% of U.S. residents are served by fluoridated water. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to become secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, considers fluoridation unsafe and aims to stop it. Kennedy has his eccentricities but that doesn’t make him wrong on fluoridation. Indeed, increasingly he seems to be right.
Fluoride, a mineral, began being added to public water supplies decades ago when it was found to prevent tooth decay in children. Back then the opposition to fluoridation was ridiculed because some people called fluoridation a communist plot to wreck the country’s health, as if the country wasn’t already doing a pretty good job of that with cigarettes and liquor. But now there is evidence that fluoride in drinking water harms children’s brain development, contributes to attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and causes cognitive impairment and skeletal weakening in older people.
This year the National Institutes of Health linked higher exposure to fluoride with reduced intelligence in children, and a federal court ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider fluoridation. In 2015 the federal government ordered a reduction of fluoride levels in public water supplies, so the issue is legitimate and properly a matter of medical and political judgment.
How much dental cavities are reduced by fluoridation is also disputed among experts. With fluoride now being added to toothpaste and mouthwashes, many developed countries that don’t fluoridate their water have shown declines in tooth decay similar to the declines in countries with fluoridation. Alternative access to fluoride diminishes the need for it in drinking water.
But another argument against fluoridation is more compelling. It is that fluoridation constitutes essentially a mass drugging of the population by the government, a serious violation of individual rights to achieve a marginal social benefit. If, as it seems, the dental benefits of fluoridation, such as they are, can be achieved without fluoridating everyone’s water, then fluoridation should stop.
After all, unlike childhood vaccines, about which Secretary-designate Kennedy is also critical, fluoridation doesn’t prevent communicable or life-altering diseases.
f under the Trump administration the federal government comes down against fluoridation, the states will follow, since some, like Connecticut, have laws requiring them to heed federal guidance on the issue and others will fear liability for disregarding federal policy. The federal government’s questionable and sometimes mistaken and contradictory policies on the COVID-19 epidemic suggest its medical policies should be questioned and criticized as vigorously as its policies that give the country stupid imperial wars and massive illegal immigration.
Connecticut’s ever-troubled cities always deserve criticism as well, along with state government for ensuring they stay troubled. But the criticism New Haven and Bridgeport got the other day from the financial services internet site WalletHub was stupid.
A survey by WalletHub ranked 182 U.S. cities for how much fun they provide, and New Haven came in 154th and Bridgeport 175th. Las Vegas came in first.
Asked about the study, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker dutifully disputed it, detailing the city’s attractions, though he had just had to deal with three more murders of young men. But responding as he did, the mayor dignified the survey when, under the circumstances, he might as well have told inquiring journalists where they could put it.
Perhaps more wisely, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim had nothing to say about the survey. But Ganim or other mayors of low-ranking cities could have replied that providing fun to visitors is not city government’s objective. Their proper objective is to provide safe and livable conditions to a largely impoverished population. If New Haven and Bridgeport ever were safe and livable for their residents, they would be triumphs even if no one ever visited them.
The advertising slogan for Las Vegas used to be, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” invoking not just gambling but also casual sex, various forms of exploitation, recklessness, empty transiency, and other things one might be ashamed of later. To many people New Haven and Bridgeport look better than that even now.
Original article online at: https://www.ctinsider.com/journalinquirer/article/powell-rfk-ct-fluoride-20005525.php