Private Interests and the Start of Fluoride-Supplemented High-Carbohydrate Nutritional Guidelines

Abstract

Fluoride has no tangible health benefits other than preventing dental caries and there is a small difference between its minimum effective dose and its minimum toxic dose. Leading global organizations currently recommend fluoride supplementation because they recommend high-carbohydrate diets which can cause dental caries. Low-carbohydrate diets prevent dental caries making such fluoride recommendations largely unnecessary. A dental organization was among the first to initiate the public health recommendations which started fluoride-supplemented high-carbohydrate nutritional guidelines. This start required expert panels at this dental organization to reverse on three key scientific points between 1942 and 1949: (1) that topical fluoride had potential harms, (2) that dental caries was a marker for micronutrient deficiencies, and (3) that low-carbohydrate diets are to be recommended for dental caries prevention. Internal documents show that private interests motivated the events which led these expert panels to engage in pivotal scientific reversals. These private interests biased scientific processes and these reversals occurred largely in an absence of supporting evidence. It is concluded that private interests played a significant role in the start of public health endorsements of fluoride-supplemented high-carbohydrate nutritional guidelines.

Activity of N–H in phenothiazine derivatives: synthesis and applications in fluoride ions sensing and electrochromism

“…[28][29][30] Because of its highest charge density and Lewis basic nature, fluoride has received well-deserved attention from the scientific community owing to its association with a diverse array of biological, medical, and technological processes. [31][32][33] Since the fluoride ion is a strong hydrogen bond acceptor, a large number of optical sensors have been developed based on fluoride induced deprotonation through H-bonding for detecting fluoride ions. However, most of the H-bonding type fluoride ion sensors involve expensive and lengthy synthetic protocols and show relatively poor selectivity, especially interfered by alkaline anions like AcO À and H 2 PO 4 À .…”