First Address of the 1966 Martha R. Jones Nutritional Lectures

The following message by Dr. Granville F. Knight was delivered at 9 o’clock A.M. on November 15, 1966 for the first of two addresses of the 1966 Martha R. Jones Nutritional lectures, held in Royal Auditorium on the Campus of Asbury Theological Seminary. The message was recorded through the facilities of Asbury Theological Seminary and is now made available to you through the Seminary’s Tape Library. Additional copies may be ordered by contacting the Tape Library and given complete identification of the message, copyright privileges must be observed, and its message must not be transcribed without the specific con sent of this Seminary.

 

Now here is Dr. Frank Bateman Stanger, President of Asbury Theological Seminary, introducing Dr. Martha R. Jones, who will introduce Dr. Knight.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce one of our special guests on campus for this lectureship and during these days. I would like to introduce Miss Frieda Rook, who is the Curator of the Weston A. Price Memorial Foundation, who is a Master of Public Health, and some of us remember that a number of years ago Miss Rook was the Martha R. Jones lecturer here at the Seminary. It is my great pleasure now to present to the student body and faculty, Miss Rook.

 

Thank you.

Now we come today to the annual Martha R. Jones lectures. A trust fund has been established by Dr. Martha R. Jones to provide here at the Seminary an annual lectureship in the field of nutrition. The purpose is to give to students a working knowledge of food values and to teach by demonstration the relationship between good soil, good food, good health, good teeth, good friends, good Christians. Through the years, many very valuable insights have been provided by means of this lectureship, and we are grateful again this year for the opportunity of this presentation. Now, I would like to present to you at this time the donor of the Martha R. Jones Lectureship, Dr. Martha R. Jones is with us. I am sure that many of you have already met her. We appreciate her long life of dedication to the cause. I won’t tell you how old she is. She told me recently that she has now pretty well settled on at least working until she is 100. I look at her and say, “you’ll make it.” I said “you have a much better chance of making it than I have, and I’m sure you’ll make it.” But, Dr. Jones is an enthusiastic supporter of good living in all of its aspects, and I want to present her to you now, so that she will have the privilege of saying what she wants to say about the lectureship and of introducing the 1966 lecturer. I now present you Dr. Martha R. Jones.

 

Thank you, Dr. Stanger. On the bottom of our speakers’ letterhead is a quote from Plato and it reads like this: “The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Paraphrasing that statement, it might be said that the penalty today’s generation is paying for indifference to our environment, to our land, to our food supply, is untold suffering and premature death. Our speaker is one of the few medical men vitally concerned with the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you Dr. Granville Knight, a Doctor of Medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Allergies, of Santa Monica, California. Dr. Knight.

 

Thank you, Dr. Jones. Dr. Stanger, members of the faculty and the student body, I consider it a great honor to be invited here to address you, because I have heard and I am convinced, since I came here, that this one of the finest groups of men that I have seen in a long time, and the finest group that I have ever had the opportunity of talking to, I think you are very fortunate to be here at Asbury. Asbury is apparently expanding very rapidly and is going to make itself felt in the field in which you are working, probably more than any other school in the country.

Now, I was only allotted three and one-half hours for this talk, whereas I usually take four and one-half, and I will attempt to condense it as best I can. It’s unfortunate that I have such a short period of time. I am covering a topic which is rather impertinent of me to even consider. It is such a fantastically broad one. However, I have taken the liberty of using this subject, simply because I like the terminology and I thought it might be wise and stimulating to talk to you about a bird’s eye view, or an astronaut’s view, of the problems which are facing the world and mankind, and to give you some of my ideas and ideas of others who have studied the subject, as to what the problem is and perhaps what we can do about it. This morning I plan to cover primarily the effects of toxic chemicals and other substances on body enzymes and how we are being affected by such chemicals. This afternoon I will go more into physical degeneration and try and give you some concrete and practical methods, by which we can meet this toxic load, which the human being has to bear these days, and some practical suggestions along nutritional lines.

