Is This the End of Fluoride in the US? | Better Way Today

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Journalist and activist Derrick Broze joins us for an update on the historic fluoride trial that recently took place in the United States. Learn more about why the mainstream media has been silent, where water fluoridation stands in the US, and what could happen following the judge’s ruling. Derrick reveals just how much science has been covered up, censored, and changed and who is responsible. He also shares some tips on how you can get involved in the fight against water fluoridation wherever you live.

Here are some of the links Derrick mentioned in this episode and where you can learn more:

• Derrick’s website: The Conscious Resistance Network
• Derrick’s fluoride reporting: The Last American Vagabond
• The Fluoride Action Network
• Fluoride Lawsuit, science resources
• The LOTUS Study
• Canada’s fluoride report
• Follow Derrick on Twitter (X)

Filtering out fluoride at home

Who is Derrick Broze?

• Derrick Broze is a freelance investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, author, and public speaker. He seeks to expose corruption and find solutions to the problems that affect all of humanity, while promoting localization and decentralization.
• Derrick’s books, documentaries, and articles can be found on his website, The Conscious Resistance Network. He also writes for The Last American Vagabond and is co-founder of the Freedom Cells Network and The Greater Reset.

View all previous episodes of our live shows here.

Hello and welcome to Better Way Today. Today is Monday, the 18th of March. I’m here. I’m Emma. If you don’t know me, I’m here with my friend and colleague, Christoph. And we are so glad that you’re here with us today. Wherever you’re watching this from today, if you could take a moment maybe and type into the chat where you’re joining us from, that would be really wonderful, Christoph. And I really like to look at the map and see where everyone’s tuning in from, but it’s cool to see that in the chat too. And maybe you’ll see someone who lives near you Today’s guest is Derek Brose. We’re going to hear an update on the historic fluoride trial that recently took place in the United States, and we’ll learn more about why the mainstream media has been silent on this, where water fluoridation stands in the US, and what could happen following the judge’s ruling in this case. Derek reveals just how much science has been covered up, censored, and changed, and who is responsible for that. He’ll also share some tips on how you can get involved in the fight against water fluoridation wherever you live. But before that, we’ll also hear announcements and better way news with Christoph. So first, let’s hear the announcements. So on Wednesday, we have a mind health webinar called the Five Fs, Control and You with Richard Fluke. In this enlightening presentation, you will learn the five primal fears that are used to sway public opinion and control how the masses think and behave. During the COVID years, social media platforms and the mainstream media purposely manipulated people the world over, engaging the five primal fears of anger, fear, loss, separation, and control. This was how public opinion was swayed and behaviors controlled, recognizing how these work is essential so it never happens again. Whether it’s with a boss, a politician, or government authority, in a sales situation, or via a mobile device, or even an abusive relationship with a so-called loved one, in this presentation you’ll discover how anger is used to provoke strong emotional reactions, fear is used to manipulate your perceptions, loss is used to foster a sense of urgency and vulnerability, separation is engaged to isolate you, and control is enforced to limit your exposure to alternative viewpoints. You’ll discover the five Fs, how they work, and where they are located in your brain. You’ll also learn how to experience them in their pure, unadulterated form, and most importantly, how to get your power back by clearing them. Register to join us on Wednesday, the 20th of March at 8 p.m. UTC on the MindHealth page at worldcouncilforhealth.org slash mindhealth. Next week on Monday, Christophe is interviewing Dr. Jane Donegan. Together, they’re going to go behind the measles scare, looking into the facts, the myths, and effective strategies. And the 27th of March, we have Quantum Healing with Jerry Pives. This is an event that takes place on Zoom. You can register right now at worldcouncilforhealth.org slash mindhealth. These sessions are a great way to experience with other people in a safe and Sorry about that, Christoph. It’s my turn to disappear. Oh, I already took it personally. All right, let me get this. Well, welcome back, Emma. Thank you so much. It’s always got to be one of us, right? Okay. Sorry about that, everyone. Back to our announcements. The WHO’s international health regulations amendments and proposed pandemic treaty or accord demand rigorous scrutiny and critical engagement from civil society, governments, public health workers, and lawyers. The lack of meaningful national engagement with civil society and marginalized communities undermines the legitimacy and effectiveness of the negotiation process, reinforcing perceptions of top-down decision-making and exclusionary practices within the WHO. It is primarily for this reason, and in addition to the WHO’s failures and conflicts of interest, that the World Council for Health is obliged to present an expert hearing to both independently appraise the WHO’s conduct and processes and discuss strategies to counter the WHO’s expansion of power. This expert hearing is taking place at 6 p.m. UTC, Tuesday, the 26th of March. It will be hosted by Shabnam Palaisa-Muhammad and Dr. Tess Laurie. Public participation during the expert hearing will be encouraged. You can learn more at worldcouncilforhealth.org slash WHO withdrawal. Embark on a journey to holistic wellbeing at the first of its kind in the UK this June, the Better Way Detox Fair. Bringing together a blend of allopathic and holistic practitioners, this unique event promises a fusion of traditional and alternative approaches to health. Enjoy enlightening discussions and gain insights from panel discussions of leading health experts as they share detox protocols and address your questions, guiding you towards optimal wellbeing through natural means. learn how to detox from heavy metals, which are often found in vaccines and other medical interventions, understand more about parasites and cancer, and find out how to take a digital detox. Network with like-minded individuals and exhibitors on a beautiful 220-acre organic stone barn farm sitting in Wiltshire, UK. This fair will empower and educate you to take action to optimize your health, boost your immune system, and improve your well-being. Join us at the Better Way Detox Fair and embark on a journey towards holistic wellness. Tickets are on sale right now at betterwayevents.org. We have a new press release on our website and substack just published today. A panel of international scientists invited to attend a UN Human Rights Council side meeting during the 55th regular session on human rights has been canceled at short notice. The side meeting, to have been held on the 21st of March at noon, would have been the first publicly available recorded UNHRC meeting on health and human rights, and specifically on human rights violations during COVID. The expert panel was to include Professor Sutrat Bhakti, Professor Christian Perrone, Christoph Ploth, and Dr. Tess Laurie. The significance of canceling this UN Human Rights Council meeting on COVID human rights violations cannot be overstated. It confirms that at this time, there are no institutional safeguards protecting inalienable human rights. The international panel presentation and discussion on health and human rights during COVID will now go ahead in a separate location in central Geneva in the form of a press conference happening on Friday. To attend this landmark press conference, please contact Fiona Goodchild at fiona at worldcouncilforhealth.org. We will also be live streaming this event and we’ll give you more information about that soon. And we have some announcements from some of our partners. The Michigan Health Choice Alliance believes that all Michigan residents have the basic human right to make healthy choices on behalf of themselves, their children, and patients without coercion, threat, or penalty, particularly by our own government. They envision a Michigan population who is healthy, free of disease and toxic exposures, and believe each individual or parent is in charge of their own health. On the 4th of April, MHCA is hosting Dr. Peter McCullough in Southfield, Michigan for a fundraising event. Learn more and purchase tickets at mihealthchoice.org. And we have an upcoming event happening in San Jose, Costa Rica at the end of April. This event is put on by one of our partners. And we’ve had a great interview on this event that was about three weeks ago on our website. If you want to search for that and learn more, if you are in the Spanish speaking community, this is going to be a free event to attend. Probably going to be recorded, so we’ll share video of that afterwards, but it’s a great event happening by a partner in Costa Rica at the end of April. If you want to learn more about it, the website address is