In my zeal to expose Joseph Mercola as the crank that he is, I’ve been very neglectful of my duty to out Gary Null. One issue that bugs most cranks is water fluoridation. Null has a whole hunk of the internet devoted to it. I picked one funny one at random for deconstruction…
In “Fluoride: The Deadly Legacy—Fluoride & the Pineal Gland“, Null stretches the bounds of illogic. He cites sources, but not correctly (for instance, giving an author and title but no source).
Another concern is fluoride’s effect on the pineal gland, a small but powerful structure located between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The pineal gland secretes melatonin, a hormone that affects such functions as sleep cycles, jet lag, hybernation in animals, immunity, and the onset of puberty.
OK. First of all, we don’t know very much about the pineal gland. It does manufacture melatonin, which is a substance that helps tell the brain that it is night time. I also plays a role in sexual maturation. Beyond that, not too much is know.
Jennifer Luke, Ph.D., found that the pineal gland attracts fluoride, and, thereby, interferes with melatonin’s functions.1 In autopsy studies she discovered extremely high concentrations of fluoride in the gland, averaging 9,000 ppm, going up to 21,000 ppm in some cases. And in an accompanying study of fluoride-treated Mongolian gerbils (the animal considered most favorable for studying effects on the pineal gland) Luke found lower levels of melatonin and earlier onset of puberty.
Thankfully, I have access to MedLine. The studies he cites are old, irrelevant, cited in almost exclusively in the fluoride conspiracy literature, and fail to state the conclusions he claims they do. For example, the author of the study states that “The purpose was to discover whether fluoride (F) accumulates in the aged human pineal gland.” There is no mention of water fluoridation, mechanisms, or function. Her study’s exciting conclusion was not “interference with melatonin”, but “[b]y old age, the pineal gland has readily accumulated F and its F/Ca ratio is higher than bone.” Groundbreaking, eh? Unfortunately I don’t have full text access, but it sounds like Null never even read the abstract.
Assertion 1:
This research is highly suggestive. People with insomnia could be suffering as a result of fluoride’s interference with melatonin production.
This research is highly suggestive? Of what? Gerbil pineal anatomy? Human pineal/bone fluoride ratios? First, correlation does not imply causation. Second, what correlation is he even claiming? Let’s see…
Assertion 2:
Currently more than half the population of the United States suffers from some form of sleep disturbance.
Maybe this is true, maybe it isn’t, but thankfully it’s not too relevant at the moment.
Assertion 3:
Sleep deprivation promotes reduced immunity.
What does this mean? His citations don’t explain it. What level of sleep deprivation leads to what kind of “reduced immunity”, and how is it measured?
Assertion 4:
Sleep-challenged people are more likely to suffer depression, stroke, or heart disease than their well-rested peers. Numerous studies have correlated insufficient melatonin production with an earlier-than-usual onset of puberty.
I don’t know what “sleep-challenged” means. I also don’t know about the correlation with the diseases he mentions. It might be true, but his citations neither support nor refute it. Whatever correlation may exist between melatonin and puberty is irrelevant, as the Luke study he is basing this on does not talk about melatonin or puberty.
This recalls the 1955 Newburgh-Kingston study, which produced some extremely puzzling results that scientists have yet to explain. One was the finding that girls in fluoridated Newberg were reaching menstruation five months earlier on average than the girls in unfluoridated Kingston. This raises the question, does fluoride contribute to the alarming rates of early puberty that we are seeing?
I dug through as much of the literature regarding this as I could find online.2 I could not find much about precocious puberty in the literature. I did, however, find many similar references in dozens of conspiracy-theory websites.
Premature menstruation is associated with a variety of ills, including breast cancer and obesity. A 2001 study published in the American Journal of Public Health reveals that early maturation nearly doubled the odds of being obese.
This is what someone of generous mindset might call a mistake, and someone of a governmental mindset might call dis-information. I call it a lie. Perhaps he is talking about obesity in the original Newburg study? According to the study cited below, “The apparent sharp increase in weight in the Newburg girls…is due to the weight of one child who is very much overweight.” ibid.
This is what statisticians call an “outlier”. It is a data point that skews an entire data set and does not confer statistical significance to a finding. Most analyses are redone with outliers excluded to eliminate bias. His argument seems to be that girls in Newburg reached puberty early, were at higher risk of obesity, and suffered the consequent risks—and that all this is due to water fluoridation. Either Null is too stupid to understand the information, or he is too careless to go to primary sources, or he is a liar. Tough choice. Maybe it’s all of the above.
Addendum:
A reader asked if Null really has a Ph.D. as he claims. The answer is “yes”—and “no”. Apparently, he was awarded a Ph.D. in a scientific field by a University that is accredited only to award Ph.D.s in the humanities. So take you pick of an answer.
