The Dark Odyssey of Dr. Phyllis Mullenix
While conducting interviews and gathering the data contained in this writing, this office was repeatedly referred by EPA scientists, university professors and physicians to Dr. Mullenix's research at the Forsyth Dental Institute as a primary and seminal source of reliable scientific research on fluoride toxicity.
The Forsyth Dental Center is a highly respected research institution established in 1910 for the purpose of providingfree dental care for the children of Boston. It is the largest and, considered by many, the most highly respected dental research institution in the world. All Harvard dental students are required to take a portion of their training at Forsyth.
It is interesting to note that the, then, director of the institute, Dr. Jack Hein, who was responsible for her assignment to fluoride toxicology studies was, according to Mullenix, instrumental in some of the original research that led to the introduction of fluoride into toothpaste while he was working for Colgate.
"I wasn't too excited about studying fluoride," Mullenix told this reporter, "because, quite frankly, it was 'good for your teeth' and all that, and I thought the studies would be basically just another control and I had no interest in fluoride." However, because it was part of what she was hired to do, she said, and because she had just astounded the institute by achieving the unattainable--securing a grant from the National Cancer Institute to study the neurotoxicity of the treatments used for childhood leukemia--she decided to incorporate the fluoride studies into that research milieu. In fact, Mullenix claimed, "I was in the top four per cent in the country" for such funding. "The institute was tickled pink, but I really had no idea what a quagmire I was getting into."
For her toxicology studies Dr. Mullenix designed a computer pattern recognition system that has been described by other scientists as nothing short of elegant in its ability to study fluoride's effects on the neuromotor functions of rats.
"By about 1990 I had gathered enough data from the test and control animals," Mullenix continues, "to realize that fluoride doesn't look clean." When she reviewed that data she realized that something was seriously affecting her test animals. They had all (except the control group) been administered doses of fluoride sufficient to bring their blood levels up to the same as those that had caused dental fluorosis [a brittleness and staining of the teeth] in thousands of children. Up to this point, Mullenix explained, fluorosis was widely thought to be the only effect of excessive fluoridation.
The scientist's first hint that she may not be navigating friendly waters came when she was ordered to present her findings to the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) [a division of NIH, the National Institute of Health]. "That's when the 'fun' started," she said, "I had no idea what I was getting into. I walked into the main corridors there and all over the walls was 'The Miracle of Fluoride'. That was my first real kick-in-the-pants as to what was actually going on." The NIH display, she said, actually made fun of and ridiculed those that were against fluoridation. "I thought, 'Oh great!' Here's the main NIH hospital talking about the 'Miracle of Fluoride' and I'm giving a seminar to the NIDR telling them that fluoride is neurotoxic!"
What Dr. Mullenix presented at the seminar that, in reality, sounded the death knell of her career was that:
"The fluoride pattern of behavioral problems matches up with the same results of administering radiation and chemotherapy [to cancer patients]. All of these really nasty treatments that are used clinically in cancer therapy are well known to cause I.Q. deficits in children. That's one of the best studied effects they know of. The behavioral pattern that results from the use of fluoride matches that produced by cancer treatment that causes a reduction in intelligence."
At a meeting with dental industry representatives immediately following her presentation, Mullenix was bluntly asked if she was saying that their company's products were lowering the I.Q. of children? "And I told them, 'basically, yes.'"
The documents obtained by authors Griffiths and Bryson seem to add yet another voice of corroboration to the reduced intelligence effects of fluoride. "New epidemiological evidence from China adds support," the writers claim, "showing a correlation between low dose fluoride exposure and diminished I.Q. in children."
