The Last American Vagabond - Michael Connett Interview – Leading The Charge In The Fight Against Water Fluoridation

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

On February 3rd, 2024, TLAV lead investigator Derrick Broze interviewed Michael Connett, lead attorney for the Fluoride Action Network in the #FluorideLawsuit. Derrick asks Michael about the facts behind the lawsuit, the science which drove him to pursue the suit against the EPA, and what comes next in the fight against water fluoridation.!function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u2q643"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble"); Rumble("play", {"video":"v48yp5c","div":"rumble_v48yp5c"});Source Links:https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/category/health/fluoride-trial/https://www.givesendgo.com/FluorideTrial Bitcoin Donations Are Appreciated:www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bitcoin-donation(3FSozj9gQ1UniHvEiRmkPnXzHSVMc68U9f) Get full access to The Last American Vagabond Substack at tlavagabond.substack.com/subscribe

My name is Michael Connett and I'm the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the EPA on water fluoridation. You know, our lawsuit is looking at fluoride and its effects on the brain. And the first research indicating that fluoride could affect the brain was a long time ago in 1930s, a study of fluoride-exposed workers. And the finding on the, with respect to neurological symptoms, was kind of overlooked at the time. There was much more emphasis on effects on the bones. But in the 1990s, scientists in China

began studying the effects of elevated levels of fluoride on children's IQ. And they did so because there were a number of animal studies coming out that were finding alterations in the brain of animals exposed to fluoride under laboratory conditions. So these Chinese scientists did these studies in the 1990s and were finding these correlations and you saw this kind of accumulation of animal research

in some of these human studies. And then in 2006, the National Research Council here in the United States, really flagged neurotoxicity as a potential problem for fluoride exposures and concluded in 2006 that fluoride does interfere with the functions of the brain. That was 2006.

And that finding by the NRC really spurred a lot more interest and research on this subject. And in 2016, we filed a petition with the EPA based on this accumulating evidence, calling for the agency to ban fluoridation under the toxic substances control act, TOSCA. And TOSCA gives EPA the authority to ban the particular use of an industrial chemical if it presents an unreasonable risk to human health. So that's what we did in 2016. We filed a petition.

In February of 2017, EPA denied it. And then April of 2017, we filed our lawsuit in federal court. The lawsuit is infamous for having sort of languished in court and different, you know, been stalled several times now as we're here sitting in 2024. What would you just would offer to anybody who's just tuned in to the lawsuit, you know, isn't really familiar with the background, just some. bullet points that you think are important for the American people to know about what has transpired so far? Well, first, we're the first citizen groups to ever go all the way to a federal trial in a citizen petition under the toxic substance control act. So in the 40 plus years of the act, no one's done that before. We did that in June of 2020. We had a seven-day trial featuring expert

testimony on both sides. And the judge at the end of that trial, stated that he wanted to wait to make his decision until the National Toxicology Program, NTP, released its systematic review of fluoride neurotoxicity. At that time, in 2020, the NTP had already been working on the review for about four years. And the thought at that time was that the review would be published pretty soon, maybe in a few months.

And so the judge put the case on hold, because he wanted to see the NTP's conclusions. The NTP is the sort of the subject matter experts on toxicology issues at the federal government. They're within the National Institutes of Health. And so the case was put on hold. Now, we weren't thrilled about that. We were hoping to get a decision, but we could certainly understand the court's interest to hear sort of what the more of an authoritative assessment from this federal body. So the case was on hold and we waited and waited and waited.

and two years later in the summer of 2020, I got word from someone in a position of knowledge, an anonymous source, saying that something was happening, political interference was occurring, and that the report was being squashed. And it may never be published, may never be published. And when I heard that, I went to the court, and I told the court what we found out, and I just asked to take the case out of the abeyance or out of the stay

because we could wait forever, in which case we won't have a case, right? And the judge agreed and agreed to put the case back on for a second trial. And then based on some additional back and forth with the DOJ Department of Justice, we were able to secure a copy of the draft NTP report on fluoride neurotoxicity, which had been completed by NTP scientists, but it was not allowed to be released. But we were able to secure a copy to see what it said.

