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This weekend, the Washington Post ran a biting but very encouraging story headlined, “Trump will push to get fluoride out of drinking water, RFK Jr. says.” That much was true, RFK did say that:
It might have been the fairest WaPo story I’ve ever seen. Meaning, fair for the WaPo. I expected an all-out effort to paint Trump and RFK as tinfoil-underpants-wearing conspiracy theorists. Shockingly, it only slyly hinted in that direction. Something held it back. Maybe the emerging truth.
Granted, the article was packed with pro-fluoride propaganda, including a tender recitation of fluoride’s halcyon American history (the waste chemical was first salted into Michigan’s water supply in 1945). But surprisingly, it also included two short segments questioning the fluoride narrative. Here’s the first one:
Some researchers have raised concerns about fluoride's effects, such as
whether the mineral has a harmful effect on developing brains. A study
led by researchers at the University of Southern California and
published in JAMA Network Open in May suggested that fluoride
exposure during pregnancy was linked to an increased risk of childhood
neurobehavioral problems.
"[M]ore studies are urgently needed to understand and mitigate the
impacts in the 99 entire U.S. population," Tracy Bastain, a USC associate
professor and author of the study, said in a statement in May. Bastain
did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Kennedy's
comments.
Maybe the WaPo was forced by circumstances to take a more neutral tone. But take a moment to reflect on how far and how quickly we’ve come.
Four years ago, a political candidate who even asked questions about fluoride would have crashed and burned faster than a billion-dollar F-35 fighter jet. Four years ago, the WaPo wouldn’t have even bothered treating this story like a real news issue. Instead, it would have run a tongue-in-cheek story about the history of conspiracy theories, starting with the Germanic Tribes blaming malodorous vapors and vile effusions for the bubonic plague.
The WaPo hasn’t changed—the public’s perception has. The WaPo is still at it. Another WaPo story this weekend leaned harder into the conspiracy angle, featuring the alarming headline “GOP’s closing election message on health baffles strategists, worries experts.” Experts baffled again.
But even that article was quietly rebellious, quoting convicted investment fraudster and known pharma shill Martin Shkreli. A worse choice for an anti-Kenney, pro-FDA quote can hardly be imagined...
But despite corporate media’s flailing efforts to slam shut the Overton Window, we are now having something close to a civil public debate about fluoride. In fact, one of the two major political parties, the party currently leading the race, is practically running on a promise to ban fluoride in drinking water. For the Overton Window to shift this far, a ton of regular folks had to become willing to re-consider the conventional narrative and question their assumptions about the government’s good intentions.
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People on this site were mentioning the harmful effects of fluoride for years:
https://patrick.net/post/1208286/2012-01-31-population-dumbing-down-through
https://patrick.net/post/1221984/2013-02-18-leading-geneticist-human-intelligence
https://patrick.net/post/1227760/2013-08-02-crest-removes-poison-triclosan-from
https://patrick.net/post/1228112/2013-08-12-israel-court-rules-to-stop-water-fluoridation
https://patrick.net/post/1329135/2019-12-15-what-happens-when-they-take-the
General Jack T. Ripper was right after all.
And what would be even funnier, I guess, is if it turned out to have actually been a communist plot.