Fluoridation Fight

While children in Massachusetts suffer from six times more tooth decay than children in Vietnam, the battle over fluoridation rages on.

Hearings were held Tuesday on legislation before the Massachusetts House that will make it easier for communities to fluoridate their water systems.

According to a 1958 Massachusetts law, any town that wishes to fluoridate must present the issue in a public referendum. A petition signed by 12 per cent of a town's registered voters is required to place the referendum on the ballot. Scare statements from spurious medical "authorities" have in the past defeated many fluoridation referenda in Massachusetts.

Fluoridation is the only state public health measure outside the jurisdiction of professionals. The legislation pending before the House would give local health officials the authority to fluoridate.

The bill's opponents make strange bedfellows, but all repeat one line: fluoridation is mass medication and deprives individuals of the liberty to select their own health care.

The secretary of the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association, the organization that introduced the 1958 referendum law, elaborated on their opposition: "Fluoride is, we claim, a poison when it accumulates in the body."

Dr. Myron Allukian, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and a member of the Governor's special study commission on fluoridation, said of the secretary's statement, "The fact is that water in its natural state already contains fluoride and in some locales more than artificially fluoridated water."

Anti-fluoridation groups don't deny that fluoride decreases tooth decay. They can't; a study of six fluoridated communities by the Massachusetts Division of Dental Health snowed an average reduction of decay of 62 per cent and in some cases as much as 80 per cent. What they do claim, however, is that the long-range effects have not been properly studied. But in the 20 years since water was first fluoridated there has been no conclusive evidence of any ill effects.

The issue has also attracted crackpots who cite unknown medical authorities condemning fluoridation. The Boston Herald recently received a letter signed "Aqua" which read: "Fluoride taken even in minute quantities is highly poisonous and destructive to the body. According to the world famous Professor Otto Warburg, any interference with cell oxidation starts an abnormal process of fermentation which changes the normal cells into cancer cells. . ."

Occasionally the far Right comments. One Birch Society member declared that fluoridation was "a prot to sterilize the population," and another explained that by accustoming the people to mass medication, the government could demand that everyone report for vaccinations on the eve of a Communist invasion and then inject deadly air bubbles into the veins of all American patriots.

When asked to comment on these claims, Robert M. Welch, founder of the Society, said, "I have never run into any members who say that." Welch emphasized that the Society has never made fluoridation "a major project" but opposes it on legal grounds.

Although Welch said fluoridation was to small an issue to occupy his time, in 1960 he issued a directive entitled "How to Defeat Fluoridation in Your City." The statement reads in part: ". . .if the Communists have been able to beguile a sufficiently large enough . . . . clique into supporting fluoridation, the above formula [a pamphlet and letter-writing campaign] alone, may not stop them. But following it conscientiously will do the job in many places."

Amidst this furor from the Right, there is one moderate group that has consistently opposed fluoridation: the Christian Science Church. The Church houses no pseudo-experts. Opposition is based entirely on the legal aspects of "mass medication."

The Church's official position is that the "government should not have the power to compel any citizen to submit to unnecessary treatment which violates. . .his day-by-day control and responsibility for the care of his body."

David P. Whelan of the Church's committee on publications added that fluoridation is a "dangerous precedent, for it opens the door to the possibility that other chemicals could be