And that report, what is considered a draft report, is in evidence in this case and is very much a focus of this current second phase of trial. And what was the conclusion of the May 22 draft report? The conclusion is that the human evidence on fluoride and IQ is consistent. It's consistent in showing a reduction in IQ as you increase your fluoride exposure. And it's not only consistent, it's a large database, but it's not only a large database. the evidence is such that the NTP felt confident that potential sources of bias like confounding or exposure errors or outcome errors, the kinds of things you look to to sort of interrogate

whether an association between a chemical and a hazard is real, the NTP felt confident that these potential biases are not the reason for this association we see between fluoride and IQ. And that's a really significant thing, significant finding, because it gives you confidence that this relationship between fluoride and IQ is real. It is causative. And through the lawsuit, you've submitted emails that you also obtained via FOIA, Freedom Information Act request, that show it wasn't just that the report was delayed for whatever reason,

but there was actual, it appears based on these emails that there was actual orders from officials, higher officials to keep this report from being completed and released. Could you speak to that? Absolutely. So when I found out from this anonymous source that there was something going on, there was political interference, I immediately began working with one of the plaintiffs in the case, Christy LaValle,

on filing a lot of FOIA requests, Freedom of Information Act requests, to a bunch of different federal agencies as well as state agencies. and we wanted to find out so that can get those communications to see what happened. And we have got those communications or a lot of them, and they paint a very clear picture. And this is so I'll tell you the outline. April 28th, 2022, the NTP tells the other agencies within the HHS, the CDC, NIDCR, FDA, that the report is done. The conclusions are set.

NTP will be releasing their report in mid to late May. At that point in time, it was panic. You had the CDC and the NIDCR, which are very aggressive promoters of water fluoridation for a long time here in the United States. They immediately went into action, are coordinating meetings with each other, and then speaking with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health, which is the Rachel Levine is the Assistant Secretary of Health. they're also talking with the director's office of the NIH and so you see this sort of communication

and collaboration amongst sort of the dental interests within the HHS really pushing back and trying to stymie the NTP from releasing the report well May 11th 2022 comes and the NTP sends out another email saying the report is coming out in one week seven days report will be released on our website on May 18th. So we were seven days away from that report being released to the public. And Rachel Levine's office intervened and told the NTP, put it on hold. It's not being released now. And we need to further review it. And then we have emails of other emails that we've gotten from the CDC, which state point blankly, sorry, state point blank that it was. assistant secretary of health Rachel Levine who made the decision to not publish a report. So the NTP wanted to publish it. They were seven days away from publishing it, but they were

prevented from publishing it. And I think the reason they were prevented from publishing it is that the findings were not sufficiently compatible with this political issue of water fluoridation. It got in the way of a policy. But it really raises a question, do you want your you want your NTP, which is supposed to be all about science, independent science. Do you want these political bodies to have sort of a veto power over them? And that's what we see happening with fluoride. This veto power from political bodies over the scientists at the NTP. And some of those emails show the review process, for example,

and show that the NTP scientists continuously, came back to their belief that the report was ready. There was some of the anonymous reviewers were trying to ask them to make statements that would sort of downplay some of their conclusions. And I guess my question is, has any of that information been allowed in court? The, you know, HHS involvement, this sort of behind the scenes, is the judge allowing that information to be brought into discussion? So we have submitted those, many of the, or some of the emails that show the political interference,

to the court in a series of different motions, including to get the case taken out of the stay. But for purposes of this trial that we're now in, the judge has ruled that we're not allowed to introduce evidence of political interference. And the judge's reasoning is, I understand it. Basically, the position is this is a case about does water fluoridation present to risk, which is a scientific question, and the court really wants to focus on the same. science and not on, you know, what some, you know, political faction within the HHS thinks. So it will not be evidence at trial. And just, I guess, putting the trial aside in your professional hat for a

moment, how does it feel to you as, is this something you've seen in other cases to see this governmental intervention? I mean, for some people, it might not be surprising to others. It might be pretty astounding to find out that government agency or multiple government agencies are trying and have prevented the release of this report? Well, I'm a toxic tort attorney, so I bring lawsuits against big corporations. And so you see this type of stuff happening in corporate, you know, in corporate America, right? You know, suppressing adverse information that could affect the company's bottom line. But from a, from the governmental standpoint, I would say that it is, it's unfortunately not surprising in the context of fluoride.

