Thanks Dude! I guess the relevance of the FDA claim goes with the statement that by FDA standards Fluoride is a drug, and then it's an ethical question about medicating the masses without informed consent by adding an unapproved drug to the water supply.
(Fluoride is a supplement and supplements aren't defined as drugs. Although one could make a case for the FDA regulating vitamin pills.)
The Harvard study is here. They did a meta-analysis of a lot of different studies in China. I don't really know what to think about it: they authors note that "studies were generally of insufficient quality," yet focused on the "consistency" of their findings. But this is a huge problem to me: the Harvard authors state that the quality of the Chinese studies was poor, and in reading through the paper, it seems to me that they also didn't know much about local conditions at each study site. For example, they said "large tracts of China have superficial fluoride rich minerals with little, if any, likelihood of contamination by other neurotoxicants that would be associated with fluoride concentrations in drinking water." But they just assume. They don't KNOW if this is true. What about lead from cars? What about lead in the water that isn't being published by the government? The government in mainland China is known for this kind of this (for example, google "crazy bad air beijing." A friend of mine was there that day. Contrary to official estimates, the air really was crazy bad.).
I can see that fluoride could cause brain damage in very high concentrations. I don't know about high, medium, or low concentrations.
Here's my advice: stay away from sites with an ideological agenda. People who make decisions based on ideology tend to ignore anything that doesn't support their point of view. Stick to the CDC or other similar sites outside the US. Read peer-reviewed studies or reviews. Obviously, they can have flaws, but it's far less likely that you'll find ideology in them.
I am hoping for more than anecdotal feedback here, I find it so difficult and exhausting to digest the information in the technical studies. Has anyone here actually looked into the hard data on this issue?
Personally, when I'm trying to answer a question that involves analyzing published information, I figure that I need to dig into the data myself. This way, I become more educated about the topic, and the education I get tends to carry over into other areas later on. It's always good to get links and sources of information from other people, though.
