In a wild presidential election featuring dozens of criminal felony charges, fallacious claims about election fraud, and sexist invective, it's easy to forget a fundamental truth: The real impact of the election will be expressed through changes to federal law and policy.
I admittedly don't know all the science behind fluoride in our drinking water, but let me say I also don't trust a guy who, among other things, boasts about drinking raw milk to be a reliable steward for the well-being of an entire nation.
Joseph, I'm 78 years old. When I was very small my mother paid for me to have fluoride treatments on my teeth. I did not have a single cavity until I was a junior in high school, and, I still have all my teeth.
This really is madness. How long before RFK Jr. declares that on January 20, the Trump administration advises medical professionals to go back to using leeches to cure headaches?
It's not crankiness we need to be concerned about. A depraved, demented sociopath who threatens courageous adversaries like Liz Cheney with firing squad vs Harris Walz... #VoteBlue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB23KtHIPOI
To avoid the consequences of fools and cranks having more power in our country, let's focus on what will benefit us. Our nation has serious work to do to make sure that everyone have access to the truth. Then, to become more exacting, our educational system must make sure that our citizens know more about how our system of government works, and what the three branches of government exist to perform. Most people interviewed on the street do not have a clue.
Many people seem not to realize: We have the immoral Rupert Murdoch an Australian who became inordinately rich lying to Americans through his practice of journalism. We have Elon Musk, the richest man in the country, an apartheid South African benefiting from milking our economic tax system and finding ways to garner our government's financial backing...while he uses his Starlink to benefit Putin when Putin so demands. Running for President, we have a psychologically impaired, poorly educated but powerful manipulator determined to live without having to take responsibility for breaking many laws in our country famous for its Rule Of Law.
My intuition tells me that Harris and Walz will win. Let us focus on the multiplicity of Good that will become possible rather than the negative fantasies of how greed and insanity can bring about the collapse of all that truly does make America great.
Just horrifying. When I was on Facebook (been gone since 2016), I used to spend a lot of time jousting with the anti-science cranks. The antixax crowd is the worst.
Fluoride is effective topically for cavity prevention. It's a toxin when ingested. Even toothpaste comes with a warning not to swallow even small amounts of it.
The trouble with fluoridated water is it's not dose controlled. The more water you drink, the more you ingest. A small child drinking large quantities will have a larger exposure to the toxicity.
Since the effectiveness is through topical, not internally consumed applications, the risk of adverse effects with long term drinking water is high.
A lot of communities have discontinued fluoride water treatments for these reasons. I think this is sensible.
Until children start drinking as much water per day as adults, we can put this to rest. Levels of fluoride in treated water are designed to be in a safe range based on consumption..
All of the self-appointed non-credentialed cranks use scare tactics to make money. Fluoride scare revival from 70 some years ago is another one.
My experience with fluoride is anecdotal. My kids, raised on non fluoridated well water until college age, had one cavity between them growing up. They did, however, participate in a school program with our permission that had them do a supervised fluoride rinse once a week. They also had regular dental checkups and used fluoride toothpaste.
Topically, fluoride has shown to be of value in preventing cavities. But you don't swallow it.
I quit trying to convince our city to stop fluoridation. We just bought a filter that removed it and used that water for cooking and drinking.
I think it is not so sensible. The US does not have an issue with “toxicity” due to fluoride. As for dosage, a small child does not drink as much tap water as an adult and therefore the dose is smaller. That is considered in setting safe limits.
There are many things we are advised not to ingest. An adult would have to ingest about 8 tubes of toothpaste to get a dangerous dose. Drs advise parents to limit the amount of toothpaste a child uses & their access to the ‘tube.’
It would be much better for public health if self-proclaimed experts & consultants for personal injury cases (where JRK, Jr makes his biggest $$) focused on dangers of lead poisoning. Lead induces long term negative results, is not safe in any dose & is still too prevalent.
Lynn D. I question your unsupported claim that "Flouride is effective topically for cavity prevention." As a child in the early 1950s in Holland, Michigan, I participated in a large, controlled trial to test the effectiveness of flouride to prevent tooth decay. The result was that flouride did not prevent cavities. As a participant I subsequently developed cavities. As did the other participants. You are correct, flouride is toxic, even in small amounts. Your point about how "the effectiveness of flouride is through topical, not internally consumed applications" is a good warning.