I think we are very fortunate, Asbury is very fortunate, in having a woman like Dr. Martha Jones, of the highest caliber–a woman who, from experience as a child suffering from poor nutrition, became interested, and by means of applied nutrition has brought herself into a very healthy condition for her age, in spite of terrific infirmities which she had when she was younger. This is true of many of us who become interested in nutrition. If one is perfectly healthy, you just don’t bother about it. You think if I get enough to eat, if my hunger is satisfied, that’s all I need. One tends to push oneself a great deal and not pay much attention to the fuel which is taken in.

You have all, or perhaps you have, in this day and age of powerful gasoline, many people have not heard a car knock, but it was very common twenty years ago when the gasoline was poor and the cars were not very powerful. But that is a sign of inadequate fuel for that car, and today most of us are suffering from some inadequate fuel intake. As a result, we have smoky motors, we have noisy motors. This may not mean much until later on, but degeneration gradually appears over a period of years, and we finally get in trouble. Now, I am to cover this from a very broad standpoint at first. I am going to mention a number of things, some of which I will not attempt to cover, since they are not in my field although I am interested in them.

One-third of our citizens in fourteen states are believed to be incapable of taking care of themselves because of debility and mental incapacity. This applies to some extent to the New England States, where the soil in that area has been gradually depleted over the years, the crops are of inferior quality; they do not contain enough calcium, magnesium and phosphorus, and the people there are in trouble. There are some intellectuals who believe that all of us, regardless of nutritional capability and intellectual capacity, should be taken care of through all our lives. One example of that, and I don’t mean to talk politics, is the Great Society. One of the friends of Aldous Huxley once said “We the intellectuals are the wise and good. We know what the world needs and what reforms it should have. If we had the power we could create a paradise.” Now this is all very well. The intellectuals have fine ideas for humanity, but the trouble is if they get their ideas in power, and if they have control, they are usually replaced eventually by totalitarian gangsters. This has happened in the past, and, to my mind, would make one very leery of any totalitarian type of society, whether it’s Fascism, Hitlerism, Communism, Pagan Socialism, or what have you.

Now, Paul Dudley White, President Eisenhower’s heart specialist, has said heart disease has now reached epidemic proportions. He claims 50% of all males over the age of 40. Cancer kills one out of three, and one out of three in this room, unless you take care of yourselves, unless you learn what is going on and do something about it, one out of three is going to die eventually of cancer. This should not be so. Arthritis of one type or another; it may be just a small soreness or swelling of the fingers, affects about 90% of the population once we reach adulthood. There are 32 million persons who are overweight, 50% of our population suffers from defective vision. Tooth decay is practically universal in civilized countries, and perhaps 97% of individuals suffer from tooth decay. There are a few, 3% to 5%, who are for some reason which we don’t know as yet, immune to decay. They can eat all the sweets they want, all the candy they want and they don’t get decay, and they are indeed fortunate, but they are the exceptions. Pyorrhea develops in practically all adults, and about 75% of teeth are lost because of pyorrhea, rather than tooth decay. Now the so-called normals of blood pressure and cholesterol and other indices of nutrition and of health have been changing. When I was a medical student normal blood pressure was never over 130/80. Now a normal blood pressure is considered to be 150/90 or below. A normal cholesterol when I was in medical school was supposed to be between 150 and 200. A cholesterol up to 275 is now considered perfectly normal, within normal limits. This is simply a sign that something is happening to our population. We in the United States are supposed to be the best fed nation in the world, and we are, as far as calories are concerned, But, when it comes to vitamins, minerals and protein, and the vital food stuffs which are essential for body metabolism, that is not true. We are often overweight and too full of calories and still sick. Now there are a number of factors involved, and I think if one looks at ecology, one gets a better understanding of what is going on, and I will roughly define ecology as the interrelationship between soil, plants, animals and man, all the interrelationships which are concerned.

