After a new, peer reviewed study was published today, the mainstream media was forced to acknowledge that women who consume fluoridated water while pregnant may give birth to children – particularly boys – with reduced IQ compared to pregnant women who drink regular water.
Today right wing organizations ranging from Infowars to the John Birch Society were at least partially vindicated on the issue of fluoride as a new study reveals mothers who drink fluoridated water during pregnancy give birth to children with IQ scores up to 4 points lower than those who drink regular water.
The study looked at 601 mother-child pairs across six Canadian cities, with 41 percent living in communities supplied with fluoridated municipal water.
The researchers said fluoridated water is supplied to around two-thirds of US residents, just over a third of Canadian residents and three percent in Europe.
After controlling for other toxins in their analysis, they found an increase in concentration of fluoride in pregnant mother’s urine of one milligram a liter was associated with a 4.5-point lower IQ score in boys — but not girls — at age three or four.
When estimating the daily maternal fluoride intake instead of fluoride in urine, they found a one milligram increase in intake was associated with a deficit of 3.7 IQ points for both boys and girls.
This new data came much to the chagrin of leftist website The Daily Beast, which lamented that the medical breakthrough will “fire up conspiracy theorists” such as Alex Jones, who has railed against fluoridated water over much of his 25 year career in media.
Daily Beast writer Shira Feder bemoaned the fact that “fluoride has been a boogeyman in conspiracy circles for decades.” She continued, “When water fluoridation became widespread in the U.S. in the 1950s, some claimed it was a Soviet plot to physically and mentally weaken Americans.”
Later in the article, Feder refers to Jones by name.
“Others still claim fluoridated water causes illness ranging from thyroid dysfunction to cancer,” wrote Feder. “Infowars founder Alex Jones has frequently railed against fluoride in hyperbolic terms, and his site sells anti-fluoride products.”
It seems strange that Feder would lament the fact that her right wing opponents were proven correct rather than the fact that medical wisdom was wrong for nearly 70 years, but the pattern continues for the rest of the Daily Beast article.
“It’s all but certain that anti-fluoride activists, no matter how outlandish their ideas, will seize on the new study results as proof they were right all along,” Feder wrote.
Perhaps The Daily Beast‘s credibility would be better served by focusing on the real impact fluoride may have on infant boys, rather than their narrative being eroded by scientific literature.
