Rating: 
Summary: A tale of PR whitewash and corporate/government collusion
Review: "If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away." Those words, or something similar, are on every tube of fluoride toothpaste sold in America. What could be in it to cause such a warning? According to this book, it's the fluoride.
Fluoride is not some safe, innocuous substance that happens to fight cavities. It is used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, to prepare Sarin nerve gas, to produce high octane gasoline, also to make refrigerant gases and Teflon plastic. It is also used in drugs like Prozac and Cipro. Fluoride is a potential workplace poison and grave environmental hazard.
Since the 1930s, fluoride has been linked, in Europe, to a number of illnesses, like central nervous system disorders, breathing problems and a number of arthritis-like ailments. But during the Cold War, with help from researchers funded by the government and industry, no such problems were reported in America. It is as if "American" fluoride and "European" fluoride have two different sets of properties. Can anyone say "scientific fraud?"
Fluoride may actually help the teeth, but the evidence is not clear-cut. Cavity rates have fallen dramatically since the 1940s, but also in countries that don't fluoridate their water. Perhaps good nutrition, better dental care and antibiotics can explain it.
The vast majority, nearly 90 percent, of the fluoride added to drinking water is actually industrial waste, scraped from the smokestacks of Florida phosphate fertilizer mills. The companies are spared the expense of treating this "fluosilicic acid" as toxic waste. Instead, it is sold to towns all over America. Shipped in rubber-lined tanker trucks, it is dumped into municipal reserviors, supposedly to fight cavities.
On several levels, this book easily reaches the level of Wow. This well-written tale of public relations whitewash and corporate/government collusion at the people's expense has over 100 pages of footnotes, and is very much a Must Read.
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Summary: This book will OPEN your eyes...
Review: After my dentist told me that the white spots on my childs teeth may be due to fluoride, I started researching how this could be possible. What an ants nest. How is it that we are so complacent to this neuro-toxin in our water? In addition, this is a riviting tale and an amazing feat of investigative journalism. A MUST read for any parent living in a fluoridated area. Our government doesn't always know best, as was the case with asbestos, lead, tobacco, and the food pyramid. Your health and well being is in your own hands. I purchase bottled water now (and am happy to report I nursed which prevents fluoride from getting to the child - mother nature knows best.) Highly recommended to parents trying to keep their child as healthy and chemical free as possible.
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Summary: Don't give your children flourinated water!
Review: I decided to read this book as my son's dentist said, "make sure your son has flourinated water". I wanted to research what exactly flouride did when digested and how safe it really is. Christopher Bryson does an amazing job with this book. I would like to see this book turn into a movie. I could not believe how much the government was involved with flouride and how many people suffered needlessly at the hands of these evil corporations. I doubt this book will ever make it into a movie because the big government would stop it dead in its tracks. They don't want you to know the truth about this deadly substance that is being put in your drinking water. My city has flourinated water so needless to say, we drink only springfed. I won't touch the flouride and will never let my children have it.
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Summary: 4 Out Of 5 Dentists Will Not Recommend This Book
Review: I have been researching the topic of fluoride for the last couple years. This is the best source on the topic yet. And I would encourage anyone reading my review first, to peruse the others as well, as they fill in the gaps with other topics I may have missed for lack of space. Together, they all paint a big picture of why this book is so important.
Bryson does not merely make a convincing argument for the dangers of fluoride. Yes, he does that, too. More importantly, though, he blows the doors wide open on the deliberate deception by industry and government to hide these dangers and to, in fact, sell its necessity to the public in direct contradiction to these dangers. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, he was able to procure a wealth of first-hand documents from the very people in industry and government who made this deception happen. Memos, letters, directives - he saw them all, and his exhaustive documentation of them illuminate the depth of the deception. It was this very fact that impressed me most about the book. As a historian, I was pleasantly surprised by how much first-hand documents he cited. Here were the very words of the people leading the industrial and govermental move to suppress the dangers and, indeed, sell fluoride as something good for us all! (Let us see your beautiful smiles!)
