It was 1945, Germany and Japan had surrendered, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were in ruins. The United States and its allies were victorious. But the Manhattan Project's chief toxicologist, Dr. Harold Hodge, had work left to do.

Hodge was overseeing a cruel and highly classified experiment. His team injected human subjects with plutonium and watched as they got sick. Three of the 11 participants died that year.

But Hodge wasn't only interested in plutonium the effects on the body. He was also studying fluoride toxicity. And he used the project's funds to conduct further research on animals. He found the fluoride greatly, disrupted their nervous systems and ultimately labeled the chemical as a neurotoxin.

But his public statement released in 1950 suggested the opposite. He said there is no other known toxic effect of drinking water containing one part per million fluorine, then the very mild modeling of the teeth.

The disingenuous remark was due to hajjis new job championing artificial water fluoridation programs. As the professor and chair of pharmacology at the University of Rochester, he worked tirelessly to prove that fluoride was harmless.

Yet Hoj never told his colleagues what he found in his earlier experiments. He never publicly described fluoride as a neurotoxin, and his previous research wouldn't be declassified for another 20 years. When the public finally learn the truth, they were left with one major question why had a former government agent lied about the potentially dangerous additive and why was he poisoning the water supply with it? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a power cast original every Monday and Wednesday, we dig into the complicated stories behind the world's most controversial events and search for the truth.

I'm Carter Roy. And I'm Molly Brandenberg.

And neither of us are conspiracy theorists, but we are open minded, skeptical and curious. Don't get us wrong. Sometimes the official version is the truth, but sometimes it's not.

You can find episodes of conspiracy theories and all other podcast originals for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to stream conspiracy theories for free on Spotify. Just open the app and type conspiracy theories in the search bar. This is our second episode on Fluoride.

The chemical is routinely added to public drinking water to strength and teeth, but critics warn it's toxic. So why are the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and the American Dental Association unwilling to listen to anti fluoride criticism?

Last episode, we explored the history of fluoridation from the Manhattan Project to today. We also investigated fluorides, potential dangers to the body.

Today, we'll discuss three conspiracy theories to explain why the government is pro fluoride conspiracy theory. Number one, fluoridation programs were part of a covert Soviet operation to undermine American health.

Conspiracy theory number two, the American Dental Association is in the pocket of corporations like Colgate, Johnson and Johnson and Big Sugar and conspiracy theory.

Number three, fluoride is a mind control drug and the government champions fluoridation to keep the population placid. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. Fluoridation has been standard practice in the United States since 1945, and after 75 years, it's still controversial. Scientists have linked fluoride exposure to bone cancer, lowered IQ and dental fluorosis. But the Centers for Disease Control and the American Dental Association endorse artificial fluoridation anyway.

It's almost like pro fluoride activists aren't interested in Americans health and wellness.

Perhaps they're actively working against us. Which leads us to conspiracy theory No. One. Artificial fluoridation programs were championed by undercover Soviet agents embedded in the United States government. The world's first fluoridation program launched in January 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, months before World War Two had ended. Even then, many Americans were suspicious of their ally, the Soviet Union.

American citizens feared that communist moles were everywhere, and their paranoia was later validated.

In the summer of 1950. The FBI uncovered a Soviet spy ring within the Manhattan Project. Numerous engineers had allegedly smuggled atomic secrets back to the Soviet Union.

More suspicious activity came to light in 1992 after the Soviet Union fell. The Kremlin admitted that in the 1940s, a Soviet spy named William Weiss band infiltrated an American code breaking operation called Venona.

At the time, U.S. officials were intercepting and deciphering Russian messages, and Weissman informed his Soviet handlers of what the Americans knew.

Then, in June 2010, the FBI arrested 11 so-called illegals deep cover Soviet agents who'd spent decades posing as ordinary U.S. citizens.

They worked as investment bankers, consultants, even travel agents.

Ten of these agents were deported back to the Soviet Union while one disappeared after posting bail. Their story inspired Joe Weisberg's fox drama, The Americans.

Although this deception was only revealed recently, it was reflective of the anti-communist paranoia that gripped the U.S. during the Cold War. And that paranoia was encapsulated by a group called the John Birch Society. Candy magnate Robert H.

W. Welch Jr. established the John Birch Society in December 1958 with a few goals in mind.

Keep the United States on the gold standard, oppose the alleged Illuminati Masonic alliance, and stop the spread of communism in the Western world. The society never made it beyond the northwestern U.S., but their rhetoric was influential.

Birchers financed political campaigns and published several pamphlets to educate the public on the dangers of communist espionage. They warned that Soviet agents had already infiltrated American schools and churches, and they zeroed in on fluoridation as a communist plot.

One chapter organizer named Murray and Rothbard highlighted the fact that private citizens didn't consent to artificial water fluoridation.

Instead, city and state officials had made the choice for them.

He believed forced fluoridation could set the country down a slippery slope. First, the government interferes with citizens medical decisions. Next, the United States succumbs to a communist coup.

That may seem outlandish, but officials did have a history of overriding the democratic process when it came to fluoride.

In 1949, the city of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, announced it was adding fluoride to its water.

The program would begin later that year, but local poet Alexander Wallace believed fluoride was a toxin, probably because fluoride was a common ingredient in rat poison at the time or the next several months.

Wallace spearheaded an aggressive campaign to turn the public against fluoride. He drafted a petition and garnered thirteen hundred signatures, which was enough to stop the Stevens Point fluoridation program, at least temporarily. The issue went to referendum, meaning the public got to vote on whether they wanted fluoride in their water or not.

In the lead up to the ballot, Wallace hosted numerous anti fluoride rallies, he distributed well researched literature, even that singalongs, he penned alternate lyrics to the hit song Goodnight Irene.

So the chorus became Goodbye Fluorine.

At one of these rallies, Wallace revealed a shocking truth to the people of Stevens Point. He didn't say how he knew, but he discovered the city was already fluoridating the water.

The fluoridation program wasn't supposed to begin until after the election in September 1950 and only if it passed the vote. Instead, every citizen had already been drinking the additives since that may, and they had