Mandrake, Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?

Last week, the city council of Brevard, N.C, a community just over a couple of hills from here that's known for its vibrant musical culture, voted to remove the fluoride they've been adding to the public water supply for last 27 years. The decision was prompted by one councillor who had "had read studies that suggested fluoride might create health problems such as bone decay, memory loss and thyroid problems." But does the science support such a decision?

Brevard Council, as any responsible council would do, asked its top administrative official, city manager Joe Albright, to look into the matter. According to the Hendersonville Times-News, he reported back thusly:

"I researched this and found there was a plethora of information and studies about the pros and cons of water fluoridation," Albright said. "After reviewing the data, I think council felt there was enough uncertainty as it relates to the possible detrimental effects and that's why they unanimously made the decision to remove fluoride from the city's water."

Now, Brevard wouldn't be the first municipality to reverse course on fluoridation despite the lack of a consensus from the scientific community that adding fluoride to drinking water does more harm than good. Apparently, the uncertainty regarding the negative effects is sufficient for many elected officials to disregard the acknowledged benefits, specifically reduced rates of cavities. But what surprised me in this case was the unanimous decision. Usually, in such cases, you'd expect to find at least one member of council in opposition.

There are plenty of websites devoted to the alleged evils of fluoridation, some that seem inspired more by Dr. Strangelove than genuine doctors. (For those who haven't seen the funniest film in history, and therefore don't get the title of this post, please read this excerpt from the script now before you get a day older). And there are the usual equivocal and less trustworthy sites like Wikipedia. But you knew that would be the case.

Still, even consulting the latest official word from the Centers for Disease Control leaves the novice researcher fails to produce a convincing testament as to the wisdom of fluoridation, but the CDC does cite a National Research Council study on alleged links between the practice and bone cancer that concludes, somewhat reassuringly, that

the overall evidence on osteosarcoma to be tentative and mixed, and no recommendations were made related to this health concern for revising current allowable fluoride levels in drinking water. The report stated that the results of the larger Harvard study, once published, may provide an important and useful addition to the weight of scientific evidence regarding this condition.

A summary document from the CDC is a bit more definitive, concluding that "Overall, no clear association between water fluoridation and incidence or mortality of bone cancers, thyroid cancer or all cancers was found."

But the summary was also chock-a-block full of caveats regarding the dearth of decent studies to which city councils can turn for guidance on the question:

the studies examining other possible negative effects provide insufficient evidence on any particular outcome to permit confident conclusions. Further research in these areas needs to be of a much higher quality and should address and use appropriate methods to control for confounding factors...

Given the level of interest surrounding the issue of public water fluoridation, it is surprising to find that little high quality research has been undertaken...

The research evidence is of insufficient quality to allow confident statements about other potential harms or whether there is an impact on social inequalities.

So it is perhaps not all that surprising that Brevard City Council chose to get rid of fluoride. On the one hand, there is really no good evidence that it's a bad thing, but clearly there hasn't been enough research at all.

Add to that the news that drinking water fluoridation has been banned in several European countries, and it's enough to give your average councillor who expects science to have all the answers a case of the creeps. Still, given the uncontested benefit of flouridation, I wouldn't have voted to remove fluoride. The science may be uncertain, but until there's more convincing data on the harm it might be causing, making a change would seem unwarranted.