Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99032 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Concerns over fluoridated drinking water have long been derided as the obsession of McCarthyite cranks. But this muckraking j’accuse asserts that fluoride is indeed a dire threat to public health, one foisted upon the nation by a vast conspiracy—not of Communist agents, but of our very own military-industrial complex. Investigative reporter Bryson revisits the decades-long controversy, drawing on mountains of scientific studies, some unearthed from secret archives of government and corporate laboratories, to question the effects of fluoride and the motives of its leading advocates. The efficacy of fluoridated drinking water in preventing tooth decay, he contends, is dubious. Fluoride in its many forms may be one of the most toxic of industrial pollutants, and Bryson cites scientific analyses linking fluoridated drinking water to bone deformities, hyperactivity and a host of other complaints. The post-war campaign to fluoridate drinking water, he claims, was less a public health innovation than a public relations ploy sponsored by industrial users of fluoride—including the government’s nuclear weapons program. Legendary spin doctors like Edward Bernays exploited the tenuous link between dental hygiene and fluoridation to create markets to stimulate fluoride production and to prove the innocuousness of fluoride compounds, thereby heading off lawsuits by factory workers and others poisoned by industrial fluoride pollution. Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate.
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Customer Reviews

A seminal work
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.

Riveting!
Wow! In this riveting book, Christopher Bryson skillfully connects the dots in exposing a 60 year old cover-up by industry giants designed to avoid mounting litigation related to fluoride--a major workplace poison--and reveals how public opinion was engineered to embrace this toxic substance as the panacea for tooth decay.

With more than 100 pages of supportive documentation Bryson spotlights the long-hidden truth, some of which he uncovered in recently declassified government files, showing that fluoride's harm to human health was well known before the start of fluoridation in 1945.

The shocking facts in this powerful book should rightfully enrage and catapult a largely unsuspecting public into action against this ill advised practice; one that has been banned or rejected by 98% of medically advanced countries.

Finally, the whole story is being told.
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.