DEAD WATER |
Coming back to that consumer-protection wish-list, dentists should be required by law to submit a detailed itemized receipt, with all the dental procedure codes listed, the price and a short description of each.
All that would be a step in the right direction.
And it is certainly not more than other trades and professions are required to do as a part of their contractual obligation to a client or a customer!
Such set of laws would bring our dealings with dental profession in line with how we deal with other trades and professions.
And yet somehow the legislators and the consumer advocates are nowhere to be seen!
I find that very "peculiar" and, in my opinion, posturing by the dental associations on the subject of fluoridation has something to do with that.
Really, how can you possibly suspect "your" dentist of wrongdoing, if the official policy of his association is that the only thing which matters is your health and wellbeing!
They go out of their way to emphasize that they support a "health measure", which would reduce the rate of tooth decay!
And it is, obviously, implied, that the dental profession would be very happy if we would not have any cavities and would not have to cross the doorstep of a dental office, except, maybe, for a dental check-up and ultrasound dental cleaning.
All they allegedly care about is that we stay healthy!
The policy of dental associations regarding fluoridation is never spelled out in this form, of course, but, in view of how unfavorauble the existing dental office practices are to customers, how well they are designed to facilitate pressure-selling, it is only natural that at some point people would begin to treat all those declared intentions with suspicion.
As for all those declared intentions about their dedication to public health and wellbeing, this is more important that some might care to believe.
This kind of posturing can be very effective when it comes to dealing with the media, making public pronouncements, developing the overall policy, as well as the individual policy items, dealing with complaints, influencing the judiciary in those cases when some frustrated clients decided to take the matters to court for what they claimed was malpractice.
Declared intentions calculated to project an image of an association, which puts public interests above all, can be very important, when dealing with the matters of higher policy.
As one can well imagine, at high level the people and parties normally avoid spelling out certain things, even though they might be obvious to everybody.
In other words, above certain level you do not call people "crooks".
Posturing on the subject of water fluoridation and the alleged benefits it brings, can be very effective for that.
I cannot think of any other initiative, which can be so successfully employed in flashing this altruistic attitude into our faces that nothing else is more important to them than our health!
"Your" dentist just could not care less how he is going to pay the office rent and where he would find the money to write a check to his assistant!
All he cares about is that you never develop cavities, which, of course, means that you never need to visit a dentist to fill them!
He can only hope to see you couple times a year for ultrasound cleaning and a dental check-up!
If this is indeed the reason for their pro-fluoridation posturing, then it is a very bizarre policy by any measure!
Analogy with the funeral industry might be illustrative here.
As we all know, funeral homes perform a valuable service, they attend to a perfectly natural need of a society.
And we do not question their motives. They perform a service for a fee, just like everybody else.
But it would certainly look phony if funeral industry would embark on a big public relations campaign extolling the virtues of a healthy lifestyle, healthy food, stress management, educating the public about the consequences of industrial pollution, against smoking, against GM foods, "do-not-drink-and-drive" and so on.
They would certainly make others laugh!
You do what everybody else does - perform a service for a fee and you are not "required" to go any further.
And yet dental associations somehow seem to have decided to take it into the next level and to start actively declaring that their incomes are of no consequence, that cavities-free teeth come first.
In the environment, where comprehensive consumer-protection legislation "needs improvements", to put it mildly, it would only be inevitable that people's behavior would be affected by it and they would be less likely to challenge the existing state of affairs.
It is a reality of life that people would be more intimidated to start examining with a microscope those who are flashing a holier-than-thou attitude on every occasion.
This, of course, means more opportunities to impose a money-making dental office routine on clients and thus squeeze more revenues for dentists who have no problem using pressure-selling tricks.
Analogy with military aviation tactics can be illustrative here.
During an operation, the air superiority fighters keep the sky clear of enemy planes, so that the pilots of the ground-attack planes can concentrate on their mission.
In this case a declared intention on the subject of public health can be seen as a clever maneuver designed to intimidate the potential opposition; when faced with that, legislators are afraid to tackle the issue and to introduce comprehensive consumer-protection laws, in the meantime dentists have a much easier job when comes to "staying in charge", thus denying their clients an opportunity of equal partnership in making decisions regarding their dental care needs.
To reinforce this argument, I would like to quote from the article "Fluoride: Commie Plot or Capitalist Ploy" by Joel Griffiths, (Covert Action, Fall 1992, Vol. 42, p. 30.)
"Government and industry - especially Alcoa - strongly supported intentional water fluoridation...[it] made possible a master public relations stroke - one that could keep scientists and the public off fluoride's case for years to come.
If the leaders of dentistry, medicine, and public health could be persuaded to endorse fluoride in the public's drinking water, proclaiming to the nation that there was a 'wide margin of safety,' how were they going to turn around later and say industry's fluoride pollution was dangerous?"
However, if we adopt this line of logic, then we would have to assume that doctors and dentists do not know much about physiology, do not read papers, are not aware about the issues around that fluoridation business and that the industry con-men would have no problem enlisting them as some "useful idiots" for their cause.
