According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump will put him in charge of the nation’s healthcare – though the details have yet to be worked out. We do know that Kennedy Jr. plans to be high enough in the administration so as to be in position to undermine some of this country’s biggest public health successes. We already know his position with respect to vaccines, the shots that have saved millions of lives. But now Kennedy has tweeted that he will personally oversee the “defluoridation” of the nation’s water supply.
Yes, the same guy who believes the COVID vaccine is more dangerous than COVID itself is now coming for fluoride. In all of history, there are very few public health successes that could possibly match that of vaccines, fluoride in drinking water being one possible exception. So it has to go. He just cannot stand to see such a success pass without putting on his own stamp of disapproval. According to the Associated Press:
Kennedy made the declaration on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.
“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.
Never mind the fact that there is no current legal means (that I can think of) for the federal government to immediately order the removal of fluoride from all drinking water, the issue now comes full circle. During the 1950s the far right John Birch Society spread fears that fluoridation of the water supply was a communist plot to undermine Americans’ health. Instead, it vastly improved dental hygiene and remains in place today.
Or it did and will, unless Kennedy Jr. has his way. Both vaccines and fluoridated water suffer from a similar overwhelming success. Society has completely forgotten what it was like to fear that your child would die or be paralyzed by polio or smallpox. People used to lose their teeth by age 50. It is as if people believe that these diseases would have gone away on their own through nothing more than society’s evolution. And it is true – provided the evolution includes vaccines and fluoride!
Kennedy’s position would otherwise be a bit funny because fluoride used to be such a punchline for right-wing paranoia. Nowadays, however – it’s not so much paranoia as it is about viewing public policy from the relative luxury of not having to suffer the consequences. Kennedy wasn’t knocking vaccines at the time when polio was knocking down kids. The COVID virus was primarily a threat to elderly Americans – very few of whom had the luxury of making a political statement about the vaccine and so the vast majority of older Americans did get the vaccine without regard to politics. Only relatively healthy middle-aged Americans who would likely survive COVID anyway could afford the luxury of using the vaccine as a political statement. Some paid for it with their lives. The bigger the gains in public health, the more room to criticize from safety.
It was only a matter of time. One can quibble about just how much benefit the public received from fluoridated water after the production of fluoride toothpastes. And there are claims that too much fluoride in drinking water is associated with lower IQ and neurological issues. But it would take an RFK Jr.-type to want to drive away all the gains made from the current fluoride levels considered safe and beneficial. Trump found “that type” and is putting him in charge of Making America Healthy Again.
People used to die all naturally. Teeth fell out as a matter of course, and at much younger ages. George Washington had only one working tooth by the time of his inauguration. One can bet that Washington would wholly support a fluoride program to “Make America Healthy – Finally.” And Washington wasn’t the type to toss aside hard-earned victories.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak
I can probably survive without fluoridated water but I’ve seen what polio does to a body (my MIL) and know that all the anti vaxxers will cause a worldwide pandemic of diseases. None of my nieces have had their children vaccinated and have to home school them. With not great results I might add lol! I foresee a time when “civilized” countries will not let planes from our country land in their countries unless ALL passengers are fully vaccinated. Orange tyrant would prevent airlines from requiring everyone to have all the required childhood and other vaccinations, but other countries CAN and also should prevent our airlines from landing. I hope they stand up to wannabe tyrant and his 1800s ideas to protect their own citizens.
😵💫😵💫 But the Chem trails, Jason, what about the Chem trails!! And, don’t forget the hormones in tap water turning the frogs gay!! 🤪🤪
And my husband and I still get my flu and Covid shots. My husband has kidney and heart failure, and has had triple bypass surgery after an heart attack and a stroke as well and needs the protections these vaccines provide! Not sure what to do about that other than to go out of country for those vaccinations?!
Don’t forget Washington mandated the vaccination of his troops against smallpox. In those days that meant cutting a smallpox sore off a dying person, cutting someone’s arm and dabbing a bit of that pustule into the wound. It wasn’t without risk. People would get sick, most often with a mild to moderate case of smallpox but then would be immune. A small percentage would get seriously ill. Enough that the effects would be harmful for the rest of their lives and yes, some would even die. Still, the odds were very good that those vaccinated would at worst go through a moderate bout with smallpox and never have to worry about it again.
