{"id":1235,"date":"2013-08-08T18:28:10","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T06:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2013\/08\/once_more_into_the_fluoride_de\/"},"modified":"2013-08-08T18:28:10","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T06:28:10","slug":"once-more-into-the-fluoride-de","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2013\/08\/once-more-into-the-fluoride-de\/","title":{"rendered":"once more into the fluoride &#8216;debate&#8217;, dear friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s <i>Hamilton Press<\/i> (a local free newspaper) has a lot of fluoride-focused letters in its opinion pages. After reading them I must ask, again, why those opposed to fluoride need to misrepresent the evidence if their case is so strong.<\/p>\n<p>For example, we&#8217;re told about Amsterdam GP Dr Hans Moolenburgh, who apparently noticed those children in his practice who were drinking fluoridated water were developing colic. (Ulcers &amp; eczema were also attributed to this ion.) Incidentally much of the letter&#8217;s content seems to be cribbed from on-line sources <a href=\"http:\/\/australianfluorideaction.com\/the-professionals\/dr-hans-moolenburg\/\">such as this<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;These sudden pains only took place in fluoridated Heemstede, and the cure was easy: Non-fluoridated water.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Now &#8211; aside from the issues of why fluoride, in the very low concentrations added to drinking water, would cause colic, and how likely it is that we&#8217;re seeing confirmation bias &#8211; this &#8216;cure&#8217; would seem quite significant. So, where are the publications relating to it, that would draw the attention of the medical world? Yes, I know he&#8217;s written a book. But a search of pubmed and the NIH database (using the terms moolenburgh+holland+fluoride+colic) drew a blank. Searches using scirus.com &amp; google Scholar brought up a paper citing Moolenburgh, but no actual peer-reviewed publications. (Incidentally that paper is in <a href=\"http:\/\/carmackessays.blogspot.co.nz\/2013\/07\/scientific-consensus-and-fiasco-over.html\">the publication <i>Fluoride<\/i><\/a>, which does not appear to be an independent journal.)<\/p>\n<p>This is really odd, because the letter writer goes on to say that Dr Moolenburgh got together a research team that&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>eventually conducted a double-blind experiment, the results of which clearly established there was a definite relationship between the symptoms and fluoride in water. Following publication of their research results, water fluoridation in Holland was discontinued in 1976.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I would really quite like to read this research paper, except so far I&#8217;ve not been able to find anything that matches what our writer describes. Just what was their double-blind set-up, and their intervention? For it to be a double-blind study then none of the researchers should know where their patients came from, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Also, while it is correct that the Netherlands no longer fluoridate their municipal water supplies, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eusalt.com\/pages\/press-corner\/file.handler?f=111109%20-%20German%20Journal%20'Kali%20und%20Steinsalz'%20-%20Salt%20Fluoridation%20in%20Europe%20and%20Latin%20America%20(Print%20Version).pdf\">fluoridated <i>salt <\/i>is available<\/a>. Indeed, as the paper I&#8217;ve just linked to points out, if a country&#8217;s major discounters sell only fluoridated salt, then that&#8217;s what everybody gets.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll get onto the next letter later.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s Hamilton Press (a local free newspaper) has a lot of fluoride-focused letters in its opinion pages. After reading them I must ask, again, why those opposed to fluoride need to misrepresent the evidence if their case is so strong. For example, we&#8217;re told about Amsterdam GP Dr Hans Moolenburgh, who apparently noticed those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3,45,44],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>once more into the fluoride &#039;debate&#039;, dear friends : BioBlog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2013\/08\/once-more-into-the-fluoride-de\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"once more into the fluoride &#039;debate&#039;, dear friends : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week&#8217;s Hamilton Press (a local free newspaper) has a lot of fluoride-focused letters in its opinion pages. 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