We have well water here at Chez Cabin, so, ergo and also, we do not have fluoridation. This small missing detail probably contributed to my $800 bill for dental work over the last two months. On January 25th, 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first municipality to adjust the fluoride-level (pdf) in their water supply to optimize it for dental health. The next day, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. Nine days after that, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met up at Yalta. Nine days after that, Dresden was destroyed while Kurt Vonnegut cowered in a slaughterhouse meat locker.
Now, for all I know, water fluoridation causes impotence in fat, white American Christians who attend church more than once a week. It could be. What I am sure about is that fluoride-fortified water caused a certain element in our society to go insane.
Conspiracy theories involving fluoridation are common, and include claims that fluoridation was motivated by protecting the U.S. atomic bomb program from litigation, that (as famously parodied in the film Dr. Strangelove) it is part of a Communist or New World Order plot to take over the world, that it was pioneered by a German chemical company to make people submissive to those in power, that behind the scenes it is promoted by the sugary food or phosphate fertilizer or aluminum industries, or that it is a smokescreen to cover failure to provide dental care to the poor.
One such theory is that fluoridation was a public-relations ruse sponsored by fluoride polluters such as the aluminum maker Alcoa and the Manhattan Project, with conspirators that included industrialist Andrew Mellon and the Mellon Institute’s researcher Gerald J. Cox, the Kettering Laboratory of the University of Cincinnati, the Federal Security Agency’s administrator Oscar R. Ewing, and public-relations strategist Edward Bernays. Specific antifluoridation arguments change to match the spirit of the time.
I don’t see much anti-fluoridation rhetoric these days. Maybe Dr. Strangelove was too successful in making the movement ridiculous (Peace on Earth, Purity of Essence).
It occurs to me that Sharia Law is now serving the same purpose.
Just replace a few words and it still works.
Ripper: Mandrake?
Mandrake: Yes, Jack?
Ripper: Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, I can’t say I have.
Ripper: Vodka, that’s what they drink, isn’t it? Never water?
Mandrake: Well, I-I believe that’s what they drink, Jack, yes.
Ripper: On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.
Mandrake: Oh, eh, yes. I, uhm, can’t quite see what you’re getting at, Jack.
Ripper: Water, that’s what I’m getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this earth’s surface is water. Why, do you realize that seventy percent of you is water?
Mandrake: Uh, uh, Good Lord!
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes. (he begins to chuckle nervously)
Ripper: Are you beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes. (more laughter)
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation. Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Uh? Yes, I-I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Yes.
Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No, no I don’t know what it is, no.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?
Yes, that seems preposterous, but that doesn’t mean that millions did not believe something similar about fluoridation at one time. And, frankly, it’s a lot more rational to wonder if fluoridating water might have some unintended consequences than it is to pass laws protecting us from the implementation of Sharia law as was recently done in Oklahoma.