And there is a longstanding history in the fluoride issue of our federal health agencies acting not like neutral umpires, if you will, trying to understand and communicate the science to the public. They act like cheerleaders. Their job is to promote, promote, promote, promote, and promote some more. That's their position with water fluoridation. promoting it. Don't let don't let don't say anything that would question it right and so what you have with water fluoridation and this goes back to the very very beginning like back to the early 1940s is you have a pattern of data suppression a pattern where findings that were adverse to the fluoridation program were airbrushed away and all we the public were told was this superficial sort of this almost like a

a fairy tale about fluoride. It's all good all the time. No problems whatsoever. It will make your teeth amazing. There's nothing to be worried about. Give your kid as much as you can. We have been given such a caricature of fluoride for so long that that really has had a very significant effect, not only on public understanding, but on scientific understanding and the public health community's understanding. And so one of my hopes and something I've worked a lot on is really trying to bring light to this problem of data suppression at the very beginning. Because it's my view that the foundation, the scientific foundation upon which this mass fluoridation paradigm took off in the 1940s, 1950s, was built on a corrupted science.

and so I think that there needs to be much more attention paid to that so that we can sort of move beyond it. And I guess that's the job for the journalists who are willing to talk about this. Could you speak to that for a moment of what it's been like to be involved in this lawsuit for going on eight years now? And have you heard from any of the corporate media, any of the mainstream media interest in talking to you or just discussing the trial? Well, CNN was interested for quite a while. We were communicating with CNN producers for over a year. And then on the eve, about a month or two before the first trial, they basically backed out and didn't want to do anything.

We have had some good news articles published on the case, mostly from smaller outlets, absolutely nothing from any large outlet, completely zero, no interest whatsoever. ever. Like, in New York Times couldn't care less about this case. Washington Post could not care less about this case. You know, you name it, NBC, ABC, CBS, they could not care less. This is as low priority for them as you name it. I mean, it's zero interest. And that is, you know, probably not surprising to you and is reflective, I think, of a media paradigm that is unfortunate at this time.

So let's speak to, or if you could kind of maybe elaborate and offer any thoughts on some of the interests that benefit from trying to debunk the NTP report, for example. You mentioned, like, obviously there are dental interests, but there's also involvement of aluminum, phosphate mining. Could you speak to some of that? Like what type of corporate or governmental interests would have interest in keeping this out of the public's attention? Okay. So whenever I'm asked this question, I always feel the need to make a distinction. Okay. I'd say there's the politics in the early days of Florida, the 40s and the 50s.

That I know well because I have documents. Okay. I'm an attorney. I need a document to base what I say on, right? And I have documents from the 40s and 50s. I have less documents, but today to see which of the industrial actors is still at play. Okay? So I just want to make that clear up front.

When I talk about special interest or industrial interest, the documentation really is predominantly early days. From the beginning of fluoridation. So if you want, I can start there. Okay. So how did this happen? How do we get water fluorination? I view it as a perfect storm. You had a multitude of powerful, special interest that each had their own, which each stood to gain from this policy.

So let's break you down. What are some of these interests? First, you had organized dentistry like the American Dental Association. The ADA, as with the American Medical Association, the AMA, were terrified that the government was going to socialize dentistry or socialized medicine, meaning the government would start to become involved in providing dental care and thereby kind of interfere with the ADA's monopoly on dentists, right? And so the ADA looked at water fluoridation and saw it as a very appealing alternative. Like, don't cut into the dentist monopoly. Throw some industrial chemicals in the water. And then that's how you can deal with oral health.

So that's special interest number one. Special interest number two, the sugar industry. The sugar, we had a large tooth decay problem back in the 1940s, right? And the sugar industry was feeling some heat. and they certainly didn't want the government's approach to dealing with tooth decay to be cutting down on sugar consumption. So again, for the sugar industry, fluoride was very appealing. Fluoridation was very appealing. Don't look at us.