right there on the screen. We invite you to please support the World Council for Health today by giving a one-off donation or for as little as $5 or £5 a month as a recurring donation. We thank you for your continued support. whether that is in the form of a donation or sharing our content, following us on social media, signing up for our free email newsletter. And when it comes to donations, we have a really exciting announcement. We now accept cryptocurrency donations. The first coin that we’re accepting right now is Bitcoin. You can make a donation using that QR code on the screen or visit our website at worldcouncilforhealth.org slash donate if you need the wallet address. We are also excited to offer… or to accept donations and different coins soon. So if you’ve got a favorite coin or a coin that you think we should accept, please put that into the chat wherever you’re watching this right now. And now I’m going to hand it over to Christoph for some better news. I’ll just need a second to pull up these slides because they disappeared when I got kicked out. All right, there you go. And I hope I wish you good luck, Christoph, so you don’t disappear like I did. Well, I’m usually the one to be blamed. I know. So let’s see. Well, thank you very much, Emma. And well, hello and welcome to another episode of Better Way News with some highlights of the last week. The first one, is by one of the shining lights of the last few years, Dr. James Thorpe. Most of you will know him by now. He’s a top OBGYN that issued a formal notice to his authorities, which are the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Board of OBGYNs, and the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine. In this very, very important letter, he states that over 585 million global citizens have been killed or injured by the vaccine rollout. So we’ll keep you up to date on the responses of these organizations. And thank you, James, amazing work you’re doing. Next one, please. And we’ve often talked about the harassment and the attacks on farmers worldwide, not only here in Europe, but as part of a theme in order to change the infrastructure of our food production. But what many people are not aware of is that if you are in the middle of the fight and try to maintain traditional farming methods, and who’s better at that than the Amish, have been witnessing amazing punishment from the governments. And in the latest trial, the Pennsylvania authorities raided an Amish farmer, seething 100,000 dollars worth of food from his farm. This is not the first case in which that has happened. We’re not talking about anything illegal, but to raise your animals in an old traditional way. So please go and use this opportunity to support your local farmers and work on a decentralized food system. Next one, please. And we already talked about this a few weeks ago in where Sweden went against the cashless agenda. Now Norway has followed. This is especially important in the light of all the digitalization of our money market. And as you may have even realized yourself, in some stores, they don’t even accept cash anymore. This shall be made illegal in Norway soon. So we hope that people will always have the choice. And thank you Norway and Sweden for showing the way. Next one, please. And well, in the fight of this disease that kept our planet in tension and fear, one thing that was known right from the beginning that there had been efficient treatment models right from May and October in 2020, which hadn’t been used anywhere on this planet and even banned, And one of the major component of any efficient protocol, keeping in mind that it is still not used in any of the hospitals that most of our countries are using, is vitamin D. We’ve already talked about the fact that if you have a vitamin D level between 50 and 80 nanograms per milliliter, It led to zero deaths in a study with a few million people. Well, now there is a new study that came out. It was with 16 different studies and a staggering 1.26 million individuals that participated in these studies. And it all showed clear signs of of huge improvements for up to 70% against the incidence of COVID in randomized control trials. So up to date, there’s especially no vaccine in averted comas that could even come close to this. So please be sure to check your vitamin D levels. It’s not only an integral part of a COVID protocol, but helpful in many, many diseases we have out there. And next one, please. That is the latest data that had been released by an MD in the Department of Defense in which he showed that U.S. Navy pilots had a staggering 937% increase in heart failure amongst the vaccinated U.S. military personnel in comparison to the unvaccinated, keeping in mind that over 90% are vaccinated in the US Army and in the Navy. Even if you would say, well, we don’t know if the vaccine was to be made responsible for it, you can clearly say it didn’t do its job in decreasing symptoms or prevent you from any serious disease. And in the next slide, please. Well, this is a headline and I hope you’ve all seen it because it now is official. One in three of the world population has now a neurological disease. Please, if you haven’t heard of this, make sure that you read it again. It’s even on the website of the World Health Organization. and it should uh really be the number one headline everywhere because this is serious it includes even children and uh we’ve seen this enormous increase especially in the last three years so please um yeah be aware of this trend and we have to look not for our not only for our global generation at the present, but especially for future generation and what is going on here. So there is next slide, please. It had been another very interesting summary recently by a PhD from Australia, Raphael Lattister, who compared four different trials to come up with the thesis that COVID vaccine trials were manipulated to make the injections appear safe and safe and effective. He looked at rate bias, age bias and case counting window bias and could see a clear violation of scientific principles. keeping in mind this was right at the beginning of the pandemic of the last few years. Next one, please. And whilst we know that we are now in the middle of knowing about the ineffectiveness and the opposite of safety, the dangers of the mRNA injections, we should carefully monitor whilst there is a slower and slower uptake of boosters worldwide, that Moderna is substantially expanding manufacturing capacity despite low demand. And this you can witness in factories in Australia, in the UK, in Japan, in China and in Spain. So please be aware there is something cooking because otherwise they wouldn’t build up all these facilities all over the world. So next slide, please. And this, just to finish this summary off, is a very, very encouraging one. If you listen to the people, so we have two choices to either listen to us, the citizens of this planet, or to get a centralized control of all of us. Two million Texans decided last week in a huge poll that 92% of them do not want mandatory vaccinations. So we hope that this voice of the people will prevent anything like we’ve seen in the last few years, taking away informed consent and a voluntary choice of people to be exposed to an untested medication. So thank you, Texas, and this is a huge sign. And last slide, please. And just to quote to finish, Friedrich Nietzsche, I’m not upset that you lied to me I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you so we hope that we’ve learned of to differentiate between truth and lies and good luck with the trust of all the people the trust in all of those people that have lied to us so thank you very much uh and um emma back over to you and a very fascinating interview Thank you so much, Christoph. You always come up with the most interesting roundup of news from all over the place on such a good range of topics. I look forward to seeing what you have every week. So thank you for that. We’re going to play our interview now. Like I said before, our guest is Derek Brose. He’s going to update us on the historic fluoride trial that recently took place in the U.S., and go into a lot of detail. He went out to California to cover this trial. He’s been an active activist against water fluoridation for many years. But I won’t tell you too much about that right now because we talk about it in the interview. I had a chance to sit down with him a couple of weeks ago to talk about this. So this is a prerecorded. If you’re unaware, Derrick Brose is a freelance journalist, investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, author, and public speaker. He seeks to expose corruption and find solutions to the problems that affect all of humanity. He has books, documentaries, and articles that can all be found on his website, The Conscious Resistance Network. He also writes for The Last American Vagabond and is co-founder of the Freedom Cell Network and The Greater Reset. So without further ado, I’m going to play this interview for you, and I will see you as soon as it is finished. Just bear with me. to find it since I was kicked out of the studio earlier everything I had ready is gone all right here we go oh derek um thank you for joining me today on better way today I’m really excited to talk to you about the recent developments with fluoride and the trial in the us but first I wanted to ask you about your interest in the topic and what made