Then in 1994, after refining her research and findings, Dr. Mullenix presented her results to the Journal of Neurotoxicology and Teratology [5], considered probably the world's most respected publication in that field. Three days after she joyfully announced to the Forsyth Institute that she had been accepted for publication by the journal, she was dismissed from her position. What followed was a complete evaporation of all grants and funding for any of Mullenix's research. What that means in the left-brain world of scientific research, which is fueled by grants of government and corporate capital, is the equivalent to an academic burial. Her letter of dismissal from the Forsyth Institute stated as their reason for that action that her work was not "dentally related." [Fluoride research--not dentally related?] The institute's director stated, according to Mullenix, "they didn't consider the safety or the toxicity of fluoride as being their kind of science." Of course, a logical question begs itself at this last statement: why was Dr. Mullenix assigned the study of fluoride toxicity in the first place if it was not "their kind of science"?...
Almost immediately following her dismissal, Dr. Mullenix said, the Forsyth Institute received a quarter-million dollar grant from the Colgate company. Coincidence or reward?
Her findings clearly detailed the developmental effects of fluoride, pre- and postnatal. Doses administered before birth produced marked hyperactivity in offspring. Postnatal administration caused the infant rats to exhibit what Dr. Mullenix calls the "couch potato syndrome"--a malaise or absence of initiative and activity. One need only observe the numerous children being dosed with Ritalin as treatment for their hyperactivity to draw logical correlations...
Dr. Mullenix was then given an unfunded research position at Children's Hospital in Boston, but with no equipment and no money--what for? "The people at Children's Hospital, for heaven's sake, came right out and said they were scared because they knew how important the fluoride issue was," Mullenix said. "Even at Forsyth they told me I was endangering funds for the institution if I published that information." It has become clear to such as Dr. Mullenix et al, that money, not truth, drives science--even at the expense of the health and lives of the nation's citizens.
EXCERPT FROM: "Fear of Fluoride", Salon Magazine, February 1999 (See full article)
At Harvard, Dr. Phyllis Mullenix says she lost her job at the Forsyth Research Institute, which specializes in dental issues, in 1994, after she insisted on publishing research results in the scholarly journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology showing that fluoride adversely affected brain function. By then, Mullenix had spent 12 years at Forsyth's toxicology department, 11 of them as department chairwoman; she was highly regarded for her previous research demonstrating how exposure to lead and radiation lowered children's IQ levels.
"To be honest, I thought studying fluoride would be a waste of time," says Mullenix. "I mean, it's in the water supply, so it's got to be safe, right?" But Mullenix's research found that rats who experienced prenatal exposure to fluoride exhibited higher levels of hyperactivity, while rats with postnatal exposure suffered the reverse: "hypoactivity -- that is, a slowing down of their spontaneous movements -- sitting, standing, smelling, turning the head, etc. ... The reactions of these animals reminded me of the reactions you'd find from high exposures to radiation."
Mullenix says that her superiors ordered her not to publish her results. "Don Hay, the associate director of Forsyth, came and told me, 'If you publish this information, we won't get any more grants from NIDR [the National Institute of Dental Research],' and Forsyth gets about 90 percent of its money from NIDR. I was really upset. I'd never been told not to publish a paper." Within hours of learning that she was indeed publishing her paper, Forsyth fired her, says Mullenix.
"Dr. Mullenix's claim that I wanted to stop her publishing her results, showing a fluoride toxicity in rats, is false," wrote Donald Hay, after consulting with his institute's attorneys. "My concern was that Dr. Mullenix, who had no published record in fluoride research, was reaching conclusions that seemed to differ from a large body of research reported over the last fifty years. These extensive studies have been reviewed and approved by prestigious organizations (American Medical Association and American Dental Association), and indicated that fluoride at ordinary levels was safe. I brought these concerns to her attention." Hay adds, "Dr. Mullenix's claim that she was dismissed after her fluoride paper was accepted is false. We had no knowledge of the acceptance of her paper prior to the time she left [Forsyth]." Hay says Mullenix was dismissed because of problems with the quality of her work.
See also: Statement from Dr. Phyllis Mullenix on the Neurotoxicity of Fluoride