Many years ago, thousands of years ago, primitive man lived on what he could forage and this included animal foods, insects, berries, fruits and what not, depending upon his location. Then gradually he came to the sheepherding stage and the agricultural stage, where he grew some of his own crops, where he kept sheep for food and for milk. And then he had cows, and cows for food and milk, so the diet gradually changed. But at that time man was exposed to practically no chemicals which were troublesome. In a few areas he encountered Selenium, which is very toxic; and in a few areas he encountered natural radioactive activity. But, on the whole, he was simply faced with the troubles which affected men of that age. He had to look out for predators who were likely to do him in, and to avoid the extremes of weather, so that he could live comfortably.

In the industrial revolution, we have now become acquainted, and we have had introduced into our bodies and our environment a fantastic number of chemicals, the petrochemical group. These, the human body has never encountered before, and it does not know how to deal with most of them. Many of these petrochemicals are exceedingly difficult to detoxicate or detoxify, and they are causing trouble, which we even now do not know the extent of. We have a change in our food pattern as a result of urbanization. Because man has moved to the city, and is no longer living on the countryside, on the farm, he has had to transport food to the cities. Those who were handling food found that if food perished very quickly, as most food does when it is taken direct from the soil on the farm, he would lose a great deal of the food he was carrying to the city. Therefore, he had to do something about it and he tried to find ways to make it last longer. So that we had food processing develop, which included, of course, canning, or home canning as it was done in the older days in jars; in other words, heat. We now have the deep freeze, which is a big advantage, and a big advance. We had canning. We had the removal, such as in flour, of the wheat germ, and wheat germ oil is what causes the whole grain once it’s ground to spoil very quickly, because the wheat germ becomes rancid. Now with modern milling methods, we take out the wheat germ, most of the vitamins and minerals, and then we have white flour left which keeps beautifully. The insects won’t touch it. If you have whole wheat flour in a storage area, rats will go after it and beetles and all sorts of things, and it doesn’t last very long. But if it is white flour, it will keep indefinitely under those circumstances. So that was one reason for producing white flour. Then there were various grades of flour, and some of them are not as good as others. The hard wheat produces the best kind of flour, so they got the idea, well, this dark flour doesn’t appeal to the people very well. Now what can we do with it. So they got the idea of bleaching it, and they used agene, or nitrogen trioxide at first, and it was used for many, many years, and that would bring all grades of flour to the same degree of whiteness, so that a poor grade could be used along with a good grade, and the public would not know the difference. Now, this is fine for the bakers and the millers, but it was not so good for the public. It wasn’t so long ago that in England they found that flour treated with agene or nitrogen trioxide caused running fits or epileptic fits in dogs. So finally, that was banned just a few years ago, and in place of that chlorine dioxide was advocated. Now, so far, there are not any reports of running fits in dogs reported from the use of chlorine dioxide, but anything which will bleach flour will tend to damage some of the amino acids or the protein in the flour, and I don’t know why chlorine dioxide, if it makes the flour white, won’t do the same thing. We don’t know yet. We will find out perhaps in twenty years. That is another change in our food supply which is causing trouble.

Now, cooking, of course, is important. If food is overcooked, amino acids are broken down or detoxified and destroyed to some extent. If the water in which vegetables are cooked is thrown away, you throw away a lot of the minerals and the water soluble vitamins, B complex, C, and so on. So cooking is important, and most people do throw away the cooking water. It should be used in soups or mixed with tomato juice. Cooking destroys some of the values in our foods, which are already partly devitalized as a result of processing.

