The Fluoride Infowar: Newly Released Emails Show California Dental Director Alter Study to Remove Negative Conclusions

Newly released emails show California’s State Dental Director, Dr. Jayanth Kumar attempting to downplay data which indicates fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ in children.

Originally Published on The Last American Vagabond

Americans are currently locked in an information war. The methods of this infowar are known as 5th Generation Warfare, and two of the most consequential battlefields are the internet and social media.

In this infowar Americans struggle on a daily basis to make sense of the constantly conflicting narratives streaming from various biased corporate media outlets, as well as the “official” party line spewed out the mouths of the government puppets and lackeys.

Amidst this confusion, Americans are also told that we are living in a period of “anti-science aggression”, a phrase popularized by Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. Hotez is also the author of the upcoming book The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.

According to Hotez, there is a rise of Americans who stubbornly refuse to accept “the science” as dogma and continue to expect scientists and studies to be free of corporate bias and conflicts of interest.

Unfortunately for Hotez, more Americans are questioning the golden calves of “modern science”, including the COVID-19 panic, vaccinations, virology, and water fluoridation.

The Fluoride Information War

The practice of adding “fluoride” — actually a combination of unpurified byproducts of phosphate mining — in the water has been happening for 70 years and has been heralded as one of the greatest health achievements of the 20th century. This process of taking waste from the phosphate industry and putting it into drinking water has long been criticized for its effects on human health and the environment.

The practice has also been the subject of a 2016 lawsuit between the Fluoride Action Network and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The lawsuit has resulted in a 2020 trial which was put on hold until late last year, and will finally resume in January 2024.

The suit has also brought to light numerous scandals, including a scientist claiming he was threatened for his work showing fluoride’s toxicity, Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine blocking the release of a report which shows fluoride impacts the IQ of children, and a behind-the-scenes look at scientists doing their best to maintain the integrity of their research.

Despite these revelations, there has been a near blackout from the corporate media regarding the fluoride lawsuit and the paradigm shifting implications. The Fluoride Action Network has recently revealed another controversy with the release of emails obtained via Public Records Act requests.

The emails come from California’s State Dental Director, Dr. Jayanth Kumar, and are related to a now published meta-analysis in the journal Public Health which claims that fluoridated water does not have an association with lower IQ in children.

FAN Attorney Michael Connett obtained Dr. Kumar’s emails and shared them with the National Toxicology Program (NTP), the U.S. government agency at the heart of an ongoing controversial review of fluoride’s toxicity. Draft reports from the NTP concluded that fluoride exposure can lead to lower IQ in children.

The FAN reports:

“Kumar is not an independent voice on the issue of fluoride’s safety. At a recent deposition, Kumar admitted his “job is to promote fluoridation” and that he is “literally being paid to promote fluoridation.”

Documents obtained under California’s Public Records Act show that Kumar’s desire to protect fluoridation influenced almost every aspect of the study. Before even conducting the study, Kumar told his colleagues that his aim was to “pre-empt” the NTP and show that fluoridated water is safe. In emails to co-authors, Kumar emphasized the “urgency” of the task.”

FAN also notes that Kumar’s paper was rejected four times before being published, with one peer reviewer describing the study as “superficial,” “unbalanced,” and “misleading”. According to FAN, the emails show the peer reviewer referring to “misinformation” in the study, and worrying that it will “fuel more controversy rather than stimulate prudent science-based decisions.”

When Kumar could not get the results he wanted in the paper — namely, that water fluoridation was safe — he chose to remove an analysis which showed the association between low levels of fluoride and reduced IQ. An email dated March 5, 2022 shows the study’s biostatistician, Honghu Liu, reporting to Kumar that the results are “opposite to what we hoped for”.

In response to this obstacle, Liu suggested to Kumar that they try different models to see if they might reach different results. “Although hard, we can test more models to try to identify a threshold that can lead to a non-significant fluctuation in IQ before the threshold and a significant drop in IQ after the threshold,” Liu wrote to Kumar.

Once the decision was made to remove the analysis altogether, the study concluded, “These meta-analyses show that fluoride exposure relevant to community water fluoridation is not associated with lower IQ scores in children.”

This paper — complete with engineered conclusions — was then promoted by the American Dental Association (ADA) as a basis for the NTP to postpone publishing its report.

In his letter to the NTP Director Richard Woychik, Attorney Michael Connett outlined the evidence of Dr. Kumar’s bias and conflicts of interest.

“The public counts on NTP to provide the best available science on the chemicals that impact their lives. I recognize this is a challenging task, particularly for chemicals with significant political interests at stake, but it is vital nonetheless.”

Whether or not Woychik will listen remains to be seen. However, we should remember that it is Dr. Woychik who previously filed a court declaration with the EPA where he claims responsibility for blocking the release of the NTP monograph.

Although the Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC) voted to approve the release of the NTP’s research in May, Dr. Woychik will play an instrumental role in deciding the final fate of the data on fluoride’s toxicity.

TLAV has reached out to Dr. Kumar for comment and will update this article if he responds. Stay tuned for further updates on the ongoing fluoride lawsuit which is set to resume in January 2024.