We Americans have an old tendency to behave in a paranoid manner when it comes to controversial subjects in the public forum. The great historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a book about it in the 1960s. It was required reading when I was an undergraduate. That book should be brought back into fashion in our schools.
As an example of paranoia in the public forum; take the discussion of communism here in the U.S. Communism has never been treated as what it is, an eco-political alternative to capitalism. Instead it has been treated as though it were a disease of dangerous proportions, designed by evil people, followers of that devil Karl Marx, out to destroy human existence. It has been treated much the same way the catholic church treated atheism for centuries. People were discouraged by the church from even talking about atheism in the public forum. Just as the Catholic church tortured and put to death those who were non believers or even those who believed in the WRONG VERSION of Christianity; the establishment in the U.S. has ruined the lives of people who were communists or even suspected of being "fellow travelers." This paranoia caused competent professors in some of our best universities to loose their jobs. It also resulted in some of the most talented novelists and writers in the movie industry to have their careers ruined. McCarthyism was a terrible blot on us all.
Unfortunately, our public discussions of flourides in drinking water and vaccines for Covid and polio and smallpox have fallen victim to this paranoia. It is difficult to discuss the subject rationally in public. I must admit I am not a supporter of that fool RFK Junior. But I am not afraid to rationally consider his words.
It was never considered a good idea to put patients in charge of a mental asylum
Yet people espousing ideas which fly in the face of centuries or decades of tried and tested successful medical science are going to be the overlords of health care? Maybe we'll see the benefit of population reduction be advanced with reintroduction of more and more deadly pandemics. Just think, as Trump commented on seeing the Twin Towers burn down, how he could then buy real estate cheaply. What's next? Decimate the population through disease to lower the cost of housing? That kind of thinking is on the ballot.
As bad as it would be for us, the rest of the World will also be at risk. Trump has already embraced our enemies and alienated our allies. Trump will abandon NATO, let Putin take over Ukraine, encourage China to invade Taiwan and North Korea to invade South Korea. WW III will start his first day in office and the World will never recover.
Yes! Since he first became a candidate in June of 2015 it’s as if we became a part of the most badly written, often incomprehensible, chaotic and terrifying horror movie. He and his new republicans have managed to turn the US into nightmare that threatens with this very election (and potentially future elections, even if Harris wins this one) to be a nightmare we will not be able to awaken from.
As long as we let the disinformation industry destroy trust in our institutions, America has a larger problem than DJT. He's just the yellow head on the boil.
I agree. Disinformation and an education system that has systematically been eaten away at. Both have been/are working overtime to consume the future of the US and alter it into something our founding fathers had bravely toiled to see never befell our country..
I apologize, but can you imagine a Fucking Idiot like RFK Jr in charge of Health? It's a scenario a Tarantino movie wouldn't bother with. "I'm experiencing life at 55 WTF's per hour"!!
The overarching character of a Trump presidency was and would be undisciplined chaos where sycophants use their federal power to advance personal agendas extremist political goals and corrupt self enrichment. Trump has proven himself to be too lazy to know or care about even the broad strokes of how his administration is run, tossing about slogans, basking in daily servile adulation sessions with his cabinet and playing golf.
I would say it's a bit more like letting the weasels run the zoo. Weasels are excellent at sneaking around, concealing what they're really up to, and not getting caught. The effects of their actions are almost always malevolent for everyone else.
If fluoridated water were lowering IQ in youngsters, then reputable, factual, well-designed studies would show an observable pattern of higher IQ in rural kids who get their water from individual wells than in those in cities and towns where the water is fluoridated. There is no such pattern. (Such patterns are quite observable as can be seen in urban kids living in certain environments where consuming lead paint chips, playing on lead contaminated soils, or drinking water with high levels of lead from old plumbing has caused measurably lower IQs.)
The underlying issue of all of this is that, by the law of averages, 50% of the populace (in every region of the country) is below average intelligence. There's no shame in this, it's just reality. On top of this, many people are not as well educated as we might wish. For many folk, complex thought, and deeper understandings of cause and effect are simply beyond their capabilities.
Going back to snake oil peddlers, it has long been the case that there was a good deal of money to be made by those who would take advantage of folk who could not see through their bogus claims. Such peddlers have always fostered resentment on the part of their audience toward the very people who might have informed them of the dangers of whatever snake oil was being sold to them, labeling the people who actually were educated and informed as "elites," or some other pejorative, proclaiming that they, themselves, and their audience were smarter than the people who actually knew what they were talking about and were trying to protect that audience from the harms that would result from whatever the peddler was selling.