Food habits make a great deal of difference. It is much easier for a person who is living alone to take a loaf of white bread and put some jam or peanut butter or something on it and eat that along with perhaps a glass of milk or a coke, and the average diet as I have seen it in many of the highschool students–I trust it isn’t true here. I wouldn’t expect so because of the superior intelligence which I see in the audience. I trust the average lunch is not a coke and donut and ice cream and perhaps a ham sandwich. But that is the tendency and it is all too common. I have gone out to some of the drive-ins we have in California, where you just drive in and get a sandwich or whatever you want, and I would say the average luncheon is a ham sandwich or a hamburger, plus a coke or perhaps a float and donut, or something of that sort. Now that highschool student perhaps went without breakfast because he got up late and he was late for class and late to school, so he may have had no breakfast, or he may have had a cup of coffee or a glass of milk and perhaps a little orange juice. Then he comes home and has a good big dinner if his parents know anything about nutrition. If they don’t, then he has a fair one, which might be meat and a vegetable and a sweet dessert. But many of them get sweet desserts several times a day, a coke break in the afternoon or in the morning, or both, and sundaes or something of that sort on the way home from school, and this does not give the body enough protein, enough trace elements or enough of the vital substances which the body needs.

Now, in addition, we have chemical contact in our food, air and water. We have at the present time something which is exceedingly dangerous, and which was exemplified by Rachel Carson in her book, which has been damned by many of the authorities as being overexcitable and as being scary, but she has shown, and I went into this subject 15 years ago and wrote an article 23 years ago, which is certainly substantiated by what she has found. That is, that our food chain is now being disrupted by the addition of chemicals, primarily the insecticides, which are being sprayed on our crops, which are being used for fumigation of cur grain, and which are building up, particularly the chlorinated hydrocarbons, DDT, and so on, in our food supply. It is found that DDT, which is fat soluble, builds up in the body fat and may magnify from 1 part per million to as much as two thousand parts per million, after one little creature has been eaten by another little creature, by another little creature, until we get up to the top. It has been shown that DDT and the relatives, many of which are now used and which are more toxic, will cause sterility in birds, will reduce the hatchability of eggs, will destroy birds who eat earthworms, who in turn have picked up DDT from elms, for instance, which have been sprayed for the gypsy moth. We are beginning to lose a lot of our birds because of this. We are losing many bees, who in turn are necessary to pollinate the flowers and the crops, and we are in real trouble. DDT has been found in fish up in the Arctic, where no DDT has been used within two or three thousand miles. So it is spreading, even throughout the ocean, and everyone of us in this room has an average, if there is such a thing as an average, of 10 parts per million of DDT in the body fat. Now, nobody knows what this is going to do eventually, but DDT is an enzyme poison, as most chemicals are that are used for insecticides or used in other ways. There is a probability, since DDT in large doses can cause cancer in some animals, there is a possibility that it may eventually be one of the factors causing cancer in man.

Now, I have so much to cover here that I am going to skip and go over to the cellular enzymes and try to give you an explanation of how these poisons cause trouble.

Our bodies are wonderfully made. Every body cell under the microscope can be seen, but it is too small to be seen without a microscope. During development in accordance with God’s master plan, the original cells become differentiated into specialized types, capable of carrying on group functions. We thus have connective tissue, muscles, brain tissue, fat depots, cartilage, skin, bones, mucous membranes and various organs, such as the liver, kidneys, spleen and glands of internal secretion. Nerve impulses and hormones, which are chemical messengers, help to regulate the activities of the body, and in health, we are scarcely aware of the complexities involved. Each tiny body cell is a marvelous battery of chemical reaction. There are more than one thousand reactions which go on simultaneously in every body cell and they are catalysed by enzymes, which in turn are composed of protein or amino acid, plus trace elements, plus vitamins. Without these enzyme catalysts all life would stop. In fact, if our oxidative reactions are interfered with, life stops within half a minute. Now many chemicals, such as cyanide, and this is an extreme example, interfere with enzyme reactions by uniting with the trace elements, which is concerned with that enzyme, or with a number of enzymes. In the case of cyanide, it reacts with the iron which is one of the trace elements in many oxidative enzymes, and once it unites with that the oxidative enzyme stops functioning and life ceases within half a minute.

