When health officials decided to add fluoride to the water supply of Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1945, they plunged ahead despite the lack of a rigorous, large-scale study of the risks and benefits. And for most of the next 60 years, fluoridation research has gone pretty much like that. It has not been science’s finest hour.
Questions about fluoridation have returned with renewed vigor because of allegations of scientific misconduct against a prominent researcher at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. The Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization in Washington, charged last month that Chester Douglass misrepresented an unpublished study about bone cancer and fluoridated tap water. In written testimony to the National Research Council last year, Dr. Douglass said he had found no evidence that fluoridation increased risk of osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer. But a 2001 study he cited, and oversaw, found that boys who drink fluoridated water have a greater risk of developing the disease. (Dr. Douglass did not respond to requests for comment.)
More interesting than what Dr. Douglass said or didn’t say, however, is the study he swept under the rug. It was conducted by one of his doctoral students, Elise Bassin. She started with the same raw data as her mentor — 139 people with osteosarcoma and 280 healthy “controls” — but saw a way to improve on it. Since most of the 400 people diagnosed in the U.S. each year with osteosarcoma are kids, and since any ill effect of fluoride would likely come when bones are growing most quickly, she focused on the 91 patients who were under 20.
Her result: Among boys drinking water with 30% to 99% of the fluoride levels recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of osteosarcoma was estimated to be five times as great as among boys drinking non-fluoridated water. At 100% or more, the risk was an estimated seven times as high. The association was greatest for boys six to eight.
SCIENCE JOURNAL – By SHARON BEGLEY