Our current media environment is just an expansion of those same forces: people seeking to make money taking advantage of people who are not among the brightest light bulbs in the pack, who now have a long history of constantly being taught that the people who are brighter, know what's going on, what the dangers are, and are trying to help them are really just trying to boss them around or take advantage of them; told this by charlatans who are actually doing exactly what they accuse the "elites" of doing, sometimes not even for money, but just for the narcissistic/psychopathic thrill of getting other people to listen to them and do what they tell them to do (as seems to be the case with Trump).
The old saying about "one bad apple spoiling the whole barrel" has generally been taken to indicate that one misguided kid could lead a lot of other kids astray, but in reality, it is these snake oil peddlers masquerading as politicians and religious leaders who are today's bad apples, and they are, indeed, being allowed to spoil massive numbers of barrels.
I can't help but believe that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is rolling over in his grave seeing what we are doing with his strong defenses of unlimited free speech. If we allow these "bad apples" to continue to operate unrestricted no matter how much they lie, cheat, and steal, they will end up "spoiling" all of our lives and every barrel.
Science deniers like RFK Jr. won't be happy until Iron Lung manufacturing companies are profitable enough to be added to the S & P 100.
LMAO!!!
I admittedly don't know all the science behind fluoride in our drinking water, but let me say I also don't trust a guy who, among other things, boasts about drinking raw milk to be a reliable steward for the well-being of an entire nation.
How about a guy who is a big proponent of eating road kill?
Joseph, I'm 78 years old. When I was very small my mother paid for me to have fluoride treatments on my teeth. I did not have a single cavity until I was a junior in high school, and, I still have all my teeth.
This really is madness. How long before RFK Jr. declares that on January 20, the Trump administration advises medical professionals to go back to using leeches to cure headaches?
And Locking up women during menstruation.
Sending women to the barn (garage) during their flow is acceptable.
It's not crankiness we need to be concerned about. A depraved, demented sociopath who threatens courageous adversaries like Liz Cheney with firing squad vs Harris Walz... #VoteBlue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB23KtHIPOI
To avoid the consequences of fools and cranks having more power in our country, let's focus on what will benefit us. Our nation has serious work to do to make sure that everyone have access to the truth. Then, to become more exacting, our educational system must make sure that our citizens know more about how our system of government works, and what the three branches of government exist to perform. Most people interviewed on the street do not have a clue.
Many people seem not to realize: We have the immoral Rupert Murdoch an Australian who became inordinately rich lying to Americans through his practice of journalism. We have Elon Musk, the richest man in the country, an apartheid South African benefiting from milking our economic tax system and finding ways to garner our government's financial backing...while he uses his Starlink to benefit Putin when Putin so demands. Running for President, we have a psychologically impaired, poorly educated but powerful manipulator determined to live without having to take responsibility for breaking many laws in our country famous for its Rule Of Law.
My intuition tells me that Harris and Walz will win. Let us focus on the multiplicity of Good that will become possible rather than the negative fantasies of how greed and insanity can bring about the collapse of all that truly does make America great.
our cultures rely on blame and punishment
most people are forbidden, not trained, to reason
most people can only act on impulse
Just horrifying. When I was on Facebook (been gone since 2016), I used to spend a lot of time jousting with the anti-science cranks. The antixax crowd is the worst.
Great reporting team!
I fled shrieking into the non-FB wilderness in 2014. Likely for similar reasons as yourself.
Popular Information's reporting helped me cut the FOMO ties to FB too.
Fluoride is effective topically for cavity prevention. It's a toxin when ingested. Even toothpaste comes with a warning not to swallow even small amounts of it.
The trouble with fluoridated water is it's not dose controlled. The more water you drink, the more you ingest. A small child drinking large quantities will have a larger exposure to the toxicity.
Since the effectiveness is through topical, not internally consumed applications, the risk of adverse effects with long term drinking water is high.
A lot of communities have discontinued fluoride water treatments for these reasons. I think this is sensible.
That's a good argument for better regulation of the fluoride dose, not an argument to stop using fluoride altogether.
Until children start drinking as much water per day as adults, we can put this to rest. Levels of fluoride in treated water are designed to be in a safe range based on consumption..
