Ellijay, GA – Swirling questions about conflicts of interest and improper influence grew rapidly today as Freedom of Information Act documents showed that since the 1970s, dental health professionals alone in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have controlled the agency’s stance supporting water fluoridation.

A response to a request for the names and job descriptions of all persons in CDC that have had input into CDC’s decision to support fluoridation listed no CDC toxicologists, minority health professionals, experts in diabetes, or others outside the Oral Health Division.

CDC says its administrative structure is set up to address what the agency calls “cross cutting issues.” Yet only CDC’s directors of oral health were listed over several decades as being responsible for the agency’s fluoridation stance, a disquieting disclosure for water, health, and political leaders that believed CDC utilized its broad array of internal expertise in assessing research on whole-body, outside-the-mouth harm from fluoridation.

The documentation intensifies focus on the motivations behind CDC’s and EPA’s fluoride safety statements that appear at odds with current scientific knowledge.

After a 2006 report from the National Research Council documented extensive amounts of basic research never conducted on whole-body fluoride impacts, CDC continued promoting fluoridation while stating on its website, “Extensive research conducted over the past 60 years has shown that fluoridation of public water supplies is safe and effective for all community residents.”

The disclosures come as yet another prominent member of the Atlanta black community is calling for a halt to water fluoridation and highlighting concerns about the CDC’s role in promoting it.

Alveda King, nationally known minister and niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., joins the civil rights leader’s daughter, Bernice King, former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, and civil rights leader and minister Dr. Gerald Durley in drawing attention to risks from fluoridation.

Alveda King posted information on her blog today. “The Centers for Disease Control has clearly been trying to preserve fluoridation at all costs, but the facts about fluoride harm are coming out anyway,” she says.

”This is a civil rights issue,” she continues. “No one should be subjected to drinking fluoride in their water, especially sensitive groups like kidney patients and diabetics, babies in their milk formula, or poor families that cannot afford to purchase unfluoridated water. Black and Latino families are being disproportionately harmed.”

A growing body of published research shows that minorities, kidney patients, diabetics, babies and seniors are particularly at risk for harm from ingested fluorides.

Law firms are now reviewing old and new documents believed to highlight a pattern of attempts to curtail discussions on fluoride toxicity and downplay the importance of professionals personally reviewing scientific reports about fluorides.

One such document is an explosive transcript of a 1951 meeting of state dental directors on file at the Library of Congress.

State dental leaders at the meeting were encouraged to promote fluoridation were told, “The question of toxicity is on the same order. Lay off it altogether. Just pass it over. ‘We know there is absolutely no effect other than reducing tooth decay,’ you say, and go on. If it becomes an issue, then you will have to take it over, but don’t bring it up yourself.”

A white paper issued by the American Dental Association in 1979 stated that, “Individual dentists must be convinced that they need not be familiar with scientific reports of laboratory and field investigations on fluoridation to be effective participants in the promotion program and that nonparticipation is an overt neglect of professional responsibility.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that the public, the media, and health providers were given soothing talking points about fluoridation, and in many cases dissuaded from personally looking at toxicity data,” says Daniel G. Stockin, a career public health professional who is opposed to fluoridation.

“How can CDC oral health professionals in a department that has promoted fluoridation for decades be objective, let alone competent to assess research and draw conclusions about the toxicity of fluorides on thyroid glands, kidneys, and the pineal gland?” he asks.

“There is a reason we’re seeing calls for Fluoridegate investigations,” Stockin continues. “The legal community and the media are waking up to this. I believe jurors will see a clear pattern of disinformation, half-truths, misdirection, and omission of critical material facts concerning harm from fluoridated drinking water.”