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52 — 2 — Precious Bodily Fluids Fluoridation, Environmentalism, and Antistatism Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily or mental and spiritual. —John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859 As Barry Goldwater stumped for reclamation, locked horns with wilderness preservationists, and was anointed the Great Conservative Hope, Rachel Carson was crafting a book that would change the world. Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea around Us, and The Edge of the Sea had established Carson as a first-rate naturalist and popular writer in the 1940s and 1950s, but Silent Spring would make her a legend. Published in 1962, just two years before her death from breast cancer, Carson’s last major literary work was a blistering indictment of the postwar breed of pesticides: aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor , parathion, 2, 4-D (dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and, above all, DDT. Silent Spring was also a lyrical defense of nonhuman nature and the intricate ecological bonds that held it together. Both the book’s popularity and its power came from this rare blend of scientific and artistic skill, as Carson wove wildlife biology, ecology, chemistry, and toxicology together with the prose of a literary master. As a result, Silent Spring quickly became one of the most important writings in the environmentalist canon.1 In the wake of the book’s debut, Carson, a former doctoral student in biology at Johns Hopkins University and chief scientific publications editor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, found herself awash in praise for taking on powerful vested interests in industry and government. Some correspondents aimed at more than mere congratulation, however, and followed Precious Bodily Fluids 53 up their accolades with pointed requests for Carson’s assistance. Would she be willing, they inquired, now that Silent Spring was behind her, to strip the veil from yet another insidious substance—“the most deadly of all,” as one writer put it—and the sinister parties who promoted it?2 Large numbers of people were exposed to this substance every day, they said, but most were unaware of its dangers. Like DDT, the substance could be used as a pesticide—it was particularly well known as a rat and cockroach killer—and had a tendency to accumulate in human flesh and bone, touching off an avalanche of health problems. Yet, as they did with DDT, “experts” declared the substance perfectly safe. Indeed, they actually called it healthy, and the U.S. Public Health Service even promoted the idea of adding the substance to the nation’s tap water so that the American people could reap its “benefits,” whether they wanted them or not. The end result was nothing less than a federal program of compulsory poisoning in the name of the “public good,” and a gross violation of the individual’s right to manage her own health. The nation needed to know the truth, the letterwriters concluded, and Carson’s reputation as DDT’s slayer would “carry a great deal of weight,” as one told her, in the growing crusade against the substance. Rumors about Carson’s thoughts on the subject were already circulating, another correspondent informed her, and a third saw a Carson -penned exposé about the substance as a “natural sequence [sic] to your excellent book,” later requesting her editorial guidance when he decided to write the exposé himself under the title A Struggle with Titans (Carson politely declined). Well aware of the controversial nature of their claims, Carson responded cautiously to her beseechers and refused to take a stand either way until she had studied the substance in depth, an answer that probably disappointed them but underlined her commitment to scientific objectivity.3 The substance that got Carson’s correspondents so agitated was sodium fluoride. Fluoridation—the controlled addition of very small amounts of sodium fluoride to municipal drinking-water systems—was one of the signature advances in twentieth-century American dental care. Beginning in the late 1940s and early 1950s, medical specialists and public-health advocates around the nation promoted the procedure as a cheap and safe method for preventing cavities in children, and by 1953 several hundred American communities fluoridated their tap water. But despite the blessings of numerous scientific and government organizations, some Americans eyed fluoridation suspiciously. To these so-called “antis,” sodium fluoride was one of the most 54 Precious Bodily Fluids hazardous substances known to humankind, a major culprit—perhaps the major culprit—in a hundred different health problems ranging from mottled teeth to cancer. By the late 1950s...

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