By Donna Westfall
CREDIT TO DOUGLAS MAIN, NEWSWEEK – TECH & SCIENCE
According to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) website, Oral Health Division, “Acid produced by bacteria in the mouth can create holes on the surface of the teeth. Fluoride helps protect and rebuild the surface preventing about 25% of cavities.”
Where are their verifiable statistics?
The Cochran Collaboration: Started 20 years ago in the United Kingdom. “We are a global independent network of researchers, professionals, patients, carers, and people interested in health.”
They do not accept commercial or conflicted funding which is vital for them to generate authoritative and reliable information, working freely, unconstrained by commercial and financial interests unlike the Centers for Disease Control, Dental Division, which has strong ties to the Pew Charitable Trust.
The Cochran Collaboration is a group of doctors and researchers known for their comprehensive reviews—which are widely regarded as the gold standard of scientific rigor in assessing effectiveness of public health policies—recently set out to find out if fluoridation reduces cavities. One of those researchers was Professor Trevor Sheldon.
Trevor Sheldon is the Dean of the Hull York Medical School in the United Kingdom since November 1, 2013 and was interim Dean before that. He led the advisory boards systematic review of water fluoridation in 2000, that came to similar conclusions as the Cochrane review. The lack of good evidence of effectiveness has shocked him.
Trevor Sheldon joined the University of York as senior research fellow in the Centre for Health Economics in 1992, where he was part of the team developing the national formula for allocating resources to health authorities for hospital and community health services. He was the founding director of the NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, established in 1993, which he directed until April 1998.
Sheldon says that if fluoridation were to be submitted anew for approval today, “nobody would even think about it” due to the shoddy evidence of effectiveness and obvious downside of fluorosis.
The Fluorida Action Network published their article in December 6, 2013:
PEW PERSISTENTLY MISINFORMS LEGISLATORS AND THE PUBLIC ABOUT FLUORIDATION
From the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoride:
The CDC Foundation takes money from many special interest groups that profit from the sale of fluoride and sugar – which is the real cause of tooth decay. http://www.cdcfoundation.org/FY2014/organizations
It appears that this is a serious conflict of interest