Ya but this whole "fluoride makes you more suggestible" thing really IS a leap.
The journals show brain damage, it shows lower IQs (maybe), but they DO NOT show, nor has any study ever shown, how fluoride would make one more agreeable when locked up in a concentration camp or prison camp. Wouldn't the constant threat of violence and the heirarchical structures of such places be a more important factor in determining someone's willingness to go along with orders?
Its a leap to start with "fluoride has been shown to cause brain damage in high doses and possibly lowering IQ by a few points" and then say "fluoride is a mind control drug" or "fluoride makes you more likely to accept the system mannnn!"
Wouldn't a more likely motive for its introduction to our water supplies be a conjunction of profit and the idea that doing so is actually beneficial - however flawed that "beneficial" part may turn out to be?
Sadly rare to see such a sensible comment in the fluoridation debate.
I too would like to know whether there's anything in the claim that the Nazis and the Stalinists tried fluoride for behaviour control in PoW and/or concentration camps. The claim is certainly nothing new – I remember it being discussed as a non-controversial detail in Labour Party meetings decades ago. I have looked into it several times, and can't find enough evidence either to prove or debunk it. However, knee-jerk 'skepticism' is not appropriate – it's certainly not implausible, and would be no more bizarre than many other pseudoscientific Nazi beliefs and deeds.
Whether it (would have) worked is another matter - we can be confident that (if true) it wasn't based on adequate science. Anyway, we don't know the concentrations – they could have been many times higher than the ppm levels in fluoridated water. For this and other reasons, the 'mind control' issue is simply not relevant to any serious discussion of the pros and cons of fluoridation, and it's a pity that many people on both sides of the debate seem to think it's the central issue.
As for the claim that lobbying of politicians, public health bodies and dentists by various chemical industries that produce waste fluoride compounds played an important part in the introduction of fluoridation, it can't reasonably be doubted. I would therefore say that there was (and is) an element of 'conspiracy' associated with the pro-fluoridation lobby but, again, this says nothing about the risks/benefits of fluoridation (and has nothing to do with mind control).
Water fluoridation seems to be one of those polarising issues it's almost impossible to discuss sensibly – apparently one must be either a paranoid, tin-hatted neanderthal or a gullible apologist for the NWO.
I am not a CTist, I have studied the issues in some depth (trying, as far as possible, to separate scientific from social), and I come down on the 'anti-' side (though not necessarily for the same reasons as the lobbyists). I think that mass medication via the water supply was not a particularly good idea at the time it was introduced, and is now completely indefensible.
Anyone who wishes to treat their teeth (or their children's) with fluoride can do so with no trouble and little expense. The economics of treating the entire water supply, only a minute proportion of which is going to be in contact with the teeth (or ingested, if you favour that mode of action), never made any sense. In general, we do not (and should not) accept enforced medication – and, as has been pointed out, if we choose to go down this road then there are far more deserving candidates than fluoride. Nobody disputes that we are dealing with a substance that is (potentially) extremely harmful, and that there is (at least) conflicting evidence about safety levels applicable to all groups of the population. There is good reason to suspect that water fluoridation might raise the total consumption in some groups to unsafe levels.
I have never understood the level of fanaticism on either side of the fluoridation debate – is it too much to hope for an intelligent, informed discussion?
(And it's fl
uoride, btw.)