The deception was big. Fluoride played a huge role in the development of atomic weapons, but it was a massive environmental and health pollutant. "National security" reasons dictated a need to hide these dangers, so a massive PR movement began to find publicly-accepted outlets for it: Enter toothpaste and the water supply. Smile, indeed! You're ingesting nuclear waste.
Perhaps the most important part of the book is the chapter about propaganda and the molding of public opinion. It offers so much insight into how the American public are so often duped by the military-industrial state. The author interviews Edward Bernays, the "Father of Public Relations" (who was 102 years old at the interview). He was one of the government's top propagandists, even as far back as WWI. Bernays tells Bryson that selling the American public on fluoride was easy because of Americans' inherent trust in "medical authority". People simply want to believe their doctors know everything. Once industry found a few doctors and dentists to play the game by pushing the fluoride-is-good-for-you idea (and at the same time, suppressing any negative publicity), the power of collective thinking ensured the deception's effectiveness.
And as one other reviewer wrote . . . makes one wonder what else they may be lying about.
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Summary: The fluoride book I have been waiting for
Review: It is the book I have been waiting for since 1997, when I read his and Joel Griffiths?s article about fluoride and the Manhattan Project. Bryson?s book is a landmark in the field, and full of original material, much recently declassified. It will be prominently featured in my fluoride essay when I re-edit my site sometime in the next year (I hope!). Bryson?s book reveals matters far more horrific than I related I my original essay. There were numerous fluorine accidents during the Manhattan Project, with workers literally disintegrating at times. It was all covered up in the name of ?national security.? There were many places in the book where I had to step back and take in the institutional evil that Bryson was documenting. Plenty was hair-raising. For instance, during the Manhattan Project, the protection afforded workers was nil, and many worked in a constant mist of hydrogen fluoride (HF), one of the deadliest acids known. Where the workers were most exposed to the HF, white people were not allowed as their skin damage was too obvious. So, in the most dangerous HF environments, the only workers allowed were black.
The U.S. government took the line of fluoride polluters, spinning an extremely hazardous waste into a health product. Much of the spinning happened just as Orwell?s 1984 was being published. I am not sure what the scariest part of the book is. Is it that the U.S. government performed extensive research into fluorine?s effect in the central nervous system (and all the results are still classified)? Or perhaps that the same people performing those experiments (who also performed the notorious plutonium experiments on unwitting subjects), were the same ?scientists? who produced the ?information? that showed how harmless fluoride was for people, as well as good for our teeth?! Bryson uncovered one study that showed the deleterious effects of fluoride on animal subjects, research that was paid for by fluoride polluters in the 1960s as they tried defending themselves from pollutions lawsuits. The results were so damning they were buried for 40 years until Bryson discovered it (the study showed fluoride causing emphysema when inhaled). All in all, Bryson?s book is an amazing effort.
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Summary: Makes you wonder what other truths are hidden by smirks.
Review: Seriously, it's a sort of comical taboo that you just don't question water fluoridation. Of course it's safe! You're a conspiracy freak like General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove or a holistic health nut if you say otherwise. Canada, China (which conducted the largest study of its kind), and several European countries no longer fluoridate their drinking supply. Portland, Oregon is the same way. Modern mass double-blind studies have shown it contributes to weak bones, low intelligence, and ulcers of the stomach and mouth...not to mention that it does nothing to improve dental health by ingesting it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a leading contributor to that IBS that increasingly afflicts so many. The science used to support fluoridation is outright junk science...slanted by anti-commies and fluoride money. The fluoride money got the "marketing" of fluoride going, then the "patriots" perpetuated it by saying our children's strong teeth would help defeat the atheists. Then the dentists, the same ones who flunked out of medical school, tried to back it up with skewed ADA stats...and people actually believed all three groups. So wipe that damn smile off your face and read this book.
