lanphear, Till and Grandjean, were:

• Casey Hannan, Director, CDC’s Division of Oral Health
• Peter Briss, Medical Director, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention Health Promotion
• Joanna Stetner, Principal Senior Attorney, CDC branch of the Office of the General Counsel

FAN’s Science Director, Chris Neurath, and I were invited to listen to the presentation since the CDC’s information-gathering meeting was originally our suggestion.  We listened, but did not participate.

The meeting: Till, Grandjean and Lanphear summarized their work in 15 minutes and then asked if the CDC had any questions or comments. At this point Dr. Hacker stressed that from their (the CDC’s) point of view this was strictly a “listening session.” At this point, the three experts gave further commentary, which included asking the CDC to review the risks of fluoridation in addition to promoting its benefits. Till stressed that contrary to some comments from other sources, these neurotoxic effects were being observed at the doses experienced in fluoridated communities. Grandjean indicated that in Europe there were calls for the World Health Organization (WHO) to review the neurotoxicity of fluoride. Finally, Dr. Lanphear stressed that in these times of Covid how important it was for the public to trust the CDC. Having the CDC revisit the risks of fluoridation would help to build that trust.

In my last communication with Dr. Hacker, I stressed that these studies were coming out ‘thick and fast” and I included the following list of 19 fluoride neurotoxicity studies published between 2017-2021.

Stay tuned,

Paul Connett, PhD
Director
Fluoride Action Network

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