Truth about fluoride doesn’t include Nazi myth
Here’s a reason to support a Florida county’s decision to cut fluoride out of its drinking water: The idea came from the Nazis.
The Nazis put fluoride in water to pacify Jews during World War II, a local resident told members of the Pinellas County Commission on Oct. 4, 2011, before the commission voted 4-3 vote to stop fluoridating water for about 700,000 residents.
“History shows, actually, that in Nazi Germany, one of the first things that they did was add fluoride to the water in the ghettos where the Jews stayed,” Matt Leffler of Clearwater said.
Once the St. Petersburg Times published its story about the decision — similar, anonymous comments on the Web piled up:
“Do you guys know where water fluoridation started? In the death camps in WWII.”
“There have been many links to cancer going back to the original tests on fluoride done by the Nazis on the Jews.”
“It IS what they used to dull their brains!! They used it in the concentration camps. It was in the concentration camps that they also developed many anti-psychotics.”
One reader declared the Nazi-fluoride connection “an absolute historical fact.” Several readers linked to sources on the Web.
Certainly Nazis, who killed millions of Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, were known for chemical tests and inhumane medical experiments. So PolitiFact Florida had to know: Did that include adding fluoride to water?
Say water fluoridation started in Nazi Germany ghettos and death camps to pacify the Jews.
And another opinion:
If you are of a certain age, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were caught up in a perverse sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Dr. Strangelove, in which a deranged rogue military officer sets off nuclear Armageddon because he thinks fluoride in the water supply is a Kremlin conspiracy to destroy America. • “You know when fluoridation first began? Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your postwar commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core commie works.” • Whew! For a moment there, while Pinellas County Commissioners Norm Roche, John Morroni, Nancy Bostock and Neil Brickfield wrung their hands and bemoaned the socialist plot to induce fluoride into the water supply, you half-expected them to fret about losing their collective “essence” by gargling.