USAF Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, the commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, initiates a plan to attack the
Soviet Union with
nuclear weapons in the paranoid belief that there is a
Communist conspiracy involving
water fluoridation which will lead to contamination of everyone's "precious bodily fluids.General Ripper's primary concern about Communism is his assertion that
water fluoridation is "a Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids," of which he was made aware when his "loss of essence" during
"the physical act of love" fatigued him. Ripper's paranoia about water fluoridation is based on a conspiracy theory by the
John Birch Society, which was prominent in conservative politics in the early 1960s
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Opposition to Water fluoridation
Conspiracy Theories - Water fluoridation
Water fluoridation has frequently been the subject of conspiracy theories. During the "
Red Scare" in the United States during the late 1940s and 1950s, and to a lesser extent in the 1960s, activists on the
far right of American politics routinely asserted that fluoridation was part of a far-reaching plot to impose a
socialist or
communist regime. They also opposed other public health programs, notably mass
vaccination and
mental health services.
[45] Their views were influenced by opposition to a number of major social and political changes that had happened in recent years: the growth of internationalism, particularly the UN and its programs; the introduction of
social welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the
New Deal; and government efforts to reduce perceived inequalities in the
social structure of the United States.
[46]
Some took the view that fluoridation was only the first stage of a plan to control the American people. Fluoridation, it was claimed, was merely a stepping-stone on the way to implementing more ambitious programs. Others asserted the existence of a plot by communists and the
United Nations to "deplete the brainpower and sap the strength of a generation of American children". Dr. Charles Bett, a prominent anti-fluoridationist, charged that fluoridation was "better THAN USING THE ATOM BOMB because the atom bomb has to be made, has to be transported to the place it is to be set off while POISONOUS FLUORINE has been placed right beside the water supplies by the Americans themselves ready to be dumped into the water mains whenever a Communist desires!" Similarly, a right-wing newsletter, the
American Capsule News, claimed that "the Soviet General Staff is very happy about it. Anytime they get ready to strike, and their
5th column takes over, there are tons and tons of this poison "standing by" municipal and military water systems ready to be poured in within 15 minutes."
[7]
This viewpoint led to major controversies over public health programs in the US, most notably in the case of the
Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act controversy of 1956.
[47] In the case of fluoridation, the controversy had a direct impact on local programs. During the 1950s and 1960s, referendums on introducing fluoridation were defeated in over a thousand
Florida communities. Although the opposition was overcome in time, it was not until as late as the 1990s that fluoridated water was drunk by the majority of the population of the United States.
[45]
The communist conspiracy argument declined in influence by the mid-1960s, becoming associated in the public mind with irrational fear and paranoia. It was lampooned in
Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film
Dr. Strangelove, in which the character General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear war in the hope of thwarting a communist plot to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water. Similar satires appeared in other movies, such as 1967's
In Like Flint, in which a character's fear of fluoridation is used to indicate that he is insane. Even some anti-fluoridationists recognized the damage that the conspiracy theorists were causing; Dr. Frederick Exner, an anti-fluoridation campaigner in the early 1960s, told a conference: "most people are not prepared to believe that fluoridation is a communist plot, and if you say it is, you are successfully ridiculed by the promoters. It is being done, effectively, every day ... some of the people on our side are the fluoridators' '
fifth column'."
[7]
Notable conspiracy theorists include terrorist and KKK member Byron de la Beckwith who "believed flouridated water was a Jewish plot to weaken the white race."
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