Fight Over Fluoride

Not since 1856, when Indians almost captured them all, have Seattle citizens been so threshed up. Their city (pop. 463,000) is deep in a round of newspaper debates, public meetings, private arguments and brawls. Friendships have been strained, and Christian Scientists have taken counsel with medical doctors--all because of a proposal to put sodium fluoride in Seattle's drinking water.

The movement got started almost four years ago when the P.T.A. took notice of the condition of Seattle schoolchildren's teeth. They seemed appallingly bad--no doubt because of the lack of natural fluorine in the city's water. Why not put chemical fluorides in the water supply? The P.T.A. quoted statistics from other towns that had tried the experiment, pointing out the resulting drop in tooth decay among children. Impressed, Seattle's city council held a public meeting to discuss fluoridation, scheduled a referendum for this year's March 11 municipal elections.

What About Lawns? For a while last year, it looked as if the P.T.A. had a shoo-in proposal. Then the city's Christian Scientists roused themselves in protest. Fluoridation, they insisted, meant forced medication. And that was far from the only principle involved. Cried Professor Ernest Engle of the University of Washington's engineering school, a Christian Scientist: "Who endorses fluoridation? Why, the different state agencies, the U.S. Public Health Service and others who are working for socialized medicine in a welfare state . . . The issue of fluoridation is not an ordinary issue. Only the positive proof that a clear and present danger exists would give us reason to change our American way of life." Politicians began to scramble for the fence.

Seattle's Christian Scientists were joined by the Washington State Council Against Fluoridation and a group called the National Nutrition League, Inc. Arrayed against them were the District Dental Society, the trustees of the King County Medical Society and a formidable list of other organizations. Opponents of the plan argued that fluorides are dangerous poisons, and that even in smaller doses they cause unpleasantly mottled teeth. They conjured up the specter of Nazi science; human experimentation, they said, had been outlawed at Nuernberg. Furthermore, they asked, what could fluorides do to car batteries and radiators and to lawns?

What About Nymphomania? Pro-fluoride people pointed once more to their statistics. When used properly, they said, sodium fluoride affects nothing but children's teeth. And it does them a world of good, e.g., in Newburgh, N.Y. it has cut cavities among children by 30%. The cost would be negligible (about 10-c- a month for each householder). No fewer than 194 communities are using fluorides already, and 70 or 80 more are preparing to.

It was plain that the fluoride men were speaking to rising opposition. Seattle audiences had all too obviously been moved by the questionable science of pamphlets that named fluorides as the cause of "arterial and venous hardening . . . cavities in head bones; premature age . . . changes of disposition; irritability, apprehension, discontent, undue financial anxiety; loss of memory, satyriasis, nymphomania."

Last week a group of anti-fluoridationists marched out to the University of Washington's anthropology department and asked to be shown all available skulls of Puget Sound Indians. Object: to study their teeth, and see whether the old residents of Seattle had got along just as well without fluorides. Their conclusion: the Indians had pretty good teeth.

The antis wanted to exhibit the skulls downtown as a clincher. But a flaw developed in the anthropological argument. A university instructor pointed it out: the Puget Sound Indians lived almost entirely on seafoods, rich in that sinister chemical, fluorine.

As both sides girded for next week's referendum, it seemed pretty clear that, even if fluoridation wins, it will have to face a long, stiff fight in the courts.

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