e following is an interview with Dr. William Marcus, Senior Science Advisor of EPA's Office of Drinking Water, concerning the congressionally mandated fluoride cancer study completed in 1990. In the study, a dose related incidence of osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in male rats was found, with the highest dosed rats having the most bone tumors, the mid dose rats having the second most, and the control group having none. The initial conclusion of the study, made by Dr. Marcus and other pathologists at the Battelle laboratory, was of "clear evidence of carcinogenicity in male rats."

Such a finding, however, put the EPA and other governmental agencies in a difficult and awkward situation, as it would have necessitated the banning of fluoridation, a policy the government has actively supported for 50 years.

According to Dr. William Hirzy, Senior Vice President of the EPA's Professionals' Union, if these initial findings weren't later downgraded by a "hastily convened" special commission, "it [fluoridation] would have been over." Hirzy is currently calling, therefore, on Congress to order an independent review of the tumor slides, with the belief that the earlier downgrading from "clear evidence" to "equivocal evidence" was politically motivated and scientifically indefensible.

Dr. William Marcus, who had protested the downgrading, was fired by the EPA, but was later reinstated (with full back pay and compensation) when the Secretary of Labor ruled that the EPA had unjustly fired him out of "retaliation" for taking a stand contrary to the Agency's wishes.

The following is a portion of a radio show interview on March 10, 1995, between William Marcus, the Senior Science Advisor of EPA's Office of Drinking Water, and host Gary Null. Call (212) 799-1246, Program #310, for complete audio tape.

Marcus: When I got a hold of the contractor report and reviewed it very carefully, not only was it reporting cancers in the animals, [it was reporting] osteosarcomas which bothered me a lot because I've been trying to produce osteosarcomas in animals for almost 20 years and the only luck I ever had was with an experiment in dogs and monkeys, and the osteosarcomas took nearly the lifetime of the animals, and we were using radium which specifically produces that in bones. And here we have a compound commonly available - fluoride - that did it in rats in two years or less. That was upsetting to begin with. Secondarily...in that same study, there were cancers of the liver that are very rare according to the board certified veterinary pathologist at the contractor, Battelle. And those really were very upsetting because they were hepatocholangiocarcinoma, a very rare, rare, liver cancer... Something similar to that occurred with vinyl chloride in a far less well conducted study and it was determined that it was carcinogenic, highly carcinogenic. And then there were several other kinds of cancers found in the jaw and other places and I felt at the time that the report was very, very interesting. It showed that the levels of the fluoride that caused the cancers in the animals were actually lower than those levels seen in people who are ingesting lower amounts but for longer periods of time and that was very very worrisome. It meant that the general population could be exposed to fluoride known to cause cancer in animals and have levels near the cancer being produced in the bones.

Gary Null: And what did you do and what happened?

Marcus: Well I went to a meeting that was held in Research Triangle Park in April 1990, the latter part of April, in which the NTP was presenting their review of the study. And I went with several colleagues of mine, one of whom was a board certified veterinary pathologist who had originally reported hepatocholangiocarcinoma as a separate entity in rats and mice. I asked him if he would have an opportunity to look at the slides to see if that really was a tumor or the pathologist at Battelle had made an error and he told me after looking at the slide that in fact it was correct. And at the meeting every one of the cancers that was reported by the contractor had been down-graded by the NTP.

Now I've been in the toxicology business looking at studies of this nature for nearly 25 years and I've never seen that; never ever seen where every single endpoint that was a cancer endpoint had been down-graded. I'd seen one or two endpoints argued over, usually on a definition [of] what is a cancer in that particular tissue. But I've never seen every one of them down-graded. I found that very suspicious and I went to see an investigator in the Congress at the suggestion of my friend Bob Carton. And this gentleman and his staff investigated very thoroughly and found out that the scientists at the NTP down at Research Triangle Park had been coerced to change their findings.

Gary Null: Coerced by whom?

Marcus: I never really got that. But the only people that can coerce them were their supervisors.

Gary Null: Why would they want to coerce them? What were they trying, who or what were they trying to protect?

Marcus: Well as you well know fluoride is still recommended as a treatment for prevention of dental caries, tooth decay, and has been touted as such by the Public Health Service since 1953-54 and they ha[ve] a reputation to protect. It wouldn't do for them to have been making this strong recommendation over the years and now to find out that they have been exposing the general public to a material known, now known, to be potentially carcinogenic in humans. And there have been other studies..."

* Read more about the research on fluoride & bone cancer

Note: The National Toxicology Program (NTP) is part of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service, in the Department of Health & Human Services.

The radio show interview goes on to tell how Dr. Marcus was fired from the EPA, endurred a two year lawsuit and then was reinstated with his EPA job after winning his lawsuit through the whistleblower act.

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