Who profits from Fluoridation?

This is an extract from an article by Mark Diesendorf and Phillip Sutton published in The Ecologist, Vol 16, No 6, 1986

Fluoride is promoted as a kind of "magic bullet" which is supposed to prevent tooth decay harmlessly whatever junk food children may eat. Clearly the promotion of fluoridation and other fluoride products assists the manufacturers of foods containing large amounts of sugar and other refined carbohydrates to prosper.

One of the principal fluoridation-promoting bodies in Australia, the Dental Health Education and Research Foundation (DHERF), is associated with the University of Sydney. The 1979 Annual Report of the DHERF contained a list of financial donors, the "Honour role of contributors". These included the Coca Cola Export Corporation, the Wrigley Co., the Australian Council of Soft Drink Manufacturers, the Colonial Sugar Refining Co., Arnotts Biscuits, Cadbury Schweppes, Kelloggs and Scanlens Sweets.

From the DHERF's total expenditure of $199,000 (Australian dollars) in 1979, $43,000 was explicitly designated for "Fluoridation promotion". Out of $97,000 designated for "Research and educational programmes" and "Publications and films" a large part was also devoted to fluoridation. The promotion of good nutrition including the avoidance of sugary foods, appears to play a very minor role in DHERF's educational and research programmes. Yet it is just these foods, not a so-called "fluoride deficiency", which comprise the principal cause of tooth decay.

Another likely beneficiary of the public health image of fluoride is the aluminium industry, which funded some of the early American research on the alleged relationship between tooth decay and the natural levels of fluoride in town water supplies. Subsequently the industry advertised its fluoride for use in water fluoridation programmes in the USA. However, the indirect financial gains to the industry from fluoridation may be considerably greater than those from selling the fluoride. Indeed, it is only in the past six years or so that discussion of fluoride pollution from aluminium smelters has started to become "respectable" in Australia.

Not that this is a deliberate conspiracy between dentists and big business. Most people have the best of motives, and there is no reason to question that bodies such as the DHERF and their donors wish to improve children's teeth. It is sufficient to identify the links between elite dental researchers on one hand and the sugary food and aluminium industries on the other, and to point out that the dental researchers may be in a position of inadvertent conflict of interest. The existence of innocent participants does not weaken the hypothesis that the primary pressure for fluoridation originates from the sugary food and aluminium industries.

Dentists and to a lesser extent doctors and health administrators play the role of unwitting "cadres" who perform both the research and the promotional campaigns for fluoridation. These activities are funded in part from the additional profits which fluoridation brings to the primary pressure groups.