- cross-posted to:
- health@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- health@lemmy.world
The new research is the first to measure community water fluoridation exposure during childhood and any potential impact on cognition up to age 80.
The paper is here
The new research is the first to measure community water fluoridation exposure during childhood and any potential impact on cognition up to age 80.
The paper is here
When crunchy lefties were first spouting off about this, they at least had an explanation. It was a nonsense explanation rooted in woo-woo pseudoscience and mysticism, but it was at least an explanation. Also, most people were inoculated against that kind of bullshit, we knew they were slightly crazy and wrong, and it was a view that was relatively harmless and allowed to exist. Most places it was “go ahead, you do you - drink your fluoride-free water and let your teeth rot, but you have to source your water yourself - this municipality fluoridates for the public good, it’s backed by science and dental experts, etc.”
These new crazy people, most of them don’t even have an explanation. (some of them are actually the same people, just moved down the alt-right pipeline after a couple decades of propaganda). If you were to ask them why they think fluoride is bad you could get responses ranging from blank stares to actual physical attacks. Transmission of conspiracy theories is so supercharged in this environment - all you have to do is jump on a bandwagon, and your buddies in the same club as you will give you the approval you desperately need just for wearing that opinion on your sleeve - no critical thought required, just base monkey instinct. This is such an irresistible way of belonging to some group and getting that special feeling that it’s becoming a real problem for most of us.
A small minority of these folks are (small L) libertarians or anti-authoritarians who believe in bodily sovereignty. That’s a rational thought process that I can actually sympathize with, so they get a minimum amount of points for having a comprehensible, defensible position. They just shouldn’t be able to force their choice on everyone else. (That would seem to contradict their own philosophy anyway). The public good of fluoridation, backed by science and experts, should vastly outweigh even that position. As before with the crunchy hippies, fine, it’s your right to choose what goes into your body - along with that comes the responsibility to take care of that for yourself, in line with your own stated ideals.
FWIW, the anti-fluoride thing started off when the John Birch Society, a right-wing hate group, started pushing it decades ago.
This is very much incorrect, it was started off by environmental activists in the 1950s as a push back to dumping aluminum mining waste into drinking water while charging the tax payer for the right to do so
Not to any meaningful degree in the US. It was the John Birch Society and KKK here.
This is objectively false history as neither were particularly popular in Wisconsin in the 1950s.
They both certainly existed, though the latter was somewhat underground in the 1950s.
It’s easy to find documentation of their positions on fluoridation; it’s not so common to find evidence of environmental groups opposing it when there was a clear public health benefit.
They existed, in the US south, underground and still using fronts like the Daughters of the confederacy.
What was lefty uber-liberal hippieism got co-opted during covid by right wingers and fascist science deniers.
they are all the same people.
they just have different origin stories for their crazy beliefs.
I am recovering from being raised by ultra crunchy parents. I had no vaccinations until I was already an adult. I have a unique vantage point into both sides of this issue and the thing of it is that yes maybe they are dumb, but the fear comes from a very real, even logical, place. Anything pushed on you by the American government should give anyone pause, because when was the last time the government spent gobs of money in the name of public health? Massive infrastructure spending in order to keep Americans from spending less on healthcare and increase their quality of life? Yeah that does not sound real. Why would the same government that has been dismantling public education and food/medication regulation spend a single red cent to make Americans’ teeth better? It makes no logical sense, so it is easy to see why generations of Americans that have been screwed over by their government at every turn would be skeptical of anything put in the water supply “for their benefit.” This is about a loss of trust in lawmakers, and all they’ve done to perpetuate it.
As an aside, though, I have watched a ton of people traverse the crunchy leftist to MAGA pipeline and it still bewilders me. “I don’t trust the government, but I trust the sleezy car salesman I have vehemently loathed for decades.” I can only blame lead poisoning for that one.
It’s a base human drive, that is far more powerful than critical thought. The only reason we sort of got around this was we had built institutions and had collective identities… and a lot of that is crumbling away the past few decades.
So people are reverting to forming their own little tribes around some niche set of beliefs to make them feel empowered. As most of them no longer feel apart of their larger tribe.
Anecdotally, I left a volunteer org I’d been a part of for ten years because this brainrot had taken it over. The new members wanted our org to some super special club for cool people only, instead of being just open to anyone and my emphasis on it being open and accessible made me persona non grata. BECAUSE HOW COULD I NOT WANT TO FEEL SPECIAL AND SUPERIOR. oh, and they also started saying they should be paid for volunteer work… because felt they ‘deserved’ all that money we were getting from donations from the public…