NIDAN - Water Fluoridation

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Fluoride, the ionic form of the element fluorine, has been added to community drinking water supplies since the 1940s to help prevent tooth decay. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, about 184 million Americans, nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population, drink fluoridated water.

Fluoride is a potent chemical that on contact kills microbes on the teeth, reducing the incidence of cavities. But a substantial and growing body of peer-reviewed science strongly suggests that ingesting fluoride in tap water does not provide the same dental benefits, and may present serious health risks.

There are two basic types of fluoride. Calcium fluoride appears naturally in underground water sources and even seawater. Enough of it can cause skeletal or dental fluorosis, which weakens bone and dental matter. But it is not nearly as toxic, nor does it negatively affect so many other health issues as sodium fluoride, which is added to many water supplies.

Sodium Fluoride is an extremely toxic substance, and a synthetic waste product of the nuclear, aluminum, and phosphate fertilizer industries. This fluoride has an amazing capacity to combine and increase the potency of other toxic materials. The sodium fluoride obtained from industrial waste and added to water supplies is also already contaminated with lead, aluminum, and cadmium.

It damages the liver and kidneys, weakens the immune system, possibly leading to cancer, creates symptoms that mimic fibromyalgia, and carries aluminum across the blood brain barrier. The latter is recognized as a source of the lower IQ's and Alzheimer's effects of fluoride.

To the extent fluoride works to reduce tooth decay, it works from the outside of the tooth, not from inside the body. It makes no sense to drink it, and expose the rest of the body to the long term risks of fluoride ingestion. The industrial grade waste products used to fluoridate America's drinking water supplies have never received FDA approval for human ingestion. It is no longer acceptable to simply rely on endorsements from agencies that continue to ignore the large body of scientific evidence on this matter.

Fluoride is a cumulative poison. On average, only 50% of the fluoride we ingest each day is excreted through the kidneys. The remainder accumulates in our bones, pineal gland, and other tissues.

Children are now being overdosed with fluoride, even in non-fluoridated areas, from water, swallowed toothpaste, foods and beverages processed with fluoridated water, and other sources. In 2007, research teams from Brazil, China, India, Italy, Mexico, and the United States conducted important new analyses, investigating fluoride's impact on childhood IQ.

According to the authors:

"We found that exposure to fluoride in urine was associated with reduced Performance, Verbal, and Full IQ scores before and after adjusting for confounders. The same pattern was observed for models with fluoride in water as the exposure variable. The individual effect of fluoride in urine indicated that for each milligram increase of fluoride in urine, a decrease of 1.7 points in Full IQ might be expected.

It is urgent that public health measures to reduce exposure levels be implemented. Millions of people around the world are exposed to these pollutants, and are therefore potentially at risk for negative impact on intelligence. The risk is particularly acute for children, whose brains are particularly sensitive to environmental toxins."

Rats fed for one year, with 1 ppm fluoride in their water, using either sodium fluoride or aluminum fluoride, had morphological changes to their kidneys and brains, an increased uptake of aluminum in the brain, and the formation of beta amyloid deposits, which are characteristic of Alzheimers disease. Rats dosed before birth demonstrated hyperactive behavior. Those dosed after birth, demonstrated under activity, or, so called "couch potato syndrome".

Fluoride administered to animals at high doses, damages the male reproductive system. It damages sperm, and increases the rate of infertility in a number of different species. While studies conducted at the FDA have failed to find reproductive effects in rats, an epidemiological study from the US, has found increased rates of infertility, among couples living in areas with 3 or more ppm fluoride in the water, and 2 studies have found a reduced level of circulating testosterone, in males living in high fluoride areas.

Fluoride is very biologically active even at low concentrations. It interferes with hydrogen bonding and inhibits numerous enzymes. Fluoride has been shown to be mutagenic, cause chromosome damage and interfere with the enzymes involved with DNA repair in a variety of cell and tissue studies.

Many scientists, doctors and dentists who have spoken out publicly on this issue have been subjected to censorship and intimidation. Most recently, Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was fired from her position as Chair of Toxicology at Forsythe Dental Center for publishing her findings on fluoride and the brain. Dr. William Marcus was fired from the EPA for questioning the government's handling of the NTP's fluoride-cancer study.

Tactics like this would not be necessary if those promoting fluoridation were on secure scientific ground.Unfortunately, because government officials have put so much of their credibility on the line defending fluoridation, and because of the huge liabilities waiting for them, it will be very difficult for them to speak honestly and openly about the issue. But they must, not only to protect millions of people from unnecessary harm, but to protect the notion that, at its core, public health policy must be based on sound science, not political self-interest.

NIDAN - Gates Foundation - Part 2 - Toxic Investments

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The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization, and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Chevron Corporation and Total of France, the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

This has led to respiratory problems, and other afflictions among the local population. Since the foundation spends billions of dollars to improve the health of Africans, that investment strategy would seem to conflict with its mission.

Hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, asthma, and blurred vision in children. Many of the 250 toxic chemicals in the fumes and soot have long been linked to respiratory disease and cancer.

The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha, find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day than to sell it. They deny the flaring causes sickness. In developed nations, they would trap the gas and either re-inject it into the ground or capture it for sale. In Nigeria, where there isn’t a well-established market for natural gas, they just burn it off and get the oil out.

The fumes and the soot are so pervasive that farmers go several kilometers away from the oil plant in order to plant their crops, because otherwise they're covered with pollution, and therefore, they can't sell them in the marketplace.

The pollution from these plants, which is so pervasive throughout the countryside, not only causes respiratory problems, but also has the effect, according to health authorities in Nigeria, that these pollutants actually reduce immunity and make the children that are being vaccinated more susceptible to diseases like polio and measles than they otherwise would be.

Many of the parents of children in this area are reluctant to vaccinate children who are suffering from respiratory ailments. They feel that the vaccinations may further weaken their children.

Oil workers, and soldiers protecting them, are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria. These are two problems the foundation is fighting.

An oil spill clogging rivers is a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The rivers became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases.

The bright, sooty gas flares, which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium, lower immunity, and make children more susceptible to polio and measles, the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate them against.

A study published 2006 found serious respiratory problems throughout the region: More than half of children aged 2 to 5 had asthma, largely attributed to sulfur dioxide and other industrial pollutants. Much of it was produced by companies in which the Gates Foundation was invested.

By using their resources and prestige, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could through their proxy and shareholder status make some real difference in corporate behavior.

For the environmental group Greenpeace, owning BP shares was a way to promote change from within. It helped sponsor a shareholders' resolution demanding BP to stop any activity to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

But a statement, posted on The Gates Foundation website, made clear that the foundation wasn't planning the type of changes some critics were calling for.

The statement said that evaluating one company over another based on social criteria would be too difficult, and the foundation would not embrace alternatives such as shareholder activism.

NIDAN - Gates Foundation - Part 1 - AGRA

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world. The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty.

The Foundation has embarked on a multibillion-dollar effort to transform African agriculture. It helped to set up the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, AG RA, in 2006, and since then has spent $1.3 billion on agricultural development grants.

The money is to pay for more research into hybrid seeds. The genetically engineered corn varieties would allow poor farmers increase their yields with less fertilizer.

But while it's true that African soil fertility is poor, there's a problem: the conventional wisdom is wrong. Food output per person is as high as it has ever been, suggesting that hunger isn't a problem of production so much as one of distribution.

And there's another problem. The genetically engineered seed can only be used once and that is all. This means that at the end of the season, farmers have to buy new seeds. The threat of hybrid seeds is not only that it is inorganic, but those promoting it are also advocating the use of other chemical inputs. This is a form of agriculture that is very expensive for farmers. Certain forms of traditional seeds will become scarce, threatening the biodiversity of the country and the region as well as the financial viability of farming for the rural poor.

In a number of grants, one corporation appears repeatedly--Monsanto. To some extent, this simply reflects Monsanto's domination of industrial agricultural research. There are, however, notable synergies between Gates and Monsanto: both are corporate titans that have made millions through technology, in particular through the aggressive defense of proprietary intellectual property. Both organizations are suffused by a culture of expertise, and there's some overlap between them. Robert Horsch, a former senior vice president at Monsanto, is, for instance, now interim director of Gates's agricultural development program and head of the science and technology team.

Monsanto and Gates both embrace a model of agriculture that sees farmers suffering a deficit of knowledge--in which seeds, like little tiny beads of software, can be programmed to transmit that knowledge for commercial purposes.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development found that a focus on small-scale sustainable agriculture, locally adapted seed and ecological farming better address the complexities of climate change, hunger, poverty and productive demands on agriculture in the developing world. That report, the most comprehensive scientific assessment of world agriculture to date, recommended development strategies that are in large part the opposite of those backed by the Gates Foundation.

Wouldn’t it be simpler, and cheaper, to just spend some foundation money on getting locally adapted seeds into local farmers hands?

The Gates Foundation acknowledges the relevance of the reports insights. But it continues to invest heavily in biotech solutions to the problem of hunger, while african farmers advocating their own solutions to the food crisis are being marginalized.

Rarely in the history of philanthropy has one foundation, or more correctly, one man, had this kind of power.

The director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria, suggests that if the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations wish to extend the hand of fellowship to the African continent, they should move away from strategies that favor monoculture, strategies that leads to land grabs, strategies that tie local farmers to the shop doors of biotech seed monopolies.

But the Gates Foundation isn't a victim of poor reasoning. It actively promotes an agenda that supports some of the most powerful corporations on earth.

Africa's Green Revolution is, in other words, just another way of doing business as usual.