When the current ruckus over the use of fluoride in drinking water began to burble, we had a hard time taking it seriously. After all, the benefits of fluoride in battling cavities are settled science. Has been since the 1950s.
But as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., outrageously the secretary of the federal department of Health and Human Services, added fluoride to his nonsensical attacks on vaccines, we had to pay attention. And when the governor of Utah last week signed a bill banning fluoride in water supplies, another pillar of a shared American view began to shred.
And that’s when we thought about Dr. Frank Orland, Sr. He’s the dad of Dr. Frank Orland, Jr., a now retired dentist in Riverside. We know the senior Orland through his work leading the Forest Park Historical Society. But he was also a leading advocate for fluoride during his studies at the University of Chicago when he earned degrees in microbiology. He was involved in a notable study which compared the impact of fluoride in Evanston’s drinking water with the absence of fluoride in Oak Park’s water supply from 1947 to 1961.
The clear consensus then was that fluoride prevents cavities. Soon fluoride began to be added to municipal water systems across America. Chicago added fluoride in 1956 and Riverside has been getting its water via Chicago since the 1980s.
Dr. Frank Orland, Jr., told our Trent Brown last week that he and his sibs only drank fluoridated water and that his dad mixed the fluoride into plastic bottles at home. Dr. Carla Orland, also a dentist and married to Frank Orland, noted that there were no cavities in that family.
Dr. Orland, Jr. said he was “totally distraught” when Kennedy began undermining faith in fluoride “because it is literally unfounded on fact. … It just doesn’t make sense to ban fluoride when it’s been so beneficial to how many millions of kids and adults, too.”
Clearly, facts do not matter in this moment. Science is to be doubted. The government at all levels is suspect. What a disturbing moment we are living in.