you want to cover this historic trial have you ever reported on fluoride in the past have you done work around fluoride has this been an interest of yours Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on. So actually fluoride and water fluoridation was one of the first topics that I started to become aware of, at least in terms of health, when I was first getting into activism back in 2009, 2010. There was actually was Alex Jones’s website InfoWars back then and some other websites that were promoting. They were putting up these posters and saying, go print these up and put them in your neighborhood. And it just said there’s poison in the tap water. And from there, I’ve read a book, Fluoride Deception, from journalist Christopher Bryson, which is a really great book on the history. So I’ve been aware of it, yeah, since for over a decade now. And over the years, whenever I had the opportunity, I’ve tried to write about fluoride updates, either studies referencing the various harms that come with fluoride exposure. or just kind of keeping up with developments in different ways. And as far as this specific lawsuit here, I started following, I think, in 2019, and it started back in 2016 with a petition, then the lawsuit in 2017. So I caught on a couple of years after the lawsuit was going on. But yeah, in general, I’ve been following the fight against water fluoridation for a decade plus. And in Houston, where I’m originally from, I helped start a group called Fluoride for Houston, and we used to go to city council and tried to educate council members and see if we could end the practice, which in Houston, it is a million dollar a year contract that the city has. And when people, when Houstonians pay their water bill, the money goes from the water bill to a fluoride fund directly. So paying for your water directly pays to put poison in the water in Houston. Wow. That’s unexpected and unsettling for sure. Well, one of my favorite things, I guess, just about you that you just kind of explained is I just like how when you care about something, you get active, you do something about it. I’d like to talk a little bit more about that maybe later for people who might be watching this and want to figure out what they can do near them if they’re not happy about water fluoridation. We have quite an international audience and I wanted to talk a little bit about just water fluoridation in general because that doesn’t happen everywhere. It is a little unique or widespread in the US more than a lot of other places and I’m not sure if everybody’s aware of that. I just did a quick search online and these were older statistics, but in 2010, I read that 66% of all US residents received fluoridated water. And that’s in contrast to only 14% of the population in the United Kingdom. And also many countries in Europe have just outright rejected water fluoridation. So this isn’t something that people around the world are dealing with. It’s unique to the US and a few other countries. While people still have to deal with fluoride in their toothpaste and in some places put in table salt, mass water fluoridation is an issue that we deal with fairly uniquely here. So why did fluoride end up in the water here? How did that come about? Yeah, sure. So you’re correct that, as you just said, that most of the world is not fluoridating their water. I do know that, like you said, parts of Canada, parts of the UK, much smaller percentages do fluoridate, but definitely not. I think at this point, the stats you read are probably accurate. I would say it’s probably 70% and above now, because there have been some communities which have rejected water fluoridation, but they tend to be smaller. The big cities are all pretty much fluoridated. And this practice started in the 1940s in the United States, in Grand Rapids, actually up in the Midwest of Michigan and North and the United States. And there’s a really kind of convoluted and disturbing history related to this. Again, I’ll recommend the book, The Fluoride Deception. But briefly, the actual research and the data on fluoride, what we call fluoride, which is actually a few different compounds, one of them being hydrofluorosilicic acid, which is a byproduct of aluminum phosphate mining, But there are other sources of what we call fluoride. There’s naturally occurring fluoride. And what I mean by that is fluoride that is just present in the water in different parts of the world. But it’s important to understand that all of these compounds, all the fluoride compounds have been associated with health harms and negative impacts to human health. So whether it’s naturally occurring or not, it’s problematic. But in the United States, you can go back and you can see that actually the Manhattan Project, which was the project for the nuclear project in the United States. They were studying not only the impacts of radiation like uranium, but also fluoride and how fluoride impacted human health back then. So we had data at that point. There was also a few different incidents. One of them I know of in New Jersey, where these factories, which again, were doing phosphate mining and using those byproducts of that mining accidentally released fluoride into the air. They’re supposed to have these scrubbers on their buildings that prevent the release of these chemicals. But in one of these incidents, it got out into the air. And you can actually find older articles from the 40s in the United States about farmers, their crops dying, their cattle and their animals just being their bones like being brittle and broken. And there was lawsuits that took place. And because of these lawsuits, the U.S. government started studying fluoride and they essentially what it appears based on the documents that Christopher Bryson found, it appears that they got some studies funded as quick as possible to show that there were actually benefits of health to try to preempt lawsuits that they knew were going to be coming in relation to these accidental fluoride exposures. And it’s around this time that Edward Bernays worked with the American Dental Association to help craft a program saying that fluoride is good for your teeth because it hardens your bones. And they come up with some studies to say that in the rural areas of the United States, kids who had bad dental health would benefit from fluoride in the water since they couldn’t afford proper dental care. And that’s essentially how it started. And then it just begun to expand and expand as the government data, government science has claimed that it’s beneficial. And that’s been the story now for 80 years. Now, of course, in that time, there have been what I would consider whistleblowers at the EPA and other agencies, including Dr. William Marcus back in the 90s and others in the early 2000s who have tried to raise awareness about this and some who made mainstream and who were kind of pushed to the fringes and called crazy and whatnot. But here we are in 2024, as I said, 80 years after this practice has begun, and we’re now in a federal court for the first time. And the data is, even though this data has been known and that is frustrating, It’s being presented in a federal court in the United States for the first time ever. So that makes it historic alone that this information is being presented by expert scientists, specifically toxicologists, epidemiologists, who are coming into court and saying, this is what we’ve seen, this is what we’ve known for years, and trying to get fluoride to be declared a neurotoxin and basically get water fluoridation banned in the United States. So this this trial happened in California and it’s it’s over now, but we don’t have the decision yet. And I believe it was something like two weeks long and you were there the whole time in the courtroom. I know you were live tweeting. You were you were very involved and listening to everything that was said there. But what what what made this trial happen? Why why why did this happen in California? What who was involved? What what is the purpose of this trial? Sure. So in 2016, the Fluide Action Network, Food and Water Watch, Moms Against Fluidation, and a couple of other individual plaintiffs’ mothers filed a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, under what’s called TSCA, the Toxic Substance Control Act. And this was a law that was passed a few years ago, which allows it involves multiple things, but this specific element of it allows citizens to petition the EPA. If you believe that there’s a chemical compound, something out there in the public that is toxic. And basically there’s a process you go through, you file a petition and you have to present evidence. And this is what the Floyd action network and the plaintiffs, which are now the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, what they did. And the EPA rejected the petition. And really kind of from what I’ve learned just from spending more time around the folks who filed this petition, it was sort of like, I mean, maybe luck isn’t the right word, but if the EPA had rejected the petition under different grounds, this lawsuit wouldn’t have happened. But because of the very specific way that the EPA rejected it, it opened up for the plaintiffs to file suit and say that the EPA had wrongfully rejected their petition. It’s kind of really a luck of a draw on that, but ultimately this turned into a lawsuit and it’s been kind of sitting just in the court. It’s in