The White Report

Few object to the therapeutic use of fluoride to stop tooth decay, but fluoridation, the addition of fluoride to the public water supply, can spark avid controversy.  Most dentists, medical groups, and government officials argue that fluoridation is a cheap and risk-free venture that doubles cavity prevention.  In contrast, a small minority of dentists and conservative political groups argue that fluoride is a hazardous, poisonous substance that should not be consumed.  Some antifluoridationists even claim that fluoridation is an untrustworthy form of socialized medicine.  But rather than just attacking fluoridation as socialized medicine, opponents originally claimed that it was a conspiracy to poison or brainwash Americans through the water supply. 

This theory arose in the 1940s when the scientific community refused to endorse or reject fluoridation, thus allowing the debate to expand into the social sphere.  While fluoridation opposition may be subconsciously inspired by naturalism, the social development of fluoridation into a Communist or fascist conspiracy resulted from a conscious effort by conservatives to suppress a growing government.

The fluoridation debate results from a visible conflict of paradigms; profluoridationists seek to protect the communal good, while antifluoridationists defend individual rights.  According to William Gamson, “Antifluoridation literature is frequently concerned with… intrusion of government into private realms and with violation of individual liberty and choice” (Gamson, 527).  Such concerns are often embodied in the characterizations of fluoridation as mass medication and socialized medicine.  One expression identifies water treatment as a violation of free choice while the other points out the encroachment of government into daily life.  But both terms have been used to question water treatment’s constitutionality.  Constitutionality was frequently mentioned during a 1954 House Congressional hearing on the Fluoridation of Water that discussed the enactment of a national ban “to protect the public health from the dangers of fluoridation of water” (U.S. Congress, 1).  Opponents appealed to the First Amendment in two contexts.  First, a pamphlet clearly depicted the view that fluoridation “constitutes a socialistic form of mass medication violating our State laws and the Federal Constitution… [and] involves an unwarranted interference with individual liberty” (U.S. Congress, 323).  Placing fluoride in the public water supply denied opponents the freedom of expression to not be medicated.  Christian Scientists also claimed that fluoridation violated the freedom of religion.  At the hearing, James Watt, a spokesman of Christian Science, testified that mass medication, “constituted a violation of fundamental religious rights” by violating a Christian Scientist’s right to heal with just prayer (U. S. Congress, 59).  Opponents argued that as long as alternatives to water treatment existed, fluoridation was unconstitutional and Un-American due to its violations of individual rights.

The visible conflict of paradigms results from the opposition’s conscious identification with political ideologies, whereas the fundamental cause of fluoridation opposition emerges from the individual’s subconscious craving for natural purity.  According to Morris Davis, antifluoridation is the “manifestation of a latent tendency towards naturalism” (Davis, 447).  Naturalism refers to resources in their natural state rather than resources altered by science.  As a society emerging from a period of continuous death, war, and lethal scientific breakthroughs, 1950s America was especially susceptible to naturalism hysteria.  Davis argues that the hysterical fear of adding fluoride to water “manifested in, among other things, anticommunism and antifluoridation” (Davis, 480).  This implies that the government subversion conspiracy subconsciously followed the normal societal patterns.  But if this was true, the conspiracy would have been identified as purely Communist and opponents would have used more social arguments prior to 1950.  The sudden argumentative shift from the 1940s to 1950s and the interchangeable identification of Communist and fascist conspiracies demonstrates the argument’s conscious development.

The speed with which opponents switched from scientifically focused arguments in the 1940s to incredibly detailed social arguments in the 1950s illuminates the opponents’ anti-government fluoridation agenda.  The United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and the American Dental Association (ADA) refused to endorse fluoridation without scientific proof, so the 1940s constituted a period of research that studied the effects of fluoridation.  At the time, antifluoridationists assumed they had unofficial scientific authority and so did not create social or political campaigns.  According to Professor Brain Martin, opponents justifiably had unofficial authority because they “could justify their stand by pointing to the caution of the USPHS and the ADA” (Martin 57).  But after the 1950 endorsement, opponents almost instantaneously shifted to socio-political arguments.  By 1952 antifluoridationists were debating the social dynamics of fluoridation before the Congressional Select Committee to Investigate the Use of Chemicals in Food and Cosmetics.  The shift in argumentative style also allowed opponents more room to maneuver.  While science is fact-based, socio-political arguments are interpreted.  Thus antifluoridationists were able to jump logical gaps and ignore conflicting information that later could have hindered the development of the subversion conspiracy.