"The great enemy of truth is often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth." JFK
Rating:
Summary: A seminal work
Review: The Fluoride Deception, by former BBC journalist Christopher Bryson, is an extremely well-researched book (10 years in the making with over 100 pages of footnotes), and it contains a history of fluoride almost completely unknown to most people. From out of the memory hole, Bryson has brought forth declassified government docs and internal industry memos that help deconstruct (and obliterate) the corporate spin (e.g. 'look ma, no cavities') that has been internalized for too long by too many people - even by people who are otherwise aware and progressive. Some examples of the material Bryson has unearthed: * Fluoride was industry's biggest air pollutant during the Cold War, causing the greatest amount (by far) of litigation, both for damage to workers and damage to the environment
* The biggest air pollution disaster in US history was a result of fluoride air emissions, not sulfur gases as the government has long contended (Bryson provides new compelling evidence on this - see the ALCOA memo)
* The main scientists promoting the safety of fluoride had profound (yet often unknown) conflicts of interest
* Fluoride was a vitally important chemical to national security, as it was the chemical used (on a massive scale) by the US bomb program to process and refine the uranium
* Scientists in the US bomb program (e.g. Harold C. Hodge) who were involved with the human radiation experiments, were behind the implementation of the early water fluoridation trials
* The "Father of Public Relations" Edward Bernays was involved in the early campaign to fluoridate the nation's water
* Studies (Bryson provides several irrefutable examples) indicating seriously harmful effects of fluoride exposure were suppressed and never published. In a nutshell, The Fluoride Deception is a seminally important book about a surprisingly important subject: the risks of fluoride to our health and environment. It is a must read for anyone interested in the fluoride issue and/or the making of the Atomic Bomb.
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Summary: Riveting!
Review: This book contains an amazing amount of new material about the origin of water fluoridation and it answers many questions about the motives behind it. Why were many important physicians, dentists and scientists who opposed fluoridation systematically stigmatized and falsely discredited during its early promotion? Why have thousands of scientific studies revealing the harmfulness of low levels of fluoride ingestion never been revealed in the major media? The answer, as usual, lies in following the money trail. Christopher Bryson brilliantly documents and puts together the pieces of this dramatic mystery after many years of researching hidden and classified information behind the story. All who are now forced to drink fluoridated water should read this important book and learn how fluoridation began in the backrooms of those industries long guilty of major environmental pollution with toxic fluoride emissions. Promoters (including the US Public Health Service) have painted themselves into a corner, so ending fluoridation would be hugely embarrassing to them. Shining this new light on the sordid history of fluoridation will hopefully do much to stimulate objective and overdue scientific scrutiny of the procedure and the harm it has long inflicted on the US public.
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Summary: Finally, the whole story is being told.
Review: This book contains an amazing amount of new material about the origin of water fluoridation and it answers many questions about the motives behind it. Why were many important physicians, dentists and scientists who opposed fluoridation systematically stigmatized and falsely discredited during its early promotion? Why have thousands of scientific studies revealing the harmfulness of low levels of fluoride ingestion never been revealed in the major media? The answer, as usual, lies in following the money trail. Christopher Bryson brilliantly documents and puts together the pieces of this dramatic mystery after many years of researching hidden and classified information behind the story. All who are now forced to drink fluoridated water should read this important book and learn how fluoridation began in the backrooms of those industries long guilty of major environmental pollution with toxic fluoride emissions. Promoters (including the US Public Health Service) have painted themselves into a corner, so ending fluoridation would be hugely embarrassing to them. Shining this new light on the sordid history of fluoridation will hopefully do much to stimulate objective and overdue scientific scrutiny of the procedure and the harm it has long inflicted on the US public.
Rating:
Summary: a pageturner.. and it is non-fiction!
Review: this book is must reading for anybody who feels that there is something very wrong going on in this world right under ones nose ..but does not have a clue as to what to look for .......
.....this book is a masterpiece of many years of research and it is like a smack in the face right from the start...where the author writes:
"..since world war 2, fluoride has been the most damaging poison..."
or: "fluoride can be up to 50 times more toxic than sulfur dioxide or ozone"
"there can be no such thing as a safe concentration..."
"by hunting enzymes, fluorine compounds were the natural enemies of humanity...they destroy the enzyme process."
.....and the authors incisiveness does not end when he writes: "IT WAS A LIE WORTHY OF JOSEPH GOEBBELS."
......warning : do not read this book if you suffer from severe anger attacks or rage....
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