Put some industrial chemicals into water. So that's special interest number two. Special interest number three is a poorly understood fact from a lot of us here in the United States. And that is that fluoride was a major, major industrial pollutant from the largest industries in our country, the aluminum industry, the steel industry, the various chemical industries, fertilizer industry, and the bomb program, which is a kind of a combination of private and public actors. But there was massive fluoride liabilities because the fluoride was being released into the air from these facilities without

any pollution control. And the thing about it that was so bad for industry is once you admitted that fluoride into the air and it got into the grass, cows ate it. They would just, they would get crippled. The cows would get crippled. Their teeth would fall out. And it was, it's like playing to the naked eye that they're being poisoned and fluoride, you could document fluoride as the cause of it.

So industry couldn't really airbrush it away. Like, farmers had cows that were walking on their knees. Wasn't there an incident in New Jersey that was the, cows, the farmers found their cows and crops and everything? Right. South Jersey, I mean, but there were incidents all across the country. I mean, all across the country, you had fluoride poisoning incidents around these facilities. And they were, they, just to give you a sense of the extent of fluoride liabilities from air pollution, between about 1950 and 1970, there was more liability for fluoride air pollution

than the top 20 air pollutants combined. So industry felt very, they were very concerned about it. And industry certainly, and the aluminum industry was the one industry that kind of was in the 30s kind of promoting the idea of, well, hey, you know what? Florida may actually have some beneficial effects. Okay. And in 1939, the first ever proposal to fluoridate water was made by a scientist. name Gerald Cox. Gerald Cox worked at the Melon Institute and was funded by two

industries, the sugar industry and the aluminum industry. And Gerald Cox stated in 1939 that the present trend towards the complete removal of fluoride from water may need some reversal because of the tooth decay benefits. And I think that's an interesting point right there because in the 1930s, the trend was to eliminating fluoride from water because

there was a growing appreciation in the scientific community that fluoride is a toxic compound like lead and arsenic. And you saw a lot of scientific research back down on the thyroid gland on various components of systemic health. And so in 1939, you have this sugar-funded, aluminum-funded researcher saying, hey, maybe we want to add it to water because it's so good for teeth. So those are three of the major sort of influences on the private actor level. But then you have the government, and that might be, that's the fourth special interest, but it's actually within the government. And that is that the government, it was World War II, and they were trying to build the bomb, right? The Manhattan Project, this large, sprawling industrial enterprise. And fluoride was the chemical that

they found could be used to enrich the uranium and uranium hexafluoride. And so they needed massive quantities of fluoride in order to build the bomb. And that resulted in a large-scale exposure's of fluoride to the workers who are helping to build the various components of the bomb. And what you see in the documents is that the toxicologist and the medical director of the Manhattan Project were very concerned about fluoride. They were very concerned. And that fact there is, I mention it because the government's, the government approach fluoride, not like, oh, let's just investigate this issue and just communicate with the public about what we're finding good or bad. It was not that.

Like the government did not approach fluoride from like an ivory tower like, oh, oh, let's just research fluoride and see how it affects human health. They researched it, and they actually have a policy of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947 where if there's research indicating that our processed chemicals, i.e. chemicals like fluoride or uranium, are harmful, that publishing information about that would be detrimental to the government's interest. Because the government is partly responsible for exposing workers and communities. immunities to these high levels of fluoride.

So the government didn't, like, the government had a conflict with fluoride too. So those are the four major sort of interest at play in the 1940s. Now, why the decision was made to Florida, you know, you can't see any particular document and say, aha, here's the, you know, the smoking gun. That doesn't exist. don't have that. And so I also would say, to be fair, because I always want to make clear that

there were a lot of people like dentists, individual dentists and people who saw the tooth decay problem that we had and were really, really enthusiastic about this idea that we could eradicate tooth decay by adding this compound to water. So there was a lot of optimism and a lot of good intentions. And I think that that optimism and good intentions was sort of exploited by certain actors for various reasons. But the long story short is this is not, this story of fluoridation is not a story of a dentist like, being like, I have found that fluoride is good for teeth. We must now fluoridate our water. We're going to help our children. It's a story that's much more complicated than that.

