After 50 years, Gordon Sinclair’s arguments still ring true, on basic medical rights of all
By Mark Anderson, American Free Press Deputy Editor; and host of RBN’s When Worlds Collide, Saturdays, 7 to 9 p.m. Central; truthhound2@yahoo.com
NOTE: The subject of this article, the late Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair, will be covered in Anderson’s Nov. 28 radio show during the first hour. A rare audio clip of Sinclair’s rant against fluoride is planned.
The year 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the brave campaign by Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair against fluoridation of the Toronto water supply. Sinclair may not be a household name in America, but his central points against the use of fluoride have withstood the test of time and need to be repeated in the important quest of eliminating fluoride from every public water supply on earth. Those who want fluoride are free to purchase labeled bottles of pediatric fluoridated water for kids, buy it in common toothpastes or through other means. But no one has the right to make everyone take fluoride through the public water supply.
The smug dental establishment always clings to the timeworn argument that this hazardous chemical additive must be pumped into public water supplies solely to guard against tooth decay, particularly among children. To them, this puts the whole issue to rest. But as Sinclair so eloquently argued starting in 1959, the problem is that public water fluoridation gives this “medicine” to “all of the people, all of the time,” not just to children.
During his noted 1959 anti-fluoride campaign on the radio, Sinclair stated: “I am a mature citizen who opposes the dumping of this chemical into our water …. Primarily, I object to being forced to take a medication that I don’t like, don’t want and know will do me no good so long as I live. It’s claimed by those who wish to insert this poison into our water – and it is a poison – that in proper doses it’s useful to the teeth of growing children up to the age of 11 or 12. There are many intelligent researchers who say even this claim is too sweeping and rosy…”
Sinclair continued: “Now if this chemical is useful, to some of the teeth of some of the children under some conditions, why do they wish to force it into all of the water, of all of the people, all of the time? The dose can’t be accurately measured because we don’t all drink the same amount of water and we aren’t all the same size. Children, in my experience, drink very little water. And yet those who favor this chemical want to put it in the water we use for washing cars or dishes, filling swimming pools, dousing fires, hosing streets and everything else …”
He further stated: “I will undertake to make up my own mind whether or not a chemical will be shoveled into the water that I drink. Impressive figures are sometimes inflated to say that tooth decay has declined in the communities where the chemical was pumped into the water.… I object on the grounds of my rights as a citizen to refuse medicine. I don’t want this medicine. And I challenge the authority of anybody to force it on me. You can go to a drug store and buy a can of this sodium fluoride, but under the laws of our country [late 1950s Canada] it will have to be labeled poison. This is a must. It is a basic chemical used in rat and bug poison. No one disputes that point. No one claims that fluoride is useful to any adult, anywhere on earth, under any condition or combination of conditions. They do claim that it is helpful to some of the teeth of some of the children, that it is not cumulative in the human system, and that it will not be injurious. ”
His concluding point was: “Why, if this is supposedly good to a limited group in the population, is it forced into the water of all of the people, all of the time? One of rights we have to protect is the individual right to take or refuse medicine. And I don’t want that right trampled underfoot.”
These days, it evidently never occurs to the dental establishment that even if fluoride effectively fights tooth decay without harming anyone, using it in public water supplies is inescapably tyrannical. Just because a narrow segment of “respectable” scientific society declares something is “good,” it does not mean that the entire mass population should receive it. And why stop with fighting tooth decay? Vitamin C is good for most people to strengthen immunity, so should Vitamin C be pumped into the public water? Why not Xanax or Zoloft? There is depression out there among some of the people, so why not inject these anti-depressants into the water for everyone, just to cover all the bases? Why not add substances to public water to reduce cholesterol and obesity?
Maybe we could invent a liquid vaccine that we all could drink each day in our tap water to avoid the “swine flu” virus and other germs. The “possibilities” are endless.
Sinclair’s influence is best described as a small but strong injection of truth-based concern into a “pool” of misinformation. He challenged the incredibly wrong-headed notion of giving “medicine” to everyone via their water supply just to “help” a small segment — the children whose developing teeth were claimed to be so prone to decay.
For the record, fluoride is cumulative in the human body. This chemical byproduct of aluminum production – which critics say is too hazardous to dump into landfills — is instead channeled through our bodies by way of public water systems. Some Alzheimer’s patients have been found to have excessive aluminum deposits in their brains, suggesting a link between fluoride ingestion and Alzheimer’s Disease that calls for further research.
By remembering Sinclair’s campaign against fluoridation, we can use his basic argument of medical sovereignty against vaccines and a host of other things that the engineers of mass society proclaim are “for our own good.”