federal court, Judge Edward Chen, San Francisco. Because under TSCA, if you file a lawsuit, which has never happened before, again, this is the other reason that’s historic. There’s never been a citizen’s petition under TSCA that made itself to a federal court. It’s also a historic case because typically judges the law, the courts aren’t asked to judge science. And in this case, Judge Edward Chen, one man, has been tasked with learning all this science around fluoride and what is margin of exposure and point of departure and benchmark dose analysis and all these scientific jargon terms specifically related to fluoride and fluoride research and tasked with trying to decide, did the EPA correctly deny this petition or did they incorrectly deny this petition? In fact, have the plaintiffs presented enough evidence to prove that fluoride is indeed a neurotoxin and thus the EPA was wrong. And then the judge, if he rules in their favor, would then force the EPA to act under TSCA. And TSCA gives them six different options, but in this case, there’s only really two that apply. And that would be either to ban it outright, which is of course what the plaintiffs are hoping for, or to lower it even more from the 0.7 milligrams per liter that the United States currently recommends. So that’s, what’s been going on with this lawsuit. It was for the first few years, just kind of back and forth, um, procedural stuff, but in summer of 2020, the first phase of the lawsuit happened. And of course that was COVID time. So everything was locked down. And so the whole trial, the first phase was via zoom. And I, I was able to, you know, be in the court and live tweet then as well, and write articles for the last American vagabond. And that was when I really started kind of following up with it and Um, realized how important it was, honestly, and it was sort of blown away that not that there wasn’t getting more attention, not only from mainstream, there’s been no mainstream media coverage of this at all in the last eight years. But at the time, uh, there was very little independent media coverage as well. Thankfully that’s changed the last couple of weeks and we’ve gotten more people talking about this, but it’s been relatively under the radar for the first few years here. And so the first phase happened in summer 2020. And at that point, uh, judge Edward Chen. said that he wanted to put things on hold until this other study by the U.S. government’s National Toxicology Program, the NTP, was released. At that time, the U.S. EPA, their attorneys were saying, look, the National Toxicology Program is working on a new study. It should be out very soon. Judge, you should rule on this matter because we all thought it was going to be over in 2020, just one round of trial hearings and then the judge would rule. But ultimately, he said, I don’t want to rule until this new study comes out. I’m going to put things on hold. And then once this comes out, we’ll reconvene and we’ll go over the new data. He figured it would be months, maybe a year at most. Here we are in 2024 and the study, the National Toxicology Program study has still not been released in its final form. But because of this lawsuit and because of lead attorney Michael Conant and his team, their ability to file open records requests and do discovery in this lawsuit, which is a big thing, you can ask for all kinds of documents. They were able to obtain emails from the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services. And these emails specifically say that the reason the National Toxicology Program, what’s called a monograph, it’s a review of all the fluoride data. They looked at the best high quality, low risk of bias studies for fluoride from all around the world. And these emails that they obtained through the lawsuit show that elements of the US government, specifically the CDC’s Oral Health Division, and the HHS, specifically named Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, and Dr. Richard Wojciech, as having blocked the release of this NTP report. And now what does the NTP report conclude? According to the May 2022 draft version, which was forced to be released through this lawsuit, the NTP scientists, again, this is a government agency, themselves doing this massive review of all the fluoride data in their own words, Higher fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ in children. And they’re specifically focused on prenatal while the mother is pregnant. And of course, right after that, and its impact on neurodevelopment. And so that’s a pretty powerful statement. And as I said, meanwhile, because of this lawsuit, and I’ve been one of the only people really reporting on this, writing articles about it, we see these emails that show while the scientists themselves were saying, our report’s ready to release May 18th, 2022. We’re going to publish it. We’re going to put it on our servers. the CDC and other elements of the government were emailing each other saying, this study is not going to come out. This can’t happen. And as I said, it’s been two more years since then. And the study hasn’t been released in final form. We do have the May and the September 2022 draft versions. We have some really unprecedented views into the peer review process that also came through this, where we can see the questions of the peer reviewers to the scientists. And I’ve written about this as well, how you can see that the scientists at the NTP seem pretty confident in their work that over and over again whenever these anonymous reviewers attempt to get them to downplay their conclusions or to add certain caveats or you know qualifiers they push back and say no we this is what we believe is is the case and we think this is what should come out this is what should be published and so yeah we only have any view into that behind the scenes stuff because of this lawsuit and I think that’s one of the reasons it’s just so important uh unfortunately Well, I say unfortunately, but I guess it’s just the way things need to be. Judge Chen allowed the 2022 NTP report into evidence, but he did not allow any discussion of the political behind the scenes stuff. He said, you know, we’re going to focus on the science. And I think I say unfortunate because I think you can’t really have a full conversation without understanding that the political does affect the science, scientific side of things, that there are political forces at play here. But nevertheless, I’ve been told that the reason for not focusing on the political is because if the plaintiffs lose track of the fact that they’re supposed to focus on the science, the EPA could use these political arguments and then appeal to dismiss this later on. So the Floyd Action Network is actually being smart by staying away from the political and just sticking to what they can prove with the science. And fortunately, the science, fortunately for their case, unfortunately for the American people, the science is on their side and Floyd is quite harmful. So with you having been there for those two weeks and and a lot of what you just shared, it sounds like the science, the evidence presented then is pretty solid for in support of of the potential. You said there’s six different options that can come out of this, but only two to two. possibilities here, one of those being just banning fluoride completely. Did it feel like to you that the evidence does support that enough was provided or did the EPA come back with anything substantial to counter any of that? You know, the EPA’s argument and their expert witness, their expert witnesses, their whole objective appears to be to try to cloud the topic and to make it as uncertain as possible. And they kept repeatedly trying to convince the judge that every time the expert witnesses on the Floyd Action Network side would say something really powerful about how Floyd is affecting IQ and neurodevelopment and thyroid and the bones and just so many other things, the EPA would come back and try their best to essentially either provide non-answers. So whenever they were asked a direct question, you know, I’m specifically thinking of Dr. Stanley Barone, who’s an EPA risk assessor, who is an expert, I would say in this field, but he seemed to be, have been coached to be very difficult to not answer any questions directly. And if it was a very simple yes or no question, he would say yes, but then add a long winding caveat and to seem to just, again, can either confuse the judge or to get him to just be so uncertain that, okay, I see that there’s harm. Uh, but it’s still too unclear and I should err on the side of like, you know, not something so profound because they’re, they’re all aware, like what happens in this court is going to have major impacts outside of the courtroom. Um, and the judge is aware of that. And I do, I would say that the judge seems to genuinely be trying to understand the science. You know, if you want, if we’re going to have a courtroom for all of its flaws and there’s going to be a judge, you would want, I believe a judge who’s going to be as neutral as possible. And this judge hasn’t been like on the government side. He hasn’t been on the flight action network side. There were times when he raised his voice at both of them for different things that he thought they were kind of getting off the path or wasting his time and stuff like that. He’s denied objections from the government. He’s denied objections from the