Aliss wrote:
"The most insidious aspect is that orders must continue to be obeyed even when
those
orders are clearly detrimental to life (i.e. the latest from Health Canada,
eight years after
several provincial health directives warned against babies drinking fluoridated
water in
formula, is now insisting that .7 ppm is safe for babies as long as the formula
powders
and concentrates meet the Codex Alimentarius (I.G. Farben) limits). The Canadian
Pediatric
Society and Canadian Medical Association have repeated their endorsement of the
fluoride
poisoning of infants."

I'm not Canadian so I don't know the exact situation, but let me make a guess.
Health
Canada said .7ppm in formula is safe for babies. But I'd bet they did not say
that .7ppm in
formula is just as safe as non-fluoridated water in terms of avoiding dental
fluorosis. If
they wrote that down somewhere I'd like to see it. If they actually wrote that
I'd be
shocked. I'd also like to know what the Canadian Pediatric Society and CMA
recommend
regarding fluoride. Do they advocate systemic fluoride with tablets or drops
for infants?
Here in the U.S. the institute of medicine some year ago said that infants up to
6 month of
age need very little fluoride. I recall the figure was .01 mg/kg/day.

I think one of the problems with this issue is that the American ADA & CDC
recommendations about infant formula are very weak. They basically say if
parents are
concerned about fluorosis then they can use non-fluoridated water for formula.
A parent
could read that and think "I've never heard of fluorosis, what is that? I've
never heard of
that, so it must not be a problem. So why should I bother to buy
non-fluoridated water?"

I agree with Aliss that getting public health officials to recommend
non-fluoridated water
for infant formula is very hard to do. My suspicion is that protecting the
water
fluoridation program has been seen as more important than the health and
well-being of
infants. This was quite apparent in 2001 when the CDC finally came around to
the
prevailing thought in mainstream dental research. The CDC finally said that
fluoride
works primarily in a topical manner. It was immediately apparent that dosing
infants with
fluoridated formula was a bad idea. Young infants have no teeth, so there was
practically
no benefit, while there was an increased risk of fluorosis. This was according
to
mainstream dental research. I read many dental research reports that were
concerned
about fluoridated formula published many years before the CDC announcement in
2001.
But at that time (2001) the CDC and other fluoridators had nothing to say about
fluoridated formula. They were aware of the issue. I remember seeing Michael
Easly's
website (a paid fluoridation promoter) and he had a folder for this subject.
The folder was
empty.

Now the CDC is saying that prior to their fluoridated formula recommendation
that most
dental researchers did not believe that fluoride exposure in young infants
would
contribute to dental fluorosis in permanent teeth. That's very doubtful in my
opinion. But
let's suppose that was true. I think it's true that most dental researcher then
and now
believe that fluoride exposure in young infants contributes to fluorosis in baby
teeth. So it
seems like the CDC was fine with staying quite and accepting increased
fluorosis in baby
teeth - perhaps to not cause any doubts or questions about their fluoridation
program.
They believed in 2001 that systemic fluoride exposure provided little benefit,
yet did not
act to protect the health of very young infants who would be inadvertently dosed
with
high levels of fluoride in formula.

I've tried to get the message about infant formula here in Los Angeles. I
attended a board
meeting of First Five L.A. This wealthy program gave $10 million in grants to
fluoridate
parts of L.A. county. I directly asked the L.A. county public health director
(chairman of
the board) whether infant formula should be made with fluoridated tap water.
He would
not give a straight answer. He either did not know what he was talking about or
he was
being evasive. 3 other First 5 board members understood my question and asked
him just
like I did. Nobody got a straight answer. So far, none of the public health
agencies in L.A.
have a recommendation on fluoridated infant formula that I can find. I have
called and
searched websites and found nothing.

Protecting the fluoridation program has resulted in spreading false information
by
government agencies and supposedly authoritative associations. So far I have
found false
information that came out of the National Institute of Dental Research, the
American
Dental Association, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the L.A.
county
dental director. They all knew they were wrong after I complained, and 3 out of
the 4
corrected their false information. One of the most common falsehoods is that
fluoridated
water does not cause fluorosis.

-Doug Cragoe