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UK Against Fluoridation

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Some fear fluoride, too

Neil Steinberg
A few loons are scared of drinking water, others link cell phones to brain cancer -- why do we find innovation so frightening?
When fluoride was first put into drinking water, most welcomed it as the boon it was. Rotten teeth became mostly a thing of the past.

There was a vocal lunatic fringe -- when isn't there? -- of John Birchers and right-wing nuts whose innate paranoia convinced them that fluoride was part of the vast conspiracy.

Lack of scientific evidence only convinced them of the depth of the plot. Some believe it still. "International Bankers' Influence on Fluoride and Drinking Water is Poisoning Us" announces one of the many Web sites on the subject.

The obvious flaw in their reasoning is: hundreds of millions of Americans have been guzzling fluoridated water for the last half century. If it was bad for us, we'd have picked up on it by now.

Cell phones are not quite as ubiquitous as water, not yet anyway. But they are popular enough to attract the loons. Dr. Ronald Herberman, director of the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, would seem, by merit of his title, not to be the sort of person leaping to suppose that cell phones cause brain cancer, the current hunch of the urban myth set who figure holding an electronic gizmo so close to your head has to cause something bad.

Herberman says science takes too long, and we should cut back cell phone usage now, particularly among children. Better safe than sorry, says he.

Let's pretend for a moment the myth is true -- cell phones increase the risk of brain cancer some tiny degree. So what? Why are old risks accepted with a shrug while new risks spook us? Thousands of people die horribly every year in car accidents, and we yawn, and wouldn't even buckle our seat belts if our vehicles didn't nag us with their electronic scoldings.

Yet let something be new -- relatively new, since the 25th anniversary of the first commercial U.S. cell phone call is this autumn -- and once-respected scientists are making sweeping public statements based on nothing. It's sad.

It is sad but for a different reason. Statements like this must make people like Prof Connett despair.

1 Comments:

  • One must understand that fear has an underlying lack of knowledge and control as its basis. However, these ravings show a lack of knowledge so fundamental that it precludes fear.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 27 July, 2008  

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