Flight Action Network. And then he sustained objections for both of them as well. So he wasn’t really kind of leaning one way or the other. I will say that on the final day of the proceedings, when the closing arguments were being made and the judge was making his final question, asking his final questions, it definitely seemed like the judge was leaning towards finding Floyd to be a neurotoxin. I will say that now that’s not, I’m not making any kind of prediction, but I would say based on the questions the judge was asking, he seemed, and honestly as well, the government’s attorney, who is a young, bright, clearly intelligent guy, the department of justice attorney, Brandon Adkins, I’d never seen him that flustered the entire two weeks. And it felt like he could tell the judge was leaning in this other direction. He kept kind of, just getting a little bit loud and like, come on, judge, you need to hear this. But what about this? It was a little different because the final day was in Zoom. So it wasn’t in the courtroom anymore. And so there was a little bit more leeway with everybody just going back and forth instead of, you know, one side talking and the judge back. So it was really the judge is asking questions that, OK, you say what you have to say. OK, what about you? And until the judge felt like, all right, I have enough information. But it did seem from my perspective that he was leaning in this direction. And another reason this this Lawsuit has been historic. I’ll sort of restate this. For one, the fact that this is the first time citizens have ever been able to get an EPA petition into a federal court. That alone is historic. This is the first time that evidence of Floyd’s harms have been presented in a federal court. That makes it historic. It’s one of the only times that we’re seeing a judge being asked to judge science to basically kind of fact check the EPA here. So that makes it historic. And then the other thing was the judge himself, as well as the EPA’s attorneys, and I believe this is probably the first time ever, did acknowledge that fluoride is causing harm. The big discrepancy here is at what levels, right? So the currently allowable levels in the United States is 0.7 milligrams per liter of fluoridated water. The World Health Organization recommends 1.5. The studies clearly show harm at two and above, two milligrams and above, 1.5 even. And both sides agree, it gets a little less clear the lower you get down. And I think This is because there just hasn’t been enough funding to get data because some people don’t want clear data down there. They’d rather it be uncertain so they can say to the judge, yeah, okay. And again, this is why it was a historic thing to hear the EPA attorney say, yes, judge and their expert witnesses under oath, you know, and it’s on the record now in the court record saying, yes, at the higher levels, we’re seeing neurodevelopmental issues, but it’s less certain. And so the EPA’s argument is essentially just keep kicking the can down the road. Let’s do more studies, more studies. Meanwhile, millions of pregnant mothers are being exposed to this. And what Michael Conant, the lead attorney with the Floyd Action Network, was arguing is that in every previous instance where the EPA has done a hazard assessment or risk assessment, like for example, for lead or for mercury, things like that, there have been other examples, including with lead, where they couldn’t tell at what exact level the harm began, right? Sometimes it’s not so clear and cut and dry as, okay, right at 1.0, harm begins. And before that, there’s nothing. doesn’t really seem to work that way. In fact, now we know there’s no safe level of lead. And at any level of lead, any exposure to you, it’s gonna start to cause problems in your body and also with your neurodevelopment. And it appears that the evidence is saying the same about fluoride. Of course, the government doesn’t want that to be the case, but that was what Michael Conant was arguing, is saying there might not be any safe level of fluoride. And so even though we’re uncertain, if we use the EPA’s past practices, they do it’s called an uncertainty factor and apparently they typically have an uncertainty factor of 10 so you look at where you’re finding harm but you you know extrapolate that out like 10 times so even if harm is starting let’s just pick an arbitrary point at 1.5 and the us says 0.7 is safe well you have to assume that harm is going to begin before 1.5 like there’s you know it’s not just all of a sudden it starts there and you have to think about the people who are the most vulnerable populations and so in this instance people who have kidney issues, kidney disease, who already aren’t able to maybe detoxify as well as the rest of us and have to drink extra water. If they’re drinking fluoridated water, they’re just going to cause more harm. So if you’re going to go based on what the EPA has done for mercury, for lead and everything else, then you would assume even with some admitted uncertainty that the best practice here would be just to get it out of the water in the interest of the most vulnerable populations. And that is what the Fluoride Action Network has been arguing. The judge brought that up several times in the final day, essentially bringing that point up to the EPA and saying, look, okay, we have uncertainty, but shouldn’t we go ahead and act? Because it’s hard to say that, he basically said all the evidence is pointing in one direction. Even if we have some uncertainty, all the evidence is pointing towards harm. Now you asked like what the EPA was arguing. The really odd thing that even the judge was kind of blown away by is that in the last year when there was this, this hold between 2020 and now, a new study was published. It’s called the INMA study that looked at fluoridated populations in the Basque region of Spain. And this study is an outlier because this study claims that fluoride actually increases the IQ of boys by 15 points. And there’s no other data, no other study in the world that has ever found anything like this. And again, I think this is probably part of the government’s objective to bring in data like this to just make it seem so cloudy that look judge we got some saying this some saying this it’s it’s all over the place we can’t make a proper ruling but the judge himself on the final day of uh testimony even said to the government said like this is totally at odds with every other study that has been presented here even if you say you don’t think all the studies they presented are exactly credible again all the evidence is going in one direction but then you’ve got this one study on the other side saying nope it totally increases iq And the Blood Action Network’s attorney, like Dr. Philippe Grandjean, who is a data scientist, who his work on mercury was used by the EPA to develop their standards for mercury. So definitely somebody, an expert on toxicology, basically saying that there’s no compound in the world that has been shown to increase IQ at such a drastic rate and that it’s just unheard of. It doesn’t make any sense. And so The judge, you know, he pretty plainly said this study, I wouldn’t have published it if I was the editor of this. I wouldn’t have it wouldn’t have made it through. I don’t see how this is credible. And so they did. I think the flight action order did a good job of poking holes in the government’s attempts. I think the judge saw through it. It’s really just going to come down to whether or not he wants to take such a big ruling, because I think he does understand that. we could expect the EPA will appeal if they lose here. And even if they don’t appeal, or let’s say the deployed action work does win the appeal, it could still be, unfortunately, years before action is taken because the EPA, if they are found to be wrong and they incorrectly denied this petition, they would then have to convene a working group to then decide how do they respond. And I mean, who knows how long they could drag their feet on that. so unfortunately more people will be exposed to this in the meantime but still with all that said I do think there’s just a lot to take away and and uh before we wrap up today maybe in the next uh question here I’d love to read directly from some of the scientists because you know I was there as a journalist and I was documenting this I’ve been researching this for a decade but no I’m not a scientist I’m I’m not the one who conducted these studies but I did have the opportunity to interview three of the scientists from the flight action network side I got to interview michael connett the lead attorney as well as one of the mothers who is a plaintiff in this. And they shared some really, the scientists shared some really profound and I think disturbing information that I think more people need to know. There’s so many things that we’ve learned over the last couple of years that this is just reminding me of, again, that they do studies for something and the average person isn’t aware of the type of person that that was studied on. Is it an adult? Is it a child body? Is it assuming that they’re consuming fluoride or whatever it might be in this controlled setting I was just talking to someone earlier today about um all the different ways that we can be exposed to fluoride and how especially with little kids when you look at the instructions on a toothpaste and toothpaste so much toothpaste has fluoride