The Floridation Of Fluoridation: Pinellas County Commission Votes To Increase Tooth Decay
Last night, Rachel Maddow gave us a glimpse at what a Tea party Republican America might look like. It ain’t pretty. And it’s stupider than it’s pretty. Moreover, its collective toothy grin will be missing a tooth or two within a fairly short time. . .
On October 4th, Pinellas County Florida’s Tea Party dominated Board of County Commissionerss voted 4-3 to remove fluoride from the county water supply, exempting St. Petersburg and a few other cities. Health concerns? Not so much. One could sympathize if the commissioners based their decison on serious health concerns. They didn’t. Indeed, there are no serious health concerns associated with fluoridation according to an overwhelming number of public health researchers.
Then what? One local Tea Partier put it this way, according to the October 5th St. Petersburg Times:
“Fluoride is a toxic substance,” said tea party activist Tony Caso of Palm Harbor. “This is all part of an agenda that’s being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government and the world government to keep the people stupid so they don’t realize what’s going on.”
He added: “This is the U.S. of A, not the Soviet Socialist Republic.”
Another, an actual voting member of the commission, longtime Republican John Morroni,
joined Norm Roche, Neil Brickfield and Nancy Bostock in voting to stop the program. . . Morroni compared the practice to the disputed federal health care reform law mandating that people buy health insurance. Ultimately, he said, public support has shifted since he and other commissioners approved the practice.
“I don’t think the county government should be telling people they have to have fluoride in the water,” Morroni said.
If folks want their water flavored with slime, fish heads, mercury, and petroleum, Morroni will apparently brook no governmental interference. This is a guy who, believe it or not, also serves on the county’s Health and Human Services Coordinating Council.
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| I feel smarter already! |
Pinellas County residents shrugged. In fact, a week after the vote Morroni’s emails were highly supportive. At the next commission meeting on October 11th, he stuck to his guns. Citizens spoke out as well. According to TampaBay.com:
One woman blamed fluoride in her drinking water for making her overweight, causing dentists to shrug. Another woman handed all seven commissioners a book: The Fluoride Deception. . . In a tangle [between two commissioners, one of them] even compared adding fluoride to dropping psychotropic drugs Ritalin and Prozac in the water.
Why not Viagra, I ask.
Mind you, fluoridation has never been popular in Pinellas County. According to the St. Petersburg Times, until its 2004 debut it was, ” the largest water supplier in the eastern United States that did not fluoridate its water.” This despite the wide acceptance of fluoride’s positive effect on reducing dental disease.
So, surely, this reaction to fluoride is an anomaly, a local breakout treatable with Clearasil. We’d think even the Tea Party understands the importance of proven public health measures. Well, no. The Tea Party has but one interest: to end anything they consider an “interference” with their brand of “liberty,” or “freedom.” This principle does not spare public health. In effect, they don’t recognize or give credence to the word “public” in any real sense. All men (and, presumably, women) are islands.
Therefore, public health measures like fluoridation and vaccinations are invasions of liberty, or, thereby, privacy (a right they do not, by the way, believe exists in the Constitution). No public health measures would be safe in Tea Party America.
For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) rates fluoridation as one of the “Ten Great Public Health Achievements” of the 20th Century, right there with these other successes, all intermediated by federal and state governments:
- “healthier mothers and babies,” (WIC, Planned Parenthood, Food Stamps, etc.)
- “family planning,” (Planned Parenthood, birth control, right to choose, etc.)
- “vaccination,” (everything from measles to polio to APV)
- “safer and healthier foods,” (FDA, Dept. of Agriculture), and
- “safer workplaces” (OSHA, Mine safety, etc.).
Note that all these are on the national Tea Party hit list. Recall the debate over funding the FDA, the controversy over the otherwise loony Rick Perry’s APV vaccination program in Texas, the attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, and, most of all, the never ending attack on abortion rights, including some forms of birth control. As you know, there are many more examples of this that affect health or safety, that, in effect, endanger public health successes from reaching the public, particularly the poor.
Of course, a Tea Partiers’ primary peeve is a general one, from which their particular “policies” emerge like poop from a goose: government regulation of nearly any kind. Since all regulation of individual behavior or business practice is considered by them to be an interference with liberty and freedom, regulations furthering the promotion of the “Ten Great Public Health Achievements” of the 20th Century are slated for suppression. Here’s two more:
- “Motor-vehicle safety,” and
- “Recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard.”
These are, after all, an interference with an individual’s liberty to kill himself/herself needlessly. Regulations, like seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws, firstly, denies the freedom to be without insurance and then, secondly, to rely on health professionals’ and hospitals’ charity to regain their health. “Responsibility to society” is not, in any real sense, a phrase in Tea Party repertoire. (Nor is “repertoire”)
- “Control of infectious diseases,” and
- “Decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke”
There must be something wrong with these . . .How will they attack them? Well, if not directly, they plan to do so indirectly by defunding national research programs like NIH, CDCP, and others. This is already underway in the GOP-dominated Congress.
Let’s not Floridate America.