So your father has been involved in this fight for decades now as well. Could you speak to more on like, you know, the personal side of your life? Like did you grow up hearing about fluoride or did you know you were going to get involved in this fight? Is it kind of like continuing your father's work? Or what made you decide, you know, to go from that, like watching your father to being actively involved? Well, my dad and my mom have been very involved for a long time on environmental health issues. They worked so intensely when I was growing up helping communities that were faced with incineration proposals. Incinerators are these facilities that burn garbage, sometimes hazardous waste,

and in the process would admit like dioxins and fureans and heavy metals and a bunch of horrible stuff into the air and expose people to these toxins. And they work closely with communities across the United States and then around the world to help defeat these proposals. And so that was like I grew up in that environment of like, you know, seeing in seeing the politics of pollution, the politics of chemicals, you know, and how a lot of times you'd see that government agencies would be in bed with the industries that they were trying to regulate or supposedly trying to regulate, right? So kind of becoming aware from an early age that science sometimes can be subverted, right? where you have captured agencies. So I kind of became familiar with that concept early on. But I knew nothing about fluoride at all, okay, until college.

And my father, well, our town in Canton, New York, okay, northern New York, was facing the question of whether we should stop adding fluoride to our water. My dad, he's a toxicologist, a biochemist, and he was very skeptical that fluoride could be a problem. He thought that people who were opposed to fluoridation were getting basic questions of chemistry wrong, like confusing the element fluorine, which is an extremely reactive element, an extremely dangerous element, confusing fluorine with fluoride and making kind of basic mistakes. So he was very dismissive that there could be a problem.

My mom, on the other hand, started looking into it, and she got some documents, studies and whatnot, shared them with my dad. he to his sort of resisted, but then looked at the studies and was really disturbed by what he found, sort of the number of red flags in the literature. And so my folks got involved sort of working on the campaign against Florida Asian and Canton. And then through them, I started to become familiar with it. And in 2000, I began helping to create this organization called the Fluoride Action Network. I created the website and then from there I went down the rabbit hole. I mean, I was doing intensive, intensive research between 2000 and 2008 when I went to law school,

including going to libraries throughout the Northeast. And so I was doing a lot of investigation on this issue for a long time. I was really fascinated by it. I was interviewing scientists, going around to a lot of places to just learn as much. much as I could. So I've been involved on the fluoride issue pretty much for the past 20 plus years, but I also went to law school and became an attorney, and so I'm obviously doing other things besides fluoride, but fluoride has been sort of a staple in my work. I know you don't want to talk too much about what's coming up next and everything, but assuming you win, what would take place then?

At the end of this time here in San Francisco, is the judge expected to make a ruling right away, or is it going to be months down the line, years down the line? And if he does side with Floyd Action Network and the plaintiffs, would that immediately be the end of water fluoridation or, you know, what comes afterwards? So I don't know when the judge will make the decision. I expect it will be relatively soon at the close a trial, so within weeks or maybe a month or somewhere in that realm. if the court finds that fluoridation presents an unreasonable risk in the form of neurotoxicity,

then the EPA will be mandated by law to initiate a rulemaking proceeding to eliminate that risk. So the one thing is EPA may appeal the judge's ruling, in which case we'd have some appellate procedure here in the court system. But assuming we win on appeal, then the EPA, has to eliminate the risk posed by fluoration chemicals in the drinking water. And, you know, it's kind of obvious. How do you eliminate the risk created by adding fluoridation chemicals of drinking water? Well, you just don't add them to the water.

