Yikes! The fluoride-in-the-drinking-water issue is back! And I don’t use exclamation points indiscriminately (there goes two). I allow myself about a dozen a year. But I can’t help it because the fluoridation issue was so large a part of my early professional life, if you can call a neophyte “cub” newspaper reporter a professional. I really shouldn’t.
I came to work at this newspaper in the first half of the 1960s and ran smack-dab into the same fluoridation issue that is roiling the country now, but back then was hot right here in Duluth, and even involved Albert Einstein. (More on that later.)
It shows, once again, that the more things change the more they stay the same. Except for diapers, of course.
Local leaders had decided that Duluth water should be fluoridated to prevent tooth decay, especially in children. Many citizens opposed such an idea as dangerous to the health of children and adults, regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, foot size or eye color (that’s everybody).
And now these disagreements are back, thanks largely to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s Trump-appointed health secretary and leading cod liver oil advocate. He has vociferously inveighed against fluoride, claiming it is unsafe for human consumption. Fluoride has already been outlawed in many venues: Fluorida — oops, Florida — and Utah have banned it in public water systems statewide.
Hmmm…I wonder what else those states have in common. Not weather.
I actually recall Duluth’s fluoridation fight with some fondness. Youthful memories are often golden. I worked nights in my new job at this newspaper, learning as I went along. I hadn’t majored in journalism in college so I had a lot to learn. My basket-weaving background was inadequate preparation.
But working evenings for the morning paper (there were two, six days a week — called by some the Morning Liar and Evening Repeater. I was assigned to cover numerous gatherings where fluoridation was debated, feeling like a big cheese reporter already. City officials would praise fluoridation by extolling its positive effect on the teeth of children as they grew up, and adults as they aged.
Opponents considered fluoride in our drinking water a poison that would destroy everyone’s health. Evil communism was even blamed. There was word that dentists feared it would put them out of business, but the opponents had only one dentist who would speak out publicly.
So off I’d go in a peppy press car to various public meetings with notebook in hand — community clubs and other meeting places where the two sides could fight it out. Many were quite well attended by people representing each side, together with others just wanting to hear what it was all about. Then I’d race back to the newspaper and, to the best of my fledgling ability, write it up for the morning edition.
My most memorable moment in this crusade was at a large community club meeting attended, in spirit, by Albert Einstein, thanks to one of the most strident Duluth opponents. The wife of a high-level city official, she led the antis, strongly condemning fluoridation at every opportunity. You wonder how that marriage was going, with her husband’s employer plugging it.
After covering the public meeting, as I was about to leave, she stopped me to further emphasize her anti-fluoride views. Her main point to me was that Albert Einstein’s nephew opposed fluoridating water, the implication, of course, being that: 1) Albert Einstein was the smartest man in the world; 2) his nephew must, perforce, be very smart too; 3) the nephew opposes fluoridation, and 4) therefore Duluth should not fluoridate its water.
It was different theory of relativity than the one Albert Einstein was famous for. You never know what your relatives might do.
All of this came to an end here in 1967 when the Minnesota Legislature passed a law requiring fluoridation of all municipal water systems. Duluth complied and I’ve been drinking it ever since, and that’s a long, long time.
Hold it! Let me check my pulse.
The city of Brainerd, Minn., resisted, though. The fluoridation fight continued there for almost 15 years with that city finally complying in 1980, much to the chagrin of many no-Brainerdites.
Finally, and for the record, of course I moved on from those neophyte years and became a seasoned journalist, covering many of the important stories throughout the Northland. In recognition of that, I was once awarded the Pullet Surprise for outstanding reporting on the rooster and hen competition at the Carlton County Fair.
But I hate to boast.
Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.