The point is that Washington didn’t give his troops a choice. They HAD to get vaccinated. End of story. Maybe someone should ask RFK and other anti-vaxxers about Washington and whether he was a tyrant unfit to one day become our first President.
My husband and all the people he served with in the Air Force.all had MANDATORY vaccinations, like it or not! Not one of them are losers or suckers, either!!!
Absolutely true, Carol. As newly drafted GIs in our first week of service at Fort Jackson in 1965, we were lined up before being assigned to our basic training units. As the lines progressed into the building there were several medical corpsmen holding pistol-shaped pneumatic vaccination devices – step up to the first one, on your right, he holds his “gun” against your arm, pulls the trigger, and “just like that” you’ve gotten the shot. A step or two ahead is someone on your left to repeat the process on that arm. This was repeated a couple more times as we followed the line through the building before reassembling outside the building, and IIRC we went through it a second time a day or two later, until some seven or eight vaccines had been administered. BTW, this month marks 59 years since that experience.
I had all the usual vaccinations growing up. I remember the setup at the Jr. High School (great big parking lot, the gym right in front of the doors from it) that my parents and everyone else went/took us to for the nationwide smallpox and polio vaccinations during that huge program. If people questioned the program or objected they were few and far between.
Still, when I went into the Corps it was quite the setup too. One morning early in training the DIs marched us over to sickbay. A Corpsman outside read a short statement noting a few matters that if they applied to anyone should be mentioned when they checked in at the table inside the door. Only a couple in the platoon got led aside from the rest of us. We stood in a long line as platoons who’d gotten to sickbay before the rest of us turned into a wide hallway. On either side there were Corpsmen in pairs, each with a small cart with supplies. I don’t remember how many “stations” there were but it was a lot of them.
The whole thing was remarkably efficient. You walked along and as you reached each station a Corpsman would shoot a vaccine into your arm. The next station a few feet down you’d get one in the other arm. Mostly it was those “gas injection” devices that they quite using for some reason some years later. But both then and later we’d get MANDATORY vaccinations. That’s just how things were and if someone wanted to whine to their Congress Critter damned few would have made an inquiry, much less a fuss. Not if they didn’t want virtually all of their colleagues raining a shitload of ridicule down on their heads.
Yes, I know that with COVID or any vaccine there is a slight chance of an adverse reaction. I felt a bit dizzy after a booster a couple of years back. But I waited in the room like they said for an additional thirty minutes and I was fine. I know reactions can be worse. Way worse in fact but severe reactions are rare. I like my odds of keeping vaccinated better than what can happen if I catch COVID or other diseases easily prevented by vaccination. It’s common fucking sense! Which it seems to MAGAs is like soap and water to a five year old boy.
Re vaccines: IIRC, I was in 5th grade and the school nurse administered the Salk polio vaccine; as a nurse, my mother had no qualms about approving it. Meanwhile, one of my cousins in PA contracted polio as a child and recovered with a slight limp as the only visible after-effect.
Re fluoridated water supplies: I had a lot of cavities as a youngster, and now have several teeth that are thin shells containing amalgam, as well as a couple more that had to be ground to studs and capped because so much decay had developed over time. By comparison, my 3 children, now between ages 48 and 56 grew up with a fluorodated water supply, and almost all their dental checkups were clear.
the thing is, Jason, that on this one thing, he is on the right side. Probably for the wrong reasons, but correct.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation-water-epa-risk-assessement
Fluoride is a drug. Not a nutrient or a water quality modifier. A drug. An unapproved drug, if you get right down to it. You will find no FDA studies or approvals for ingested fluoride, especially in the chemical form that is added to water supplies.
It. Is. Not. Legal. to add drugs to the water supply. It is also very bad medical practice, as there is no control whatsoever on dosage.
And it is neurotoxic. The trivial improvements in cavity rates are not worth the IQ points, and the damage done to tooth enamel and bones by overdose.