All of the self-appointed non-credentialed cranks use scare tactics to make money. Fluoride scare revival from 70 some years ago is another one.
I agree. And dose is impossible to control.
My experience with fluoride is anecdotal. My kids, raised on non fluoridated well water until college age, had one cavity between them growing up. They did, however, participate in a school program with our permission that had them do a supervised fluoride rinse once a week. They also had regular dental checkups and used fluoride toothpaste.
Topically, fluoride has shown to be of value in preventing cavities. But you don't swallow it.
I quit trying to convince our city to stop fluoridation. We just bought a filter that removed it and used that water for cooking and drinking.
Ingested fluoride through drinking water is also beneficial. Especially for children's developing teeth and bones. Here is a source of information: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Fluoride-HealthProfessional/
https://fluoridealert.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/PDF2-TSCA-Victory-press-release-1.pdf
I think it is not so sensible. The US does not have an issue with “toxicity” due to fluoride. As for dosage, a small child does not drink as much tap water as an adult and therefore the dose is smaller. That is considered in setting safe limits.
There are many things we are advised not to ingest. An adult would have to ingest about 8 tubes of toothpaste to get a dangerous dose. Drs advise parents to limit the amount of toothpaste a child uses & their access to the ‘tube.’
It would be much better for public health if self-proclaimed experts & consultants for personal injury cases (where JRK, Jr makes his biggest $$) focused on dangers of lead poisoning. Lead induces long term negative results, is not safe in any dose & is still too prevalent.
https://fluoridealert.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/PDF2-TSCA-Victory-press-release-1.pdf
Lynn D. I question your unsupported claim that "Flouride is effective topically for cavity prevention." As a child in the early 1950s in Holland, Michigan, I participated in a large, controlled trial to test the effectiveness of flouride to prevent tooth decay. The result was that flouride did not prevent cavities. As a participant I subsequently developed cavities. As did the other participants. You are correct, flouride is toxic, even in small amounts. Your point about how "the effectiveness of flouride is through topical, not internally consumed applications" is a good warning.
We Americans have an old tendency to behave in a paranoid manner when it comes to controversial subjects in the public forum. The great historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a book about it in the 1960s. It was required reading when I was an undergraduate. That book should be brought back into fashion in our schools.
As an example of paranoia in the public forum; take the discussion of communism here in the U.S. Communism has never been treated as what it is, an eco-political alternative to capitalism. Instead it has been treated as though it were a disease of dangerous proportions, designed by evil people, followers of that devil Karl Marx, out to destroy human existence. It has been treated much the same way the catholic church treated atheism for centuries. People were discouraged by the church from even talking about atheism in the public forum. Just as the Catholic church tortured and put to death those who were non believers or even those who believed in the WRONG VERSION of Christianity; the establishment in the U.S. has ruined the lives of people who were communists or even suspected of being "fellow travelers." This paranoia caused competent professors in some of our best universities to loose their jobs. It also resulted in some of the most talented novelists and writers in the movie industry to have their careers ruined. McCarthyism was a terrible blot on us all.
Unfortunately, our public discussions of flourides in drinking water and vaccines for Covid and polio and smallpox have fallen victim to this paranoia. It is difficult to discuss the subject rationally in public. I must admit I am not a supporter of that fool RFK Junior. But I am not afraid to rationally consider his words.
Thanks for the refresher, Lynn, I remember that from decades ago!
Exactly how much water would a 30 lb child need to drink for it to be hazardous?
It was never considered a good idea to put patients in charge of a mental asylum
Yet people espousing ideas which fly in the face of centuries or decades of tried and tested successful medical science are going to be the overlords of health care? Maybe we'll see the benefit of population reduction be advanced with reintroduction of more and more deadly pandemics. Just think, as Trump commented on seeing the Twin Towers burn down, how he could then buy real estate cheaply. What's next? Decimate the population through disease to lower the cost of housing? That kind of thinking is on the ballot.
As bad as it would be for us, the rest of the World will also be at risk. Trump has already embraced our enemies and alienated our allies. Trump will abandon NATO, let Putin take over Ukraine, encourage China to invade Taiwan and North Korea to invade South Korea. WW III will start his first day in office and the World will never recover.
I can't wait for this election to be over. And I genuinely hope we are still a country in 4 years...