References
1Luke,J. A. Effect of fluoride on the physiology of the pineal gland. Caries Res. 28:204,1994. 11)
2Edward R. Schlesinger, David E. Overton, and Helen C. Chase. Newburgh-Kingston Caries Fluorine Study. V. Pediatric Aspects—Continuation Report.Am J Public Health Nations Health. 1953 August; 43(8): 1011–1015. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1620388
January 9, 2008 at 7:02 pm
This is hardly the most egregious example of nonsense coming out of the anti-fluoride camp, which is rife with quote-mining, misrepresentation of the literature and downright lies.
January 9, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Very true. I’ve pretty much decided that going after the fluoride folks on this blog is worthless—they are too crazy to reach. But to use it as a further example of how horrible Gary Null is…well, that I can get behind.
Hey, you’re not one of those people who thinks amalgam fillings are OK, are you? (/snark)
January 10, 2008 at 2:03 am
Interesting, thanks for putting all the effort in to it.
January 10, 2008 at 10:44 am
(it won’t let me post links, I have put spaces after http so it will post)
Precocious puberty in children of families served by a municipal water supply could fit with my low NO hypothesis.
Virtually all natural sources of water, surface water, ground water including from wells contains ammonia oxidizing bacteria. These are autotrophic and so don’t show up on any pathogen screening. Depending on what sort of water treatment is used, these may (or may not) be removed. Well water is usually unprocessed and so would have what ever ammonia oxidizing bacteria were naturally in it. Water that is purified and sterilized with chlorine might have none. Nitrifying bacteria are more resistant to chlorine than many pathogens, but they are not completely resistant.
Many municipal water supplies do have large populations of nitrifying bacteria, especially if chloramine is uses as the disinfectant (the ammonia acts as a nutrient).
http ://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/56/2/451
http ://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15556217?ordinalpos=11&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
The age of menarche has been dropping for over 150 years. In figure 1 of this paper the age of menarche in 1850 was nearly 17. The “standard” explanation is improved diet, but there is no “blip” in the curve during the Depression when presumably there was relatively less food.
http ://www.biolreprod.org/cgi/content/full/60/2/205
This is the same type of effect that is observed when farm animals are giving antibiotics in animal feed, they get bigger, fatter and reach sexual maturity sooner. The mechanism for the antibiotic effect in farm animals remains unknown. I suspect it may be due to reduction of commensal ammonia oxidizing bacteria. Via antibiotics in farm animals, via bathing in humans.
NO is what regulates the synthesis of androgenic steroids. NO inhibits the P450 enzyme that is the rate limiting step. Since NO is already actively controlling this, any change in the NO level will have an effect on the output of the pathway with no threshold. This is how physiology adapts to stress. Stress causes low NO, which affects synthesis of the various steroid (and other) hormones so as to compensate for that stress.
Fluoride can only be added to large municipal water supplies which also do purification and disinfection. If the “control” comparison group used a water supply that was not purified and disinfected, then the exposure to ammonia oxidizing bacteria (and NO status) could be quite different.
The effects of water hardness on heart disease may be due to this effect also. Water is hard because of the presence of Ca and Mg (usually). Such water is more likely to have nitrifying bacteria in it because they lower the pH of water by converting a cation (ammonia) to an anion (nitrite). They require a buffer, which CaCO3 or MgCO3 can supply.
Precocious puberty due to a NO effect from water purification is more plausible (to me) because it can be explained by known physiology acting normally, rather than some unknown effect of fluoride mediated by completely unknown (and likely non-physiologic) mechanism.
January 10, 2008 at 5:05 pm
“fluoride conspiracy literature”
Ah, the anti-fluoride loonies. I’ve tangled with them a few times before online. Thanks for the info.
January 10, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Obviously, he never heard of the Null hypothesis.
January 12, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Here is some more info on Gary Null, including details of his so-called PhD:
http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/null.html
His thesis work sounds pretty rinky-dink, and I doubt if it would be acceptable as a science fair project.
February 1, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I listen to this woo-slinger on the radio as I monitor financial prices at noon, mostly for a cheap laugh.However, I did see his “live act” at a local bookstore : nearly equal parts of off-color self-aggrandizing “humor”,pure snake-oil salesmanship,and poorly organized misinformation, much of it mispronounced.* What is frightening though, is I watched agast as over 100 middle class, middle-aged people listened ,semingly enraptured, applauded loudly, and bought many of his books. This took place 10 miles west of NYC, . in affluent Bergen County. *If Null truely attended classes in anatomy, physiology,etc. as he claims ,would he continuously mispronounce names of parts of the brain or neurotransmitters?