You stop adding them. And that's what we certainly are hoping EPA will do. And, I mean, I would expect that the government would appeal. And so I guess what I'm getting at is if people are expecting a sort of a means, immediate at the end of this trial, water, fluoridation is over, there's going to be a little bit more of a process. That's true. It's not going to be, you know, it's not going to happen right away. I think a favorable decision by the court would be very important historically. But you know, the funny thing is, even if we win, even if the judge finds it to be an unreasonable risk,

I don't think you will see a single major corporate outlet even mentioned it. Not a single word. That would be my prediction. Not a single word from the New York Times, single word from the Washington Post, or National Public Radio. They'll completely ignore it, act like it didn't happen, doesn't matter, and that's what I expect. But I think

the encouraging thing here is that we're seeing a change taking place within the environmental and the scientific community. Not the dentist. The dentist, they just promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote,

and they can't get past the paradigm, but like in the scientific community, the environmental epidemiology community, you can see a change taking place. Like they are very, you can see there's just a great deal of concern now about fluoride and the brain and other parameters that you're seeing a lot of research coming out.

Like fluoride used to be the kind of subject that if you're a scientist in academia, you might not want to study it, it might not be good for your career. I think we're seeing a change there. Like, fluoride's becoming a safer topic to study. Like, it's becoming like mercury and lead and, you know, PFS. And so that's very encouraging to me.

I mean, because that's sort of like when you have that happening, when you have this sort of scientific academic community doing primary research to better understand how this is affecting our health, I mean, at that point, it's only a matter of time before we get the stuff out of the water and the food because there's just this accumulating evidence of harm. I mean, and I think you are seeing the paradigm change. But the thing is, there's so many dinosaurs in the way

that make it go a lot more slowly than should be the case. Assume for a moment, the worst case scenario, that you aren't successful in this. Would this be the end of your fluoride litigation? Do you have ideas for new strategies? and I guess for those who are at home watching and kind of putting their hopes and faiths and prayers in this that it's successful. You know, what would you offer to anybody else? Like if it doesn't end up being successful, what's the next phase in trying to fight fluoride while they're affordedation?

As for me, I think there, I certainly have some fluoride projects that I could, that I'm thinking about. One of them is to, is a First Amendment issue. and I really am very interested in better understanding the extent to which the HHS has been encouraging or asking or otherwise these big tech companies like Google, YouTube, which is all Facebook, meta, you know, Twitter. I really want to understand the extent to which HHS has encouraged. has encouraged them to censor content on fluoride to shadow ban it. And to give you an example, like Floyd Action Network website used to be like number one, number two on Google search engines.

We got a tremendous amount of traffic through Google, right? And in the past like 10 years, you started to see that the fan website just got demoted and demoted and demoted and demoted and demoted and demoted. And so that's, that was interesting to me, right? And then on YouTube, okay, YouTube, Floyd Action Network has a bunch of videos

that used to post on YouTube. You used to get a lot of hit. You typed in fluoride, you'd get a ton of fan videos on there, right? And including one video that I did, which was called like 10 Facts on Floyd, okay? And, like, you go to YouTube today, they will not link to fans' videos.

So you can go to fans' videos if you know the YouTube link, right? And then put it into your search browser, then you can get there. But if you go to YouTube and search fluoride, they will exclude all of fans' videos, right? Like if you type in my name and 10 facts about fluoride, they won't even think they won't link to it, right? So it's clear that there's some algorithm that they've actually said exclude that organization. I want to find out the extent to which there's been government involvement with that, because if there has been, which I think is reasonable, given what we're learning of the past couple of years about, you know, the government involvement with other forms of censorship.

I think that there's a real First Amendment issue there that could be litigated. So that's something that I'm considering. But, you know, in terms of what people can do, I think I always look at sort of, I always look at sort of issues as having like an ecosystem. And everyone has a certain part to play. You know, my part might be filing a lawsuit or whatnot. Someone else's part might be, you know, going to their city council and really just trying to raise awareness at the city council level.

But everyone has a part to play, and I think it's just tapping into what motivates you, what type of work do you feel comfortable with, what type of work do you enjoy doing? I think a lot of it is finding something that you enjoy, because when you can kind of merge what you enjoy with something you find meaningful and important, that's where you're going to have a sustainable sort of venture, right?

Because if you don't enjoy it, you're not having fun, you're going to burn yourself out. So what is that sweet spot that you enjoy and you feel is moving the needle? And that's all I can suggest in terms of the fluoride issue is people who can find that sweet spot on fluoride, go for it.