Sir, - Mr Liam O Droma, community dental surgeon at Navan, is to be congratulated for promoting good dental practice and giving common sense advice on oral health and nutrition (May 22nd). Dr Eithne Cahill of Kellogg, however, attempts to protect the interests of her employers and the sugar industry by advising readers to "focus on fluoridation and adequate oral hygiene, rather than sugar intake" (May 24th).
At a conference in June 1951, dental health representatives from various American states and territories met with federal authorities to discuss the promotion and implementation of fluoridation. In emphatic language, the Public Health Service spokesmen outlined a programme to introduce fluoridation as widely as possible. Dental health officers from the US, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands were joined by a representative of the World Health Organisation (Phil Blackerby of the Kellogg Foundation) and others.
Soon afterwards, the National Research Council was guided in its deliberations on fluoridation by three scientists, two of whom were closely associated with fluoride promoting industries. F. F. Heyroth was assistant director of the Kettering Laboratory, which was supported financially by ALCOA and eight other corporations confronted with serious fluoride pollution problems. Another scientist, B. G. Bibby, Director of the Eastman Dental Dispensary, had been carrying out research for the Sugar Research Foundation, Inc.
The sugar industry stood to profit by fluoridation as much as any other industrial group. The foundation's 1950 annual report clearly expressed its aim in dental research: "To discover effective means of controlling tooth decay by methods other than restricting carbohydrate [sugar] intake." (The Problem of Tooth Decay. Seventh Annual Report, Sugar Research Foundation, Inc., 1950).
We have no quarrel with cereals per se, but we agree with the Navan Community Dental Surgeon: " . . . even the ordinary varieties are damaging if sufficient sugar is added to them."
Incidentally, according to the WHO, the Republic of Ireland, approximately 66 per cent fluoridated, comes sixth in the tooth league in Western Europe - behind four countries which do not fluoridate and one (UK) with only 10 per cent fluoridation. So why isn't the Republic top of the league? Because water fluoridation is not effective. It is, however, a cumulative poison. - Yours, etc.
JANE JONES,
Administrator,
National Pure Water
Association,
Wakefield,
England.