Killer Statistics

This isn't exactly light holiday news, but Don Surber links to a web site that lists the leading causes of death in America as of 2002. 

The American Council on Science and Health reports that "there were zero deaths in 2002 from exposure to Alar, fluoridation of water, chlorination of water, terrorism, dioxin, Teflon, PVC polymers, mercury, lead, and flame retardants" in 2002.

The major causes of death were all the familiar doozies:  heart disease (697,947 deaths), cancer (557,221) and strokes (162,672) topped the list.

One quibble.  Although terrorism killed about 3,000 Americans or foreign nationals on American soil in September 2001 and in the anthrax attack that followed, the American Council on Science and Health says there were no terrorism-related deaths in America in 2002.  Not true.

Beginning in October 2002, "freelance" American jihadists ("Beltway snipers") John Allen Muhammed and Lee Malvo began killing apparently randomly selected Americans in the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area, in sniper attacks.  The victims of the shootings that began in October 2002 included men and women at gas stations and a 13-year old boy arriving at school.  In all, ten people were killed and others critically injured before the two snipers were apprehended.  The snipers' effects included notes and documents that confirmed their jihadist motivation.

That doesn't make terrorism a leading cause of death in 2002 by any means, but the jihadist menace was and remains real.  If not properly fought and deterred, terrorism has the potential to take far more lives in a day than the 3,000 lives viciously snuffed out in 2001.

Still, it's reassuring -- or disturbing, depending on your perspective -- to realize that Krispy Kreme donuts may pose a greater threat to your immediate survival than violent jihadists.  Unfortunately, that's one battle America's troops can't help you win.

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Death by Fluoride by Sally Stride

A wee bit of fluoride makes teeth and dentists happy, we’re told. Dr. Happy Tooth’s smiley face turns into a frown when his favorite decay buster is busted as a killer. Anything in large doses kills, bristles Drill & Fill, DDS, even Dihydrogen Monoxide, they often tease. Ha, ha, get it – water – H2O. Stop picking on fluoride, they say, you make us look bad.

Few people know that fluoride maims and kills. Dentists wouldn’t want you worrying your little head off, and possibly scaring you away from twice-yearly insurance-paid-whether-you-need-it-or-not treatments. Fluoride’s toxicity is downplayed-–or worse, never mentioned. That way everyone stays happy including organized dentistry’s biggest benefactors--toothpaste makers and, and the media paid to showcase the fluoride-good-news, only.

Four stories, organized dentistry and fluoride profiters would rather you didn’t see occurred this year:

1) A 51-year-old committed suicide by fluoridated toothpaste, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers (1). They won’t release the who, what, where, when and why to us.

2) A 52-year-old women with a two-gallon, double-strength daily instant tea habit developed bone and joint pain and other abnormalities indicative of chronic fluoride toxicity or skeletal fluorosis. After breaking the tea habit her pain and discomfort alleviated. Tea is naturally high in fluoride and few doctors are trained to diagnose fluoride’s adverse effects (2).

3) Daily high-dose fluoride home therapy caused gastric distress, difficulty in swallowing, leg muscle and knee joint soreness, and general malaise in a patient, according to the Journal of the American Dental Association (3).

4) Elk drinking naturally high fluoridated water in Yellowstone Park die a decade sooner than they should (3a).

In case you missed previous fluoride deaths:

a) A two-year-old died after swallowing too many fluoride tablets (4).

b) A three-year-old dies from swallowing too many fluoride tablets (5).

c) Three-year-old dies from ingesting, instead of expectorating, dentist’s fluoride treatment (6).

d) Three dialysis patients died from fluoride poisoning at the University of Chicago Hospital when equipment meant to filter out fluoride from the water supply malfunctioned (7).

e) Fluoride killed an Alaskan man and poisoned 296 others after too much fluoride accidentally flowed into the public water supply (8).

f) Fluoride killed a 65-year-old kidney dialysis patient who became ill during a blood cleaning process after water supply workers left a fluoride valve for too long to allow toxic fluoride levels to flow into the public water supply (9) in Annapolis, Maryland.

Fluoride caused many industrial, occupational and environmental sicknesses and deaths also (10).

Fluoride cripples and maims too many people in the world who live on naturally high fluoridated water supplies such as in Nalgonda, India (11).

About 62 million people including 6 million children, have been suffering from fluorosis due to excessive consumption of fluoride through water, reports Newindpress.com

One simple method of assessing the extent of fluorosis is to estimate the prevalence of dental mottling which is the most convenient ‘bio-marker’ of exposure to fluoride, they report (12).

Symptoms of skeletal fluorosis (13):

In the early clinical stage of skeletal fluorosis, symptoms include pains in the bones and joints; sensations of burning, pricking, and tingling in the limbs; muscle weakness; chronic fatigue; and gastrointestinal disorders and reduced appetite. During this phase, changes in the pelvis and spinal column can be detected on x-rays. The bone has both a more prominent and more blurred structure.

In the second clinical stage, pains in the bones become constant and some of the ligaments begin to calcify. Osteoporosis may occur in the long bones, and early symptoms of osteosclerosis (a condition in which the bones become more dense and have abnormal crystalline structure) are present. Bony spurs may also appear on the limb bones, especially around the knee, the elbow, and on the surface of tibia and ulna.

In advanced skeletal fluorosis, called crippling skeletal fluorosis, the extremities become weak and moving the joints is difficult. The vertebrae partially fuse together, crippling the patient.