locally, some good news / bad news on fluoridation

First, some good news.

http://www.altoonamirror.com/News/articles.asp?articleID=11926

Friday, May 18, 2007 — Time: 4:37:23 PM EST

City Authority won’t fluoridate its water supply

By William Kibler, bkibler@altoonamirror.com

The Altoona City Authority voted Thursday not to fluoridate the water system.

The vote comes two years after the Altoona Hospital Partnership for a Healthy Community asked the authority to add fluoride to the water to help prevent tooth cavities, especially in children.

Three months ago, the partnership reiterated that request during a meeting at which new authority member Tom Martin declared himself an advocate for the practice, which is followed by public water systems serving 170 million people in the U.S.

With two other members of the five-person board saying they were open-minded, it seemed the authority finally would begin fluoridating, as requested by various groups periodically since the 1950s.

But all such efforts have generated opposition, which has included concerns about health effects and philosophical opposition to “mass medication.”

A resident who came to an authority meeting in March as part of a small delegation read from anti-fluoridation literature that claimed the practice originated decades ago as a profitable way to dispose of an industrial by-product.

Martin was the only authority member who voted Thursday to fluoridate after Chairman Maurice Lawruk called for a resolution on the matter.

“Things have been dragging out too long,” he said.

Lawruk said that after researching fluoridation, he decided against it with the help of a professor he met recently in Florida, who wondered why Altoona would want to add the element to its good mountain water.

The authority adds chemicals only to remove impurities, not to “enhance” the water, as fluoridation would, in-house engineer Mike Sinisi said.

Member Tony Ruggery said he would have no problem with fluoridation personally, but he figured “it isn’t right for us” because most customers are older and wouldn’t benefit much and because fluoridation might be a liability for the authority.

If families want their kids to have fluoride, they can give them tablets, he said.

Member Patrick Dumm had “no problem with the concept,” but be believes the authority’s responsibility ends when it delivers pure drinking water.

While Martin said he respected the majority decision, he said “evidence is overwhelming” in favor of fluoridation. Customers are getting shortchanged without it, especially kids whose families can’t afford good dental care, he said.

“We’re way behind the times,” Martin said.

Marian Fifer, executive director of the partnership, said the group was disappointed with the decision.

“We would hope they’d continue to consider it,” Fifer said.

The partnership had offered to pay half the $186,000 startup cost.
---------

And now for some of the prime morsels of bad news hinted at by various comments from this article. Fort starters, the way the world turns these days, these kinds of good-news stories are seemingly never fully over and put to rest/bed/death where they belong. Even when they fail at one turn, they seem to enjoy the never-ending capacity to just sort of quietly linger out of the way, like so much invisible vapor or virus, away from the present headlines, for now, just sort of waiting ..... incubating futher.....waiting to lunge at the the next right opportunity to come along. This seems to be a reason why eternal vigilance by an increasingly wakening, increasingly informed populous is critical, without which the opportunities for turning this presently-good news into eventual bad news ever lurk just the way select comments of that article suggest and as revealed by some of the present bit-players in this presently-good news story.

#1, the chief advocate of the recently failed water-fluouridation project in the greater Altoona Area is and continues to be none other than the "partnership" specially formed out of the Altoona Hospital. For those who are not familiar, for decades the greater Altoona area has been in decline as far as jobs & livlihoods that were once prominent in this otherwise small-town rural city located in the middle of farm country roughly half-way between Pittsburgh to the west and Harrisburg to the east. Thanks to dramatic encroachment of post WWII, UN-sponsored world programs such as Zero PIG, the new-world phase-outof the old and phase-in of the new makeup of greater Altoona focuses less on the proliferation of job opportunities from genuine labor & manufacturing - what once featured a fairly heavy concentration of railroad industry, in favor, primarily, on two pseudo business fronts: retail/Mall shopping; various flavors of "medical care". The best characterization that I hear, just recently at this, for what embodies the present day aspirations of the City of Altoona is to become the modern Breezewood; littered with retail outlets catering to highway interchange traffic. There aint much happening in Altoona these days, plus or minus the House that Bud built (AA minor league baseball park), but what little there is, the Altoona Hospital holds a fair amount of sway & say such that in one way or another it often has a hand involved with a lot of what little there is happening.

#2, check the comments in the article for how such a partnership, seemingly out of the benevolent "goodne$$ of it's own corporate heart" was willing to foot half the $186,000 startup costs to get the area's kids - via their drinking water, systematically fluoridated. The kind of influence to be dredged up by that kind small-town idle money just hanging around soliciting and otherwise luring "sound investors" is ripe - in a rotting way, for hanging around waiting to raise it's ugly head of corruption pretty much at any time in the unpredictable near future.

#3, also note thre present "fluoridated muni water back up plan: prescritpion fluoridation for the kiddies" is and has already been in place in the greater area which I documented/posted on previously. #4, also note that when it came down to the votes of the present 5-member board, it was not the inherent hazards and dangers to the health of the populous - particularly the young children, that seemed to be what ultimately swayed their decision, but instead was the scent.... the still-unknown future threat of "liability". #5, also remember that one of the ever-increasing traits of the police-state culture we live in today is the capacity for the establishment to enact new "laws" that provide them immunity from liability from whatever systemic evils they may have previously legislated onto we the people, be it at the local, community level or the federal level where many smalltown communities look to for guidance and role-model behavior. If this artcile is to be taken as truth, there already are 170,000,000 people across the states of America being treated by fluoride-treated drinking water.