Since October of 2010, Jason Agre, who lives near Valley of the Moon Park, has been urging Anchorage’s elected officials to stop adding fluoride to his drinking water. Agre is part of a global movement of people objecting to fluoridated water. Anti-fluoridation activists say the practice is at best unnecessary, and at worst an instance of the government dangerously toying with mass medication that lowers IQs and increases cancer. The objectors are often accused of exploiting quack science and they’ve been known to promote conspiracy theories that often get them ridiculed. But in recent years activists such as Agre have gained a foothold in Alaska by repeating a message that doesn’t require anyone—politician or voter—to learn chemistry or understand scientific studies. That message relies on ethical questions about fluoridation and on bedrock libertarian values common among Americans, particularly in the red-state West. Is it really okay to put medicine in the water? “We don’t want to be medicated by politicians and we don’t give our consent to this medication,” Agre said, “and basically, we come from all walks of life.” Since 2006, Juneau, Fairbanks and Palmer have all stopped adding fluoride to their public water supplies. Agre said he has followed those debates with interest. In the first two, the anti-fluoridation movement took several years take hold. “It took six years to get it out of the water supply in Juneau,” Agre said. That pattern was repeated in Fairbanks, but Palmer’s fluoride program seems to have toppled like a domino almost immediately after Fairbanks.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 12:13:25 +0000