The following example was mentioned on another page of this site:
"Alcoa's Vancouver, Washington plant was found guilty of dumping 1,000 to 7,000 pounds of fluoride poison each month into the Columbia River [...] The fluoride contaminated grass and forage andresulted in injury and death to cattle."
Even if such news were not noticed by the dental association brass, could it really be possible that every single dentist among over a quarter million dentists in US, Canada, Britain, Australia also failed to notice it?
Even if we assume that the toxic effects of ingesting trace amounts of fluorides were not yet well-known in those days, the people who are in charge of developing and maintaining a consistent public policy for medical and dental association would have to think twice before lending support to some dubious "public health measure".
At best they could have commissioned some studies, to limit or to qualify their endorsement in some way, for example, pending further studies.
At the very least, instead of spelling it out, they could have pretended this is something, that goes without saying.
After all, when fluoridation started, nobody could exclude that somewhere down the road a clear link between fluoridation and some bad disease would be established.
In that case it would make sense to quietly drop the support and to stop mentioning the "benefits of fluoridation" in the official publications.
The association members could then be advised through an internal circular letter or a memorandum, which could be written in such a way as to disguise the dangers of fluorides simply as a "lack of significant (or demonstrated) improvements".
The manufacturers of fluoride toothpaste, as well as the dental polishing agents, which are used in dental cleanings, could also be advised in a similar fashion that dental association no longer actively promotes fluoridation.
They could also send someone high in the association hierarchy to brief the fluoridated toothpaste manufacturers behind the closed doors about some serious problems, which can result from using fluoridating agents in toothpaste.
Let's not forget that prior to 1950 they were very much against this!
Another page of this site has a quote from the editorial in the Journal of the American Dental Association in October, 1944, with pretty straighforward warnings against fluoridation.
Several research studies have pointed to the harmful effects of fluorides as early as 1952!
Obviously, it was known decades earlier that fluoride is a very potent poison, but the new studies specifically pointed to the dental problems and they were dealing with the trace amounts of fluorides, exactly what we get from fluoridated water, as well as fluoridated toothpaste.
The following examples were taken from the book "How Dangerous is Fluoridation?" by Phoebe Courtney.
In 1956, Dr.Charles Dillon, in the Dental Digest, pointed out that fluoride causes a progressive degeneration of vital tissue in the root and the dental periosteum, the membrane, which separates the tooth from the bone.
This results in progressive periodontal disease (gum disease) and in wholesale loss of teeth.
V.O.Hurme, DMD, in Dental Items of Interest, June 1952, stated:
"Fluorides cause gum disease and loss of teeth. Among the very inadequately studied physical signs of fluoride toxicosis are inflammation and destruction of gingival and periodontal tissue.
Published and unpublished observations by many researchers suggest rather strongly that periodontoclasia - gum disease - may be induced or aggravated by certain chemicals, includingfluoride.
Sixteen years later, Dr.C.C.Bass, Dean Emeritus of Tulane University, concurred with Dr.Hurme when he reported in the January 1968 Louisiana State Medical Journal that after many years of research he had concluded that fluoridated water increases the activity of already existing periodontoclasia.
Surely, this should be more than enough to make those who develop policies in dental associations to think again about their unequivocal endorsement of fluoridation!
And yet this had not happened!
Dental associations continue to support and endorse fluoridation!
The LA Times of May 11, 1965, quoted Dr.Harold Hillenbrand, then secretary of the ADA, as claiming that the case for fluoridation was so thoroughly established that it was not "scientifically debatable".
(taken from "How Dangerous is Fluoridation" by Phoebe Courtney)
This speaks for itself! And it speaks volumes!
The following is also from the book by Phoebe Courtney:
In his column of July 29, 1970 Ralph de Toledano stated that he read hundreds of thousands of words on fluoridation when he first began writing about it, and then added: "And I have yet to encounter any solidly categorical proof that it is safe.
"Why then are the pro-fluoridationists - the American Dental Association and its disciples - pressing so hard for the program?
"If it were only a matter of dental health, fluoridated toothpaste and fluoride tablets for growing children would be a far more effective and safe way to deal with the problem of tooth decay."
That is why I believe the real story must be different - dental and medical associations and their members, as supporters of fluoridation, should derive financial benefits from it independently of industry.
I can almost hear indignant voices of the flouridation promoters, reminding us that on many occasions retired dentists were leading the "community campaigns" to adopt fluoridation for their municipalities.
And that is indeed true!
Here is an illustration to expose this maneuver - I used to work for a company, where people were saying that the CEO is conducting a policy, which is clearly for the benefit of a competitor.
If that was indeed the case, then the competitor was paying that CEO to some secret Swiss Bank account.
So one does not really need to read volumes of conspiracy theories to know a few things about "false fronts" and how to recognize them.
And, of course, you do not identify those through their declared statements, but through their actions.
Qui bono? - that universal principle can be very helpful in sorting out things.