Yes! Since he first became a candidate in June of 2015 it’s as if we became a part of the most badly written, often incomprehensible, chaotic and terrifying horror movie. He and his new republicans have managed to turn the US into nightmare that threatens with this very election (and potentially future elections, even if Harris wins this one) to be a nightmare we will not be able to awaken from.
As long as we let the disinformation industry destroy trust in our institutions, America has a larger problem than DJT. He's just the yellow head on the boil.
I agree. Disinformation and an education system that has systematically been eaten away at. Both have been/are working overtime to consume the future of the US and alter it into something our founding fathers had bravely toiled to see never befell our country..
it has been so ever since the thugs took ownership from the tribe, entrenched addiction
I apologize, but can you imagine a Fucking Idiot like RFK Jr in charge of Health? It's a scenario a Tarantino movie wouldn't bother with. "I'm experiencing life at 55 WTF's per hour"!!
The overarching character of a Trump presidency was and would be undisciplined chaos where sycophants use their federal power to advance personal agendas extremist political goals and corrupt self enrichment. Trump has proven himself to be too lazy to know or care about even the broad strokes of how his administration is run, tossing about slogans, basking in daily servile adulation sessions with his cabinet and playing golf.
so isn't it about time we got serious about rearing good children?
Yes. If we compare the number of hours a child in England spends in school, compared to a child in the United States, we are far behind.
Trump to let RFK Jr. 'go wild on health'.
We mapped the number of COVID deaths per county under Trump. Vote to prevent RFK Jr. of breaking Trump's death count record.
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/10/31/trump-rfk-jr-health-policy-map-covid-deaths/
Was "Idiocracy" just a movie or was it a pre-documentary? If you don't want to find out (and believe me you don't) you know what to do.
Vote BLUE!!!
Night after night Trump ads lie about how he will help Senior Citizens with their Medicare, etc.
Good article. Letting the clowns run the Circus is not a good idea.
I would say it's a bit more like letting the weasels run the zoo. Weasels are excellent at sneaking around, concealing what they're really up to, and not getting caught. The effects of their actions are almost always malevolent for everyone else.
If fluoridated water were lowering IQ in youngsters, then reputable, factual, well-designed studies would show an observable pattern of higher IQ in rural kids who get their water from individual wells than in those in cities and towns where the water is fluoridated. There is no such pattern. (Such patterns are quite observable as can be seen in urban kids living in certain environments where consuming lead paint chips, playing on lead contaminated soils, or drinking water with high levels of lead from old plumbing has caused measurably lower IQs.)
The underlying issue of all of this is that, by the law of averages, 50% of the populace (in every region of the country) is below average intelligence. There's no shame in this, it's just reality. On top of this, many people are not as well educated as we might wish. For many folk, complex thought, and deeper understandings of cause and effect are simply beyond their capabilities.
Going back to snake oil peddlers, it has long been the case that there was a good deal of money to be made by those who would take advantage of folk who could not see through their bogus claims. Such peddlers have always fostered resentment on the part of their audience toward the very people who might have informed them of the dangers of whatever snake oil was being sold to them, labeling the people who actually were educated and informed as "elites," or some other pejorative, proclaiming that they, themselves, and their audience were smarter than the people who actually knew what they were talking about and were trying to protect that audience from the harms that would result from whatever the peddler was selling.
Our current media environment is just an expansion of those same forces: people seeking to make money taking advantage of people who are not among the brightest light bulbs in the pack, who now have a long history of constantly being taught that the people who are brighter, know what's going on, what the dangers are, and are trying to help them are really just trying to boss them around or take advantage of them; told this by charlatans who are actually doing exactly what they accuse the "elites" of doing, sometimes not even for money, but just for the narcissistic/psychopathic thrill of getting other people to listen to them and do what they tell them to do (as seems to be the case with Trump).
The old saying about "one bad apple spoiling the whole barrel" has generally been taken to indicate that one misguided kid could lead a lot of other kids astray, but in reality, it is these snake oil peddlers masquerading as politicians and religious leaders who are today's bad apples, and they are, indeed, being allowed to spoil massive numbers of barrels.
I can't help but believe that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is rolling over in his grave seeing what we are doing with his strong defenses of unlimited free speech. If we allow these "bad apples" to continue to operate unrestricted no matter how much they lie, cheat, and steal, they will end up "spoiling" all of our lives and every barrel.