Many of our other chemicals which are used therapeutically, such as anesthetics, in turn poison the enzymes which have to do with oxidation, but the processes are reversible, so we take in an anesthetic, we go to sleep and we wake up at the right time, providing the anesthetist knows what he is doing and uses the right compounds. It is perfectly marvelous what can happen. There are many enzyme functions which can be reversibly poisonous with a good purpose and good function in mind.

Now, we have chemicals in the air we breathe. We have smog in Los Angeles, I’m sorry to say, and I shouldn’t admit it, being from California. You don’t have it here. You are fortunate to live in a small community, and that contains many chemical compounds, such as ozone, which cracks rubber. Sometime during a bad ozone attack rubber tires will crack within 24 hours. We seldom get an attack in Santa Monica, by the way, but we do get three or four during a year, and within 24 hours after a bad one I may notice that all the tubing leading to my blood pressure machine is cracked and starts to leak, and I have to replace them. We have also fluorides in the air in smog in the big cities, and this is one thing that is difficult for one to elicit, as far as getting information is concerned from authorities. They don’t like to mention fluorides in the air because they are advocating putting fluorides in the water supply of the big cities. I understand that the great state of Kentucky somehow has been persuaded to fluoridate the water supply, and I assume of every community of over 10,000. We just fought this in Los Angeles and the City Council in Los Angeles turned it down by a vote of 9 to 6, and I hope that Kentucky, with its great reputation, will eventually reconsider. There is a national drive to fluoridate the water supply with what I think is a fallacious idea, that fluorides will reduce tooth decay. Now we know perfectly well that the cause of tooth decay is first a poor inheritance, plus a poor or incomplete intake of various nutrients, particularly calcium, phosphorus, magnesium and vitamins and protein, plus the use of sugar and white flour. The use of sugar and white flour has been increasing at a tremendous rate throughout the world, until now Americans eat more than 100 pounds of white sugar per year per person, average. In other words, the increase in the simple sugars and carbohydrates has increased markedly, and these are the ones that ferment most quickly to produce acid, which in turn helps to dissolve susceptible teeth. One can avoid tooth decay primarily by avoiding sugar and white flour. It is that simple, but it is not simple because everyone else is eating them, and therefore it is difficult to go against the crowd. But anyone can stop tooth decay, at least 90% of it, if they wish to, by a good diet and by avoiding those foods which I have just mentioned.

Now we also have radioactive fallout. We have illuminating gas in houses which act as allergens. We have allergy which is a stress, and most disease is due to reaction to stress. Reactions to stress can be of various types, but if it impinges on a body which is inferior because of inheritance, because of a poor diet, because of inability to detoxicate chemicals, then that person is more likely to become ill.

Now in our water supply we have nitrites and nitrates as a result of fertilization, artificial fertilizer, which may even drain into wells, and this has poisoned babies. Nitrites and nitrates are very poisonous to youngsters, and to adults, as well. We find those in our luncheon meats and hamburger sometimes, sausage and so on. It usually says so on the package. In water we also have detergents, which are seeping underground, which are going down in rivers, and which even in some areas are so active that when they try to purify the water supply they get a great big arch of foam, because these present detergents break down very poorly as a result of bacterial action. One interesting fact on the detergents is that they increase the absorption of various substances, such as coal tar dyes. I am going to mention those later, but I will bring it up right now. The coal tar dyes which are used in our food, and there are about 14 of them, only seven of them being approved by the International Cancer Commission, but these dyes which color foods, which color medications, are questionably toxic. Several of them were discarded a few years ago because they were found to produce cancer in animals. There are, I believe, still one or two used which will cause cancer in animals on injection only. They can be fed by large quantities by mouth and they don’t bother the animals, but given by injection they will produce cancer in a certain number of them. Now one thing that detergents do is to increase the absorption of these dyes, and if you give a detergent to an animal plus one of the dyes, the dye, instead of going through the intestinal tract, as it does ordinarily, is absorbed into the tissues and can be observed there staining the tissues. So we are now laying ourselves open to contamination from dyes and other chemicals, as a result of increased absorption from detergents. We use them for washing our dishes, there is some residue left on the dishes, so it is a factor we have to consider.

