The BSC working group found that they had in fact misinterpreted the IQ statistic. In correcting the error, they also move the draft report toward its much anticipated final publication.

The lawsuit was put on hold for over two years awaiting the release and finalization of the report and internal CDC emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by plaintiff attorney Micheal Connett showed government officials, specifically Assistant HHS health secretary Rachel Levine and the NIH director Lawrence A. Tabak interfered with its release.

The plaintiffs had hoped that the report would be final and published before the second phase of their trial on January 29, 2024, and it looks like it now may be.

At its May 4, 2023, public meeting, the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC) voted unanimously to accept the BSC Working Group’s systematic review of the report with the exception of an error in the BSG working group’s assessment notes.

In their review of the report, the BSC working group [ PDF ] incorrectly thought that the -0.46 was the mean difference in IQ points, not the standardized mean difference which would equate to a decrease of about 7 IQ points or half the standard deviation.

The BSC working group noted in their slides that “This makes the example in the discussion section of the draft meta-analysis manuscript that presents a 5-point decrease in a population’s IQ correct.”   

NTP director Richard Woychik, PH.D. is now ultimately responsible for deciding on the final publication. He said in his closing remarks that he will be working with the members of the working group and the NTP authors to make the revisions and try to get the report to publication as quickly as possible, hopefully in the next several weeks.

Woychik mentioned that he would also be consulting with their partner organizations, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the finalization process.

Key Findings Of The NTP Report

The NTP’s 6-year Systematic Review has undergone an unprecedented peer-review process with five separate review processes done since 2019. The review consists of a monograph and a meta-analysis. A monograph is a specialized piece of in-depth scientific writing on a focused area.

The meta-analysis reported that 52 of 55 studies consistently found that people had lower IQ when exposed to higher levels of fluoride.

Dr. Jack Kall, Executive Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT), who also testified at the May 4th meeting, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview, that there were three key notable findings in the report:

1. No safe exposure threshold was found for fluoride’s effect on IQ.
2. Human epidemiological evidence supports a conclusion of “moderate confidence” that fluoride is a developmental neurotoxin. 
3. Fluoride exposures experienced by pregnant women and children in the U.S. today are within the range where human studies have found reduced IQ.

Kall stressed that because of the findings of the report, a precautionary approach is necessary.

He noted that because the number of fluoride sources and the rates of fluoride intake has substantially increased since water fluoridation began in the 1940s, “it has become a necessity to reduce and work toward eliminating avoidable sources of fluoride exposure, including water fluoridation, fluoride containing dental materials, and other fluoridated products.”

In terms of the significant delays the NTP report has undergone, Kall says that “we have seen the same delays play out before with mercury amalgam fillings that we are seeing with fluoride where it seems someone either outside or inside of government with influence is preventing restrictions from occurring.”

Correction: This article was corrected from an earlier version that described the drop in IQ represented in the research as a percentage, when it fact, the change was in IQ points.