Column: Trump’s anti-science backers go after water fluoridation, a historic healthcare success

Regular visits to the dentist to fill cavities used to be a shared ordeal for millions of American children and adults. “On January 20,” Kennedy tweeted a few days before the election, “the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” ‘Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face.’ — The unhinged Gen. Jack D. Ripper in the 1964 film ‘Dr. Strangelove’ The reason, he asserted, is that “fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” That’s all flatly untrue or grossly misleading. The National Research Council’s 2006 analysis of government fluoride standards identified “no indications” in the existing scientific literature implying “that fluoride had a causal relationship with. typically associated with drinking-water fluoridation.” Among other changes in the final monograph published this summer, the program removed references to a “neurodevelopmental hazard to humans.” Critics also pointed out the inherent problems with treating IQ as an all-purpose measure of intelligence, since it’s well-known that IQ can be affected by “socioeconomic, physical, familial, cultural, genetic, nutritional, and environmental factors,” the American Academy of Pediatrics observes.