Then we have in foods, antioxidants, preservatives, flavors, buffers, insecticides of all types, acidifiers, alkalizers, deodorants, moisteners, drying agents, extenders, thickeners, disinfectants, defoliants, fungicides, sweeteners, anticoagulants, antifoaming agents, conditioners, purers, hydrolizers, hydrogenators, maturers, fortifiers, hormones and so on. So we have quite a collection of chemicals and you should see the number that are put in our foods. It is fantastic. I take the application of the Food and Drug Administration, which tells of all the chemicals that have been released for use in foods, and it is incredible. I have a list with me, but I won’t take time to read it to you because you wouldn’t understand what they are, I don’t either. Anyway, these chemicals may destroy vitamins and enzymes in food, as well as denaturing or damaging amino acids, and they affect the bodies of those consuming those foods. Those who are allergic or malnourished or ill are undoubtedly more susceptible to the action of toxic chemicals than individuals in excellent health.

Now, we get increased destruction of vitamins, particularly Vitamin C, we get interference with enzyme systems, which I thinks helps to precipitate Vitamin B complex deficiency, which, in turn, is very common these days, because Vitamin B complex is necessary to metabolize, or help the body use carbohydrates, such as sugar and flour and rice and so on. Now, if Vitamin B complex has been removed from these foods, normally there is enough in there to help the body use them, but if it has been removed, then you have to take Vitamin B from other foods or get it from supplements in order to burn up the carbohydrates, When we eat brown rice and freshly ground whole wheat flour then we don’t have to worry so much about Vitamin B complex because it is in those foods. But once it is taken out, we have to get it from somewhere else. Since the other foods supply only enough for their own needs usually, we either have to take it as a supplement or we gradually become Vitamin B deficient. I would like to show the slides on Vitamin B complex deficiency right now. These are just a few slides which show some tongue slides of Vitamin B deficiency, and you can recognize it yourself.

This is a magenta colored tongue in a woman who has Vitamin B complex deficiency.

This is a tongue which is deep red and also magenta, and that goes with a certain type of nutritional anemia. This is very common. I see this type of tongue every day in my office. In fact, nine out of ten people who come to my office as patients show signs of B deficiency by looking at the tongue. And yet they say we are well nourished and there is practically no pellagra.

Well, this is pellagra, semi pellagra, or pellagra without pellagra, because it does not include the dermatitis which goes with full blown pellagra, plus the dementia which also occurs. But there is a typical red tongue and there is the notching, which shows edema of the tongue and is another sign of B deficiency.

He looks rather frightened, and many of these people are extremely nervous, who are low in Vitamin B complex, but there again, we have the red tongue, particularly at the tip, which goes with B complex deficiency.

Here we have what is called perleche. The angles of the corner of the mouth, as you can see, are moist and weeping and red. That is a definite sign of B deficiency. It can either be riboflavin deficiency or it can be pyridoxine deficiency. All of these are mixtures of various B complex factors. The one on the right shows fissures behind the ears. That is a certain type of eczema and fissure which you get with Vitamin B complex deficiency, which disappears when the diet has been corrected and supplements added.

This is pellagra. This is an example of the dermatitis of the hands and the exposed areas of the body, which goes with pellagra, along with the tongue as you see on the left.

