Scientific studies have linked fluoridation of the water supply to lowered IQs, increased risk of cancer, and bone disease, amongst other conditions. So why do we still fluoridate? As researchers like Anthony Gucciardi warn, fluoridation may in fact only be the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to forced medication of the population. This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.

As the scientific evidence of the dangers of water fluoridation continues to mount, there is no longer any room for doubt: those who deny that adding hydrofluorosilicic acid to the water supply is in fact causing untold medical harm are simply ignorant of the scientific data on the subject. From peer-reviewed studies in prestigious journals to the experimental evidence compiled by some of the best-regarded scientists in the field, there can no longer be any doubt that water fluoridation is lowering IQ and stunting the development of children’s brains, interfering with thyroid function, contributing to rising incidents of skeletal fluorosis, and exacerbating conditions like oesteoperosis and cardiovascular disease. [See this and this and this and this and this.]

On a positive note, community after community around the globe is bringing this issue to a head by forcing referenda or plebiscites on the practice of water fluoridation. And, little by little, concerned citizen activists are working to get the fluoride removed from the water supply in an increasing number of towns and cities.

While it is heartening to see more and more activists taking up the fight to get this toxic chemical removed from their local water supply, this work is of necessity piecemeal and subject to setbacks. Even as some communities work to remove the fluoride, others, like Portland, Oregon – the largest urban centre in the US currently without a fluoridation program – are preparing to vote on whether to add it to their supply.

It may be tempting to say that this democratic process is fair but frustrating. After all, we often hear, the will of the people must be respected. This viewpoint, however, is not only wrong, it is dangerously wrong. The real issue behind the practice of water fluoridation is not merely that the hydrofluorosilicic acid that is misleadingly called “sodium fluoride” is a toxic brew of industrial waste products that is causing untold medical harm. It is that this creates the precedent for the forced drugging of our society.

As long as the fluoride myth is not confronted head on for what it actually is, the Center for Disease Control and like-minded institutions will continue to promote it as one of the 10 Greatest Public Health Achievements of the 20th Century, as they do. This, in effect, serves to paper over the fact that what is being advocated is the forced medication of an entire population, without regard to the unwitting patient’s age, size, sex, race, background or medical history, and without giving that patient a method for opting out of the program. Every day millions of people in different parts of the globe drink, shower in, bathe in, and otherwise absorb and ingest this un-prescribed medicine, almost without exception without the informed consent of those individuals.

Earlier this week I talked to author and researcher Anthony Gucciardi of NaturalSociety.com about this aspect of the fluoridation program, and why it is so significant.

Indeed, exactly as Gucciardi notes, the idea of using the fluoridation program as an explicit justification for adding further medications to the drinking water is already being introduced to the public. [See this and this and this.]

It does not take a professional bioethicist to understand how such an idea, even if implemented by the best-intentioned doctors for the best-intentioned reasons adhering to the best practices conceivable via modern medicine could still be a fundamental violation of human rights and, in fact, a crime against humanity no less egregioius than the human experimentation in the Nazi death camps that the civilized world has long since shunned.

Fluoridation, in short, is a medically and scientifically bankrupt practice that has long since been discredited as a means of preventing tooth decay. Its political utility for those who wish to use this precedent of the forced drugging of an entire population, however, means it is not a practice that will be abandoned easily by the CDC, EPA, FDA and the entire pharmaceutical-industrial complex that is increasingly eager to start adding other drugs to the water supply.

It is incumbent on activists everywhere, then, to lend their efforts to eradicating the water fluoridation program in their own area and assisting others in ridding it from theirs. Only then can this practice be exposed for the crime against humanity that it is, and all such ideas of drugging the water supply can be properly consigned to the dustbin of history.

About Global Research
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) is based in Montreal, Canada, and is a registered non-profit organization. The CRG is a fully independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists, filmmakers and activists. It publishes a webpage at www.globalresearch.ca containing news articles, commentary, background research and analysis on a broad range of issues, focussing on social, economic, strategic and environmental processes.