in it and you’re supposed to use a pea size you’re not supposed to swallow it when kids start brushing their teeth themselves they squirt a whole giant lump of toothpaste on their their toothbrush they they eat half of it like so many moms have walked into the bathroom to see their kid like eating toothpaste because they’ve gotten used to the taste they like it that we um were presented with these these amounts of something that is is safe or okay within a certain window, but how many people are actually consuming it? You talked about the vulnerability, somebody who might have kidney issues. So they’re they’re both more vulnerable and they’re drinking more. And just the difference between average people of how much water you might consume, the type of toothpaste you use if you’re a kid and you are actually eating the toothpaste. So you’re getting more fluoride that way. It just goes back to something that I think in a lot of different areas, more and more people have been talking about the last few years that when there’s risk there has to be a choice where I can go to the store and I can choose if my children are going to use toothpaste with fluoride in it or if it’s going to be fluoride free toothpaste it’s a lot harder to make a choice of what’s in your tap water of course we can filter and do things but if you’re not aware that that’s happening you don’t you don’t have that choice you can’t turn on the fluoride free tap or the the fluoride tap in your house but you can make a choice with bottled water you can make a choice with toothpaste so I i like what you’ve been saying about the direction that seems like the judge is going here, where there is so much evidence here, this appears to be a neurotoxin and we can’t know the threshold for everyone about where that’s going to negatively affect them. And about that 10 point leeway that you said on either side, that makes so much sense because there isn’t ever a threshold. We’re not all the same. It’s not just at 1.5. It’s going to start being harmful for some people. It could be at 0.1 or less for someone. And we have to consider that when we’re doing something that’s It’s basically like mandated when it’s in our water. There’s not there’s not a choice there. So it’s so it’s so good that this is all being talked about. I’m glad that you weeks to get to get all of this out there because and like you said, this this you know, the can in various ways will get kicked down the road, even if this goes the way that that the anti-fluoride people want it to, you know, we want fluoride out of the water, but that can take a lot of years. But at least there’s also a big opportunity for education here, too. And to hear some of these things that like the EPA is trying to say this and that the evidence is very clearly over here. And hopefully that can help educate more people to make choices for themselves about their water, about their toothpaste, and not always leave it up to the government to be the one making this decision for them that there’s a lot that we can do um in the meantime hopefully it does get out of the water but if that’s 10 years down the road what do we do um between now and then um so I’d love to hear what you were mentioning about uh some of the exact quotes and stuff from from and I would also like to talk um a little bit about recommendations you would have too for people about what what they can do for themselves right now absolutely yeah definitely we can get into some solutions I just wanted to add to what you were saying there you know this was brought up in the uh lawsuit a couple times by some of the different scientists that those of lower socioeconomic status are always going to be impacted the most by things like this because so for example I at my house we have multiple five gallon bpa free jugs that we take to the local water filter station that does reverse osmosis uv blah blah all those things and there’s a lot of them in mexico and the us most of the places I’ve been you can find those But yeah, that takes a commitment of buying those big jugs and sometimes they’re $10 or more just to get one of them. And then of course the time cost of going to fill them up and all that. And then maybe you got busy live or buying bottle water all the time or buying a sink filter for your house or a shower filter. These are things that all cost money, of course. And for some people they’re accessible for others, they’re gonna be inaccessible. And so that’s typically gonna be those who are on the lower socioeconomic status are gonna be forced to continue showering with fluoride. cooking with fluoride, drinking fluoride. So, you know, just to kind of bring that point further as well, there are solutions, but sometimes they’re inaccessible to everybody. And that’s why I think this case does matter. And hopefully in the long term, it leads somewhere. But also, Emma, you make a great point that this gives us, like I’ve been telling people This gives you more kind of tools in your tool belt to try to wake people up to fluoride. Because I’ve seen some reaction online like, yeah, we all know fluoride is bad. I heard that 20, 30 years ago. And it’s like, that’s great. That’s not the story here. The story is that now it’s in court. It’s in a federal court and the information is being presented. And not only that, I think some of the details do matter. So I will share my screen real quick. And I want to share just these quotes from Dr. Howard, who is the first scientist that I got to interview. And you can find my articles at The Last American Vagabond on, we have a fluoride page under my author page, and you can see everything I’ve written over the last four years. So Dr. Howard Hu, he was the principal investigator in the Mexico study, what’s called the Element Study, that looked at pregnant mothers in Mexico. And this was itself funded by the EPA and the NIH. So again, government-funded study by Dr. Howard Hu, and he’s testifying on the side of Fluoride Action Network. Uh, he made a few different points. Some of them I’ve already covered in terms of like the, uh, the pregnancy and the impact of mothers, but he did make some, some points that I wanna pass on here. Namely that by the third trimester, uh, the mother is being exposed to some of the highest levels of fluoride content because anybody who’s ever been pregnant or been around a pregnant woman, you know, you’re gonna be drinking more water as the pregnancy progresses. And by the third trimester, this is the point where the baby. is starting to really form and form its skeletal structure and come into being and everything that it gets of course it gets from its mother so if a mother is drinking fluoridated water and increasing the amount of fluoridated water she’s drinking as her pregnancy progresses that fluoride stores in her bones and when the baby comes to pull calcium from the mom’s bones to form its own skeletal structure it’s pulling all that fluoride right into its body it’s passing through the blood-brain barrier into the placenta I mean this is it just being exposed at incredibly dangerous levels from what we’re seeing here. And so Dr. Hu discussed that quite a bit. And when I asked him directly, what did he think about this claim that fluoride is a neurotoxin? He said, quote, yes, I would say that in my view, the evidence is quite persuasive that there is a negative impact of fluoride exposure on the neurodevelopment of children, particularly the research that’s coming out in prenatal exposure. And you can find my interview there if you want to listen to his full statement. The second scientist and expert witness for the Fluide Action Network I interviewed was Dr. Bruce Lamphere, who is a pediatric epidemiologist, and he also has done work for the US government. His work on lead was used by the EPA to develop their standards on that. So, I mean, I think the Fluide Action Network did a great job of bringing true experts, people who have worked for the government themselves and been hired by the us government so the government can’t even really kind of deny their their credentials and their uh their expertise on this topic so uh dr bruce lamphere talked about a bunch of different things but the one I want to focus on of course we’ve talked about the lowering iq of children he talked about hypothyroidism though and I want to mention that for a moment because hypothyroidism it imp obviously it impacts your thyroid uh for those who don’t know like back in decades ago floyd actually floyd pills used to be given to people with hyperthyroidism because it does the opposite of, I can’t think of the word, elevating your thyroid, but it slows it down, it brings it down. So if you have an overactive thyroid, fluoride can be used to bring it down. But what if you just have a regular thyroid, a regularly normal functioning thyroid, fluoride will still have that same impact. And so Dr. Lamphere noted this. He said that as far back as 2006, the National Research Council, they had a report saying that fluoride was a thyroid disruptor, and it was worse for people who have low iodine. In fact, if you’ve ever done any research on that, there are some people who believe there is an iodine crisis in the United States and other parts of the world, that many of us have lower levels of iodine, and fluoride is definitely not helping the case. And so what he told me, Dr. Bruce Lamphere, quote, What we found is that women who were exposed to higher