Doug Henwood wrote:
>I just tried the web link and heard that quack Gary Null talking...
Max Sawicky responded:
>The guy who says the Birchers were right about fluoridation all along?
From the S.F. Chronicle: White Teeth Or Red Scare? Santa Cruz anti-fluoride vote reminiscent of anti-Communists Marshall Wilson, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, March 6, 1999 ©1999 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/03/06/MN57915.DTL
``I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.''
-- General Jack D. Ripper talking about fluoridated water in ``Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb''
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Fluoridated water, once seen as a Communist conspiracy to ruin America, is now a no-no in what many view as the closest thing America has to a lefty, pinko enclave: Santa Cruz.
Voters in the coastal community, a self-declared nuclear-free zone where it's illegal to discriminate against fat people, narrowly sided this week with the anti-fluoride camp -- a group once composed of die-hard anti-Communists. The vote aims to stave off a state law that mandates adding fluoride to the city's water.
The no-fluoride stance puts Santa Cruz, where just one in seven voters are Republicans, solidly in sync with San Diego, hardly a bastion of barefoot tree-huggers and vegans.
Although the vote was tight, 4,441 to 4,367, Santa Cruz sent a message that locals should decide what passes their lips, not politicians in Sacramento, Councilman Mike Rotkin said. He attributed the anti- fluoride movement to a general distrust of taking at face value what so-called health experts say.
``It's the difference between believing nuclear power is entirely safe because experts told us so and my experience,'' said Rotkin, who said he has spent hundreds of hours researching the fluoride issue.
``For those of us who came of age in the '60s, we have more questions,'' he added. ``I think more and more people from my generation feel there are reasons to question experts.'' ...
Fluoride opponents suspect that the additive causes severe medical problems that include bone decay, cancer, brain damage, a low IQ in children and fluorosis, a condition that causes blotches on the teeth from too much fluoride. They say people get plenty of fluoride from toothpaste, orange juice, sodas and elsewhere.
``You haven't got the faintest idea how much water I drink. I don't have the faintest idea how much water you drink,'' said Jeff Green of Citizens for Safe Drinking Water. ``You can't control the dosage.''
Health officials first added fluoride to public water in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Mich., in an attempt to prevent tooth decay. About 60 percent of the nation's drinking water is fluoridated.
But in California, just 17 percent of the cities with public water supplies add fluoride, for a total of 5 million people, according to the California Dental Association. The state ranks 47th in the nation.
That's just fine with opponents. Rotkin, the councilman, said the medical evidence failed to convince him fluoride is safe, especially for small children.
``If my parents knew I was taking some stance against fluoride in water they would laugh,'' he said, adding that when he was young, right- wingers held to the Strangelove line, thinking that fluoride was ``a conspiracy to sap the precious bodily fluids of America.''
I know Mike Rotkin pretty well, he was a leader in the local of the pre-merger with D.S.A., New American Movement. I was one of many budding student radicals at U.C.S.C. active in the chapter and learned my Gramsci from Rotkin, plus he can
do a pretty good rendition of Bob Dylan too. I did wonder a bit about his endorsing Gary Hart in '84, but, that's another matter. I haven't talked to Mike Rotkin, or visited Santa Cruz in years but if any lbo'ers (like occasional poster Jim O'Connor, a big reason for me going to Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp) are in touch with him maybe they can get him to write up his conclusions.
Have never heard Gary Null but have seen some provocative stuff on water fluoridation in Covert Action Quarterly(?) and the New Ageish/Conspiracy Theory
minded magazine Nexus. That the Atomic Energy Commission was involved in this makes me wonder...
Michael Pugliese
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