We have a number of conditions which can affect the body. I might mention allergy, since it is the one with which I am best acquainted. Allergy is a stress and it may be defined as a reaction to a normal substance, which produces an abnormal reaction in allergic individuals, and it, in turn, is a stress. As an example, I had one woman who was sent to me because she had a completely blocked nose. It turned out to be an allergy to milk and once the milk was removed from her diet, her nose cleared up. At the same time she was getting about five cavities every four months. Without the milk, without the interference with enzyme systems which occurred from the milk reaction, without any vitamin supplements or extra calcium or phosphorus, she, at the end of four months, had three cavities, the next four months no cavities. I followed her three years. She had no more cavities during that time. That’s an example of how allergy can act as a stress which can interfere with body chemistry.

Now, coal tar dyes I have mentioned. Insecticides I could spend a lot of time on, but we are now exposed to a number, some of which are carcinogenic. We have shifted from the chlorinated hydrocarbons pretty much, or are shifting, they are long acting, to the organic phosphates, and now to the carbamates. Now the carbamates will produce cancer in animals, I think you will remember the amino triazole episode of the cranberries that were poisoned and they took them off the market. Well, we are now using something similar to that. We are also using carbamates. One is carbono, which is now being widely used. It is not supposed to last long. What happens is, it disappears in the animal body so that you can’t find it, or in the vegetable to which it is applied, but there is another chemical there, which may be very harmful and which may be cancer causing.

Now, we have radioactive fallout. We have other chemicals. I would just like to show a couple of slides on fluorides, if I may, since this is a very important subject in your state, and there is a great deal of misunderstanding about it. There is some misinterpretation of the Public Health statistics, I believe by the Public Health people themselves. I think it was an honest mistake, but I’ll let you judge in seeing these slides. The only trouble is that they are attempting to perpetuate it with our tax money by a national drive to fluoridate the whole country, and fluoride is one of the most potent enzyme poisons known.

These are from Newberg. Newberg was fluoridated and this shows, you will see that zigzag curve of decay after Newberg was fluoridated nine years. Now the horizontal straight line should be the amount of decay, according to the Public Health Service figures. In other words, there is supposed to be about 65% to 70% reduction for life in cavities, Now, you can see that that is going right up and up above at the top is a dot, Kingston, no fluoridation, and you will see that at age 11 they have about 84% decay, whereas Kingston at age 10 has about 70%, but the line is exactly the same. What happens is there is a delay of one to three years in decay in those cities which are fluoridated, but eventually at 20 or 30 everyone has the same amount.

Here is one that illustrates it more graphically. On the left, that thin line is before fluoridation. The number of filled teeth in Grand Rapids, and the ages are shown on the bottom line, and the average filled teeth per child on the left. In other words, it shows that gap between the solid line, which is curved and a bit jagged, is the delay in the detection of decay between fluoridated areas and those which are non-fluoridated.

Now here’s an example of how they figured out their 71%, which they said first. Now they say 60% to 70% for life reduction in decay. At the top we have the age and DFM is decayed, filled or missing before fluoridation, and those are the number of teeth which are decayed, filled or missing, 1, 8, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and the DFM after fluoridation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you will see before fluoridation that we have two years at age 6 and 7, where after fluoridation has been added there is no detectable tooth decay. So they say that’s 100% improvement. The next year there is no detectable tooth decay, so that’s 200% improvement. The next year tooth decay starts in those that have been fluoridated, and we find that that amounts to 66% reduction. The next year 50%, then 40%, 33%, 28%. In other words, you will see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. The teeth are decaying about one tooth per child per year, at the same rate, but with a delay of two years, according to this graph. Now, that’s the way they get their average, by dividing the sum of those reductions by 5, giving 71%. Now, this was shown to a group of highschool children, not mentioning fluorides, but mentioning a plant fertilizer, and out of 25 highschool subjects, only three flunked by not seeing the statistical area involved, which you see right here.

I think I will have to close on that note. This afternoon we will talk more about physical degeneration and what we can do about it. I was going to leave time for questions this morning, but I find, Dr. Stanger, I have been negligent. Thank you very much.