amounts of fluoride, especially if it’s in the water or if it’s a measure of fluoride intake, we saw an increase of those risk of those women developing hypothyroidism. And he said it wasn’t a small amount. There was overall about a 65% increase in hypothyroidism. And he said that this raises some really Important questions about a serious problem because the thyroid, thyroid is related to neurocognitive function as well. So once your thyroid starts getting messed with, your brain function can be messed with as well. But it really just disrupts the body in so many different ways. And the third witness I was able to interview was the Danish scientist I mentioned earlier, Dr. Philippe Grandjean from the University of Southern Denmark. He also is an adjunct professor of environmental health at Harvard School of Public Health. and he has researched mercury for decades as well. And he said a number of different things. I just want to hit on one or two of the points. First off, he made it clear, as I was illustrating earlier, that there’s been data on fluoride going back generations. In fact, almost 100 years, about 90 years. Dr. Granging talked about a research scientist from Denmark called Kai Roham, and he actually researched fluoride back in the 1930s. He went to what’s called cryolite mines these are just it’s a mineral that the workers are out there were mining and apparently as part of the process of mining these uh the cryolite they’re exposed to fluoride and so he went and studied these these guys he did x-rays he did all kinds of tests on them and he was the first person to identify skeletal fluorosis and said that when he did x-rays of these men their their rib cages were like marble like they couldn’t see through them but at the same time they were very brittle and this is something we now know uh fluoride causes he also said they had they had um high exposures they had symptoms in their central nervous system it was affecting the functioning of their brain and now of course we’re seeing this with the small children so that’s to me another frustrating aspect of that is in reality even though this trial is bringing out some some important data this information has been known for for quite some time already uh it’s been out there in the public sphere for almost 100 years And the last point I’ll make is that Dr. Granjean also told me about two of the forces that he says, which he named the fluoride lobby, were not interested in his work on fluoride’s dangers and in fact kind of pushed him out. And one of these is Harvard. He said that while he started doing work on fluoride’s neurotoxicity at Harvard, quote, a professor from Harvard came to my office and asked me to sign a statement that my work on fluoride had nothing to do with water fluoridation. He actually wrote this draft. And since I didn’t sign this immediately, he instead went to my dean and had the dean sign a statement that he supported water fluoridation in accordance with the CDC. And Dr. Granjean said that he was told by the, quote, leadership at Harvard that his research was unwanted. And then he said, quote, because we couldn’t agree on what I would consider academic freedom, I left Harvard. And then another time he said that he was invited to the World Health Organization to help them develop an environmental health criteria document on fluoride. and that he started gathering data, animal data, epidemiological studies, and he was putting together a draft report. And then some funny business started, and he said, quote, they inserted changes in my draft indicating that fluoride could perhaps be toxic, but only at immense concentrations. I protested and said that in accordance with the scientific documentation, it would be wrong to insert the word immense. And so who published a document without my name, because I’d asked to have my name stricken, But then they inserted some other colleague’s name as the author of the draft, which is, of course, erroneous. But that was what the WHO felt was necessary in order to protect the interests of water fluoridation. So I just wanted to share that because I think those are just some really, again, you can find all that on the Last American Vagabond. But I think that those, as well as some other quotes in those articles, need way more attention because if you need evidence, we’ve all learned, as you were saying, Emma, just how things work the last few years during COVID. so big surprise right that there’s similar forces going on fluoride not necessarily a huge surprise but this is the kind of information that we need to use to educate other people when they say oh come on you’re crazy there’s nothing wrong with fluoride in fact uh one of the articles I’m working on um this week is about the first fact check that has been released about the fluoride lawsuit so we haven’t got any mainstream coverage but now factcheck.org has shown up to tell us that uh There’s nothing going on. The NTP study was only released because it’s not good enough science and there’s nothing happening behind the scenes. But this is why I was saying the talk of the political, which is, I guess, more my job as a journalist and our job as regular people watching this is to bring awareness to that. And the court, they’re just focusing on the science. But I’m here to say the science matters as well as understanding some of the forces who are behind the scenes who might be influencing the science and making it look one way or the other. Absolutely. I’m glad that that little last bit that you shared about the World Health Organization that you had that quote up for us. Because we talk about the World Health Organization a lot here at WCH, obviously, with everything that’s happened over the last few years with COVID. And the ongoing attempted power grabs by the WHO. It’s just yet another reason that we we cannot let these um unelected massive bodies make make decisions like this for all of us not just at the country level but especially on the global level um especially when they’re willing to do something like that that’s just absolutely absurd um and that that needs to definitely be shared far and wide so thanks for showing all of that to us um For people in the US and other countries where they do have fluoride in their water, you’d started out by telling us about how you got involved locally in Houston trying to stop this. And I know there has been a little bit of more positive news coming out recently about some areas in the US that have new ordinances. I think there was one in North Carolina where county commissioners wanted to do something about the fluoride. There’s been a couple of states that have decided to leave it up to local municipalities now. So there’s some actions happening. We can’t wait for the EPA to do something for all of us. What can people do, not only individually, because we know we can get water filters and we can do certain things just for ourselves and our families, but what kind of actions can people do in cities, in their states, What organizations are there out there that people can plug into and try to do something about this? Yeah, so great question. You know, of course, the Fluide Action Network, FluideAlert.org, they are, I mean, they’ve been the just amazing resource on this topic. And, you know, on that note, I want to just take a moment to thank Michael Conant, who is the lead attorney. His father and his mother, Paul Conant and Ellen Conant, are really, they started it before he was around. And he’s been researching this for 20 plus years. So it really is a family effort there. And the whole team that’s involved in that are really great people. And if you’re looking for data, like if you just need more facts and information, they have probably the world’s largest database on fluoride studies. Also, if you want some more stuff to sink your teeth, then you can go to fluoridelawsuit.org slash science. It’s either .org or .com slash science. And that’s where some of the plaintiffs, Brenda specifically, she’d organized all the different studies that were referenced in the lawsuit. So If you just need more facts and more information on your side, Flood Alert is a great place to start. And I think they also have pamphlets and flyers and things you can print out. You know, what I started doing was, you know, I just started Flood Free Houston. So if you want to take that name, Flood Free, wherever you’re at and plant a flag, say we’re here, start printing out some basic information on maybe it’s about some of the quotes from the lawsuit. Maybe it’s just about some of these new studies, because this is the other thing that’s important to remember is that As we’re having this conversation, the UK is absolutely considering starting to fluoridate the entire country and Canada is doing the same thing. In fact, this came into the lawsuit a little bit that Health Canada, which is Canada’s public health agency, they commissioned a study on water fluoridation. They chose not to publish it and instead commissioned an expert panel to review it. And the expert panel was made up of several pro fluoridation activists and scientists that basically recommended but the actual study itself, the scientists published it separately from Health Canada, and they said that there is evidence of harm even at currently allowable drinking water levels in North America. And in the UK, if you look up the Lotus study, which was just released, the latest edition last