On August 13, 2007, the Lillie Center announced it had delivered
a formal ethics complaint last week to an Ethics Subcommittee of
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The complaint
charged that the CDC’s Oral Health Division and CDC’s
director Julie Gerberding had failed to follow the CDC’s own
ethical code which it promotes around the country. According to
the complaint, CDC has:
• Elected to omit vital information in its communications
to the public concerning vulnerable population groups that are
particularly susceptible to harm from fluoride;
• Chosen to ignore its own data showing disproportionate
harm by dental fluorosis in minority populations and has not actively
provided this information to these groups;
• Demonstrated a severe ethical lapse in failing to appropriately
disseminate its own change in policy that parents of infants be
aware of the risk of dental fluorosis in their children and may
wish to use unfluoridated water to mix their babies’ powdered
milk formula;
• Justified fluoridation in terms that mislead Americans
into confusing the fundamental concepts of concentration versus
dose. This had led citizens to believe that a low concentration
of fluoride in water cannot result in a harmful dose of the chemical,
regardless of volume of water consumed and other sources of fluoride
-- and in this context CDC has also failed to appropriately disclose
that fluoride can accumulate harmfully in the body over time;
and
• Misled the public concerning the results of studies about
harm from ingested fluoride.