There seems to be a certain group of people in the United States who just love conspiracy theories. I have to wonder if all of the conspiracy theorists hang out together and have conspiracy theory conventions once a year. But then I realize that they’d probably convince themselves that the convention is just a government conspiracy to get them all in the same place at the same time, and they wouldn’t go. The reason that I’ve been thinking about conspiracy theories is that I recently became aware of the fluoride poisoning conspiracy in America. If you haven’t heard about this, you can read extensively about it on Wikipedia, but here’s the gist:
- In the 1940s the U.S. Government started putting fluoride in the public water supply as a means of reducing tooth decay.
- In high amounts fluoride is poisonous and has been linked to cancer.
- Conspiracy theories have arisen as to why the government would poison its own people.
The conspiracy theorists argue that fluoride is a by-product of nuclear weapons production, and that it needed to be dumped somewhere, so the government put it in our drinking water. Some will argue that the slow dosing over time is making people complacent and easier to control—the same argument was made during the Red Scare when conspiracy theorists blamed the Communist government for trying to control the American populace. Most, however, will cite major industry as the biggest cause of fluoride poisoning, hearkening back to the production of the A-Bomb.
Why is this so hard for me to believe? Because the government could easily dump fluoride anywhere else. You don’t see them putting nuclear waste in our water… what reason would they have to kill all of us with disease and cancer? There are much easier ways for them to do this. On top of that there is no definitive research showing that the amounts of fluoride in the water can cause the diseases that conspiracy theorists claim they do.
I will say that it has been shown that fluoride’s health benefits are extremely minimal, if there at all. I don’t see any need for it to be in our water anymore, and most European countries stopped putting it in their water in the 1970s. So maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is a conspiracy going on here. But I’ll leave that for the masses to decide.
What do you think?