week, this Lotus study found no difference between those in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas in terms of cavities. So there’s really not even any data to back up those claims that they make. And so it’s important people get this information out because right now, as we’re talking, Canada and UK are both considering expanding their fluoridation programs. I know that some areas in those countries have it, but not nearly to the degree that the United States has. And you guys don’t want to be in a position where we’re at, where we’re now having to try to get rid of it instead of, you know, where you can prevent it from happening. So I would encourage you to start a group in your community as soon as possible. If you are hearing about this, you are correct. There have been some really great successes recently. North Carolina, there was another county in Florida I saw. And there’s a couple of cities in Texas where I’m originally from. And you know, so victories do happen on the local level. And if this court doesn’t go the way we want it to, or even if it does, but it still takes a couple of years, there’s definitely a benefit benefit to raising awareness in your community, because you, if you’ve got a town council or a city council, especially if you’re in a smaller area and maybe it’s less than 10 people on that council, all you have to do is convince, you know, a certain percentage of them to listen. And it does take effort. I will say be consistent, be persistent, be prepared for a long haul because like many of these things, like probably with COVID, we look at the data and we’re like, oh my God, this is so clear as day. All I have to do is take this to my city council member and they’re going to be ready to take the fluoride out of the water tomorrow. It’ll be no problem. And then you often go there and two things happen. For one, you’re not a scientist unless maybe you are. And if you are, then you might have a leg up on somebody like me or the rest of us lay people who get sort of treated like, oh, you just don’t understand the science. The other thing is the fluoride lobby is very strong in the United States, I’ll say at least, and I would imagine elsewhere. And they pay attention when there are local fights. The American Dental Association, years ago when we were going to city council, it was only four or five of us. And we set up meetings with city council members. So that’s one thing is you can start trying to set up individual meetings. You can send them emails, phone calls. We started doing that. And we had only been going for a couple of weeks to city council to share information. And then a dentist representing the American Dental Association showed up to basically say, these guys don’t know what they’re talking about. Don’t listen to them. I’m the dentist and I know fluoride’s safe. So be aware of that. The lobby is real. So don’t be disheartened if people don’t listen right away. Don’t be discouraged if you have pushback or resistance or if somebody mentions the movie Dr. Strangelove or calls you crazy because that is what the propaganda has been designed to do for the last 80 years is to treat people who ask questions about this like crazy. But just know you have the facts on your side. Again, I would use the resources that are available to you. Look up some of the most basic data. Don’t overwhelm people by giving them 100 studies. Pick some of the most recent studies you can find. And even unfortunately, I think this is done by design. even though we have the National Toxicology Program study, the draft version that clearly says fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ in children, like we’re seeing in this fact check, the fact that it wasn’t released in a final version is kind of giving them cover to say, oh, no, no, that’s not our opinion, though. That was just some draft version. It’s not conclusive. So there are other data out there that, excuse the barking dog, there are other data out there that are more recent that I think are actually stronger. So I would recommend the Health Canada study that just came out. And I’m happy to send you these links if you want to put them in the show notes. And some of the other studies that have come out, the Lotus study showing that it doesn’t reduce cavities. Take this information, start a conversation with somebody, you know, because you’re going to hear that. You’re going to hear these canned responses that people, for better or worse, have been programmed to think, OK, maybe you want a choice. But what about the poor people who don’t have toothpaste in the countryside? Right. What about we got to think about them? Right. And then you can show them the data, say, but look, that’s not even true. It doesn’t even appear to actually impact toothpaste. And even if you think that’s the case, adding it to the water where it’s going to wash over your entire organ system doesn’t make any sense. So that’s kind of my thing here. Start a group if you can. Get connected with people. Start printing out flyers. Spread them in your local area. And just start building some awareness. That’s what you can do right now, whether you’re in the United States or not. especially if you’re in a place that is considering adding this to the water. And I think more countries probably will see that. If you have the World Health Organization recommending it, and we’ve seen like with COVID, so many countries just fall in line with WHO policy, we can expect that there will probably be more nations that will adopt this policy, which makes this lawsuit even more important. Absolutely, thank you for all that advice. I’m really all about, excuse me, just getting into action before the thing happens. Like you said, once it’s in everybody’s water, it’s gonna be a lot harder to get it taken out. We have to do things, we have to get active. before the thing happens. And we have to do it ourselves. We have to participate in that process and just not wait for the government or our local leaders to be the ones to do it. We have to participate in that process. So you gave a great roundup of tips and ideas there. And yeah, if you could send me those links, that would be great. I would love to include all the links in the show notes. And just before we close, can you just let everybody know where to follow you and to keep up with this? Because you had so many interviews and information coming out over those couple of weeks of the trial, but we’re still, we’re waiting now for more information and what the final ruling is going to be from the judge. So I imagine that people want to be close to you as that happens and to hear the report whenever we expect that to come. So where can people find you? Sure. Thank you again, Emma, for having me on and for everybody at World Council for Health for all the work you guys are doing. Uh, my main website is the conscious resistance.com. As soon as I get an update about this or it’s shared with me, I’ll probably go live right away and just get a video out as soon as possible. And then of course, as I mentioned earlier, I write articles for the last American vagabond.com. So I’m sure I’ll do a detailed, uh, written version as well. Once we get the, the judge’s statement. And, uh, of course you can follow me on social media, but, um, yeah, my website and the last American vagabonder be the first places I post about this and, It could be weeks, it could be months, but hopefully it won’t be more years to come before we find out. Great, well, thank you for sharing all this information and thank you so much for being there for those couple of weeks and for sticking with this topic, because this is so important. And it’s obviously one of those topics, if you didn’t go there, if you didn’t report on it, who would have? There’s not enough people covering this. So I’m very glad and thankful that you went to California and that you dedicated that much time to this topic. So thanks for sharing this with us. We’ll get all these links into the show notes so people can keep up with the information and hopefully get active against water fluoridation wherever they live. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today and for watching this interview with Derek. I’ve put a lot of the links to the various studies and his articles on the last American vagabond. And I put his Twitter in the chat and a few different places where you might be watching this. I will also add them to the post on the video library on the World Council for Health website. website so that you can stay connected to all of those things and stay connected to Derek so you can hear the latest updates whenever the judge does make a ruling on this. So we are done with today’s show. I’m going to play out with a little video about how to filter your own water at home made by Linda Ray, our health coach here at the World Council for Health. And we will see you next week on Monday for our episode all about the measles. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Thank you for watching this episode of Better Way today. If you found value in it, please consider making a value exchange with us. The World Council for Health is a grassroots people’s organization and we rely on funding from people just like you. Your contributions from as little as $5 or £5 or 100 Rand help to power our work. The World Council for Health team is on a mission to serve you. Please make it your mission to support us.