Due to the less restricting form of social debate, opponents could ignore the conflicting exchange between Communism and fascism that arose during Fluoridation of Water because the conspiracy remained the underlying common denominator.  At the hearing, antifluoridationists laid the foundation for a possible conspiracy.  Dentist Fredrick Exner testified that fluoridation was “a gigantic steamroller, fabricated by the Public Heath Service, powered with unlimited Federal funds, and directed by Washington…designed… to destroy… the constitutional protections of the citizens” (U.S. Congress, 83).  Here, Exner voiced the opposition’s opinion that the USPHS’s endorsement was fraudulent due to economic bribery or political blackmail.  These implications of under-the-table government activities helped lay the ground for the subversion conspiracy.  Other antifluoridationists feared the dangers of overdosing the public water supply.  At the hearing a witnesses commented “stockpiles of fluorides at the reservoirs… would provide the perfect weapon for saboteurs” (U.S. Congress, 325).  The argument grants that while fluoride may be safe in small amounts, fluoridation could easily become deadly.  With a solid foundation of conspiracy and danger, other antifluoridationists used the hearing to identify conspirators.  Most of the testimony identified fluoridation as a socialistic violation of rights.  In contrast, the most authoritative speaker, Fredrick Exner, classified fluoridation as a fascist violation of rights.  It is “totalitarian medicine… [because] things are done to you whether you like it or not” (U.S. Congress, 78).  Opponents arrived at two difference conclusions using the same arguments: constitutionality, freedom of choice, and conspiracy.  In the end, Communism and fascism nullified each other either through repetition or speaker authority, leaving the conspiracy as the calculated common denominator.

Antifluoridationists ignored logical fallacies and skewed evidence in order to create a conspiracy that predated the endorsement of fluoridation.  In 1957, Oliver Kenneth Goff published a notarized statement discussing his 1939 testimony before the House of Un-American Activities Committee.  In the statement, Goff said Communist Party leaders had discussed fluoridation as a method to “keep the general public docile during a steady encroachment of Communism” (H, 3).  According to Goff, the Party discussed using fluoridation as a tool to “either kill off the populace or threaten them with liquidation, so that they would surrender to obtain fresh water” (H, 3).  After its publication, antifluoridationists began citing Goff’s statement and HUAC testimony as proof of a malicious Communist conspiracy.  The statement is misleading and its interpretation skewed.  The notarized document does not quantitatively prove a conspiracy and does not suggest that Goff testified about fluoridation before HUAC.  It only says that the Party discussed endorsing fluoridation.  But even this is questionable.  Of the items discussed in the notarized document, only water fluoridation fails to appear in Goff’s 138-page HUAC transcript.  Also, his statement closely parallels the conspiracy allegations from the 1954 hearing Fluoridation of Water.  Both discuss Communism in affiliation with sabotage, brainwashing, and government infiltration.  This coincidence leads to the conclusion that Goff wrote the statement as a “professional ex-Communist” willing “to embroider his testimony to suit his patrons” in the antifluoridationist community (Schrecker, 50).  Like other ex-Communists, Goff may have written a partially untrue statement condemning fluoridation in exchange for money.  But despite his questionable credibility, opponents heavily emphasized Goff’s statement, thus showing that the existence of the conspiracy was more important than the evidence supporting it.

 Antifluoridationists chose Goff’s HUAC testimony to portray the fluoridation conspiracy in order to provide an explanation for the interchange of Communism and fascism.  Goff’s statement linked Communism to fluoridation.  Nazi Germany and fascism were in turn linked to fluoridation through political alliance with the Soviet Union.  In historical context, the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939 (Schrecker, 10).  This nonaggression treaty linked Communism and fascism in the eyes of America.  Three months after its signing, Goff commented that Communists reconciled anti-Nazism with the pact by accepting “information coming from Soviet Russia” explaining that the alliance served “the revolution we are waiting for” (HUAC, 5715).  Both historical context and Goff’s explanation created grounds for a false analogy to interchange Communism and fascism.  Therefore, Goff’s testimony not only lent the conspiracy historical foundation, but also allowed opponents to legitimately interchange governments to maximize a negative public response.

Antifluoridationists attacked newly prominent political proponents in order to make fluoridation a relevant, menacing plot and to protest government expansion.  Oscar Ewing, a lawyer and the administrator of the Federal Security Agency (FSA), became a focal point of harassment.  After his appointment in 1947, Ewing was “prominent in promoting” programs like national health care which put him “in the fire” for public attack (Truman, 10).  Some Americans thought Ewing promoted socialized medicine while others disliked the way he promoted programs, like national health care, that increased government intervention in daily life.  In his oral history, Ewing recalls that the USPHS’s 1947 report about fluoridation “was made public over my name and the opponents of fluoridation took after me” but recalls that “the first I heard of this opposition” was in 1952 (Truman, 32).  Seven years passed between Ewing’s initial link to fluoridation and the political criticisms that followed.  The change that occurred in this period was the 1950 endorsement of fluoridation when opponents could no longer rely on scientific authority.  Also, antifluoridationists chose not to attack Ewing until his “socialist” reputation was thoroughly entrenched in the public eye.  Then through false analogy opponents developed a clearly governmental path to characterize fluoridation as socialist.

Antifluoridationists even used Ewing’s political status to undermine the validity of the scientific endorsement.  As the administrator of the FSA, he oversaw the USPHS and other government medical groups.  In Fluoridation, the Great Dilemma, Dentist George Waldbott used this information to conclude that USPHS studies were inherently faulty.  According to Waldbott, the data may have stated one result while the scientists interpreted another.  This could occur because researchers “were influenced in their desire to please their boss [Oscar Ewing]” and then manipulated the data accordingly (Waldbott, 313).  While this was nothing more than speculation, enough evidence existed to legitimize Ewing’s possible involvement in the fluoridation conspiracy and undermined the objectivity of profluoridation research.

Just as antifluoridationists developed Communist and fascist conspiracies, opponents also created and attacked Communist and fascist political figureheads.  Oscar Ewing became the Communist figurehead while Edward L. Bernays became the fascist figurehead.  During the 1940s and 1950s, Bernays was in charge of public relations for the USPHS and the developer of the profluoridation propaganda campaign.  His successful use of propaganda earned him the reputation as America’s “Spin Doctor.”  As the “father of public relations” he wrote a book called Propaganda that said a politician could manipulate public opinion by using propaganda “to mold the mind of the voters in conformity to his own ideas” (Bernays, 104).  Bernays’s philosophies and successful use of propaganda resulted in critics linking him to Joseph Goebbels of the German Nazi regime.  Dentists Exner and Waldbott accused him of “converting highly controversial findings into propaganda material” (Fl. Experiment, 175).  Other antifluoridationists characterized Bernays’s propaganda as a form of mass brain washing that changed public opinion overnight.  These allegations invoked public fear and mistrust of the propaganda and so of fluoridation.  However, the attacks on increasingly publicized government officials like Ewing and Bernays intended to invoke public mistrust of the government that endorsed fluoridation.

Antifluoridationists targeted individuals not only for their symbolic representation of government subversion but to further expand the conspiracy network.  The first “attack” on Ewing in 1952 alleged that he represented the interests of the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) and “had been ‘rewarded’ with $750,000 by the fluoride waste producer” (Truman, 33).  Thus, through Ewing, ALCOA became a conspirator that sought to profit from selling the waste-product sodium fluoride.  In his oral history, Ewing admits that while his law firm occasional represented ALCOA, he “was not even aware of the fact that the company manufactured fluorides” (Truman, 33).  Once again, antifluoridationists skewed evidence to fit the conspiracy theory.  But while, the Ewing-ALCOA link is debatable, ALCOA’s history is factually littered with lawsuits, illegal international cartel agreements, government payoffs, and three HUAC investigations.  In 1912 ALCOA signed a consent decree, under which companies agreed not to become directly involved in European cartels.  But because European, not American, aluminum companies threatened ALCOA’s monopoly, the company only followed the letter of the law.  ALCOA signed the decree and then used its Canadian subsidiaries to indirectly participate in cartels.  The company signed agreements with Soviet Russia and Germany, and during World War I ALCOA built aluminum plants in Germany (Holloway, 24).  In 1956 and 1959 HUAC investigated ALCOA during the hearing on “Communist Infiltration of Vital Industries in the Chicago Area” and discussed the company in the “Annual Report of HUAC for the year 1961” (U.S. Gov, v).  According to Professor George David Smith, HUAC used unionization as an excuse to attack ALCOA for its “alleged Nazi and fascist sympathies” and to settle the rumor that ALCOA “was trying to sabotage the war effort” (Smith, 225).  This inaccurate interpretation of the facts demonstrates how HUAC hearings blurred the line between accusation and truth.  For example, the company’s production facilities in Germany during World War I were often taken out of historical context and caricatured as World War II concentration camps.  Antifluoridationists expanded HUAC’s misinterpretation, claiming camp workers were fed fluoridated water to make them docile and to rid the company of the waste.  While Germany based production facilities existed and ALCOA negotiated contracts with both Soviet Russia and Germany, the aforementioned allegations hold no historical fact.  The antifluoridationist’s disregard for such facts demonstrates the conscious effort to develop a negative image of fluoridation and its supporters.

The government conspiracy theory that arose during the 1950s was a conscious development of personal paradigms and political attacks in order to suppress government expansion.  Antifluoridationists were typically right wing conservatives that desired smaller government.  Before the 1950 endorsement, antifluoridation was not debatable on the political sphere because opponents chose to focus on science.  When opposition shifted to the political arena, conservatives suddenly had a new weapon to attack big government.  Using minimal evidence with political commentary, opponents developed the Communist/fascist subversion conspiracy.  To legitimize the plot, creators sought early supporting evidence and testimony.  Oliver Kenneth Goff’s notarized statement implied a 1930s Communist fluoridation agenda without quantitatively proving that the conspiracy existed.  Antifluoridationists also developed the plot around government officials that were increasingly seen in the public eye as proponents of big government and fluoridation.  While not absolutely true, opponents created a fluoridation web that shed enough doubtful light on the security of fluoridation to legitimize opposition.  This web however does not prove the factual existence of a conspiracy.  But because the hysterical fear of Communism and of government subversion that characterizes the McCarthy era was real, the conspiracy was legitimate.  While the Communist/fascist plot seems extremist now, antifluoridationists still use the fluoridation web, protestations of government expansion, and civil rights arguments in debate today.  From the 1950s to modern, antifluoridationists have understood their audiences and adapted accordingly.  During the 1950s, opponents used Communist hysteria to create effective argumentation for fluoridation opposition and to protest further government expansion.

Works Cited

Exner, Fredrick, George Waldbott, and James Rorty. The American fluoridation experiment. - New York: Devin-Adiar, 1961.

Gamson, William, A. The Fluoridation Dialogue, Is it an Ideological Conflict? - Public Opinion Quarterly, vol 25, 1961.

H. Mike. The Fluoridation Fiasco - the real reason for it! Nov. 1998. 6 June 2003. - http://politicaltexan.com/wwwboard/messages/66.html

Holloway, Steven Kendall. The Aluminum Multinationals and the Bauxite Cartel. Nova Scotia/ - St. Francis Xavier University, 1988.

Martin, Brian. Scientific knowledge in controversy: the social dynamics of the fluoridation debate. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991.

Oral History Interview with Oscar Ewing. Interview by J.R. Fuchs. May 1969. - 13 May 2003 http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/ewing3.htm

Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2002.

The Blue Book of the John Birch Society. Belmont, Massachusetts: Robert Welch, 1961.

United States. House of Representatives. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commence. - Hearings on Fluoridation of Water. Washington, GPO, 1954.

United States. House of Representatives. House Special Committee on Un-American Activities.

Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the U.S. Volume 9. Washington. - GPO, 1972.

United States. Supplement to Cumulative Index to Publications of the Committee on Un-American Activities, 1955 through 1968. Washington: GOP,1970.

Waldbott, George L. Fluoridation: the Great Dilema. Larwerence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1978.

Waldbott, George L. Fluoridation: the Great Dilema. Larwerence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1978.

**Sara Suzanna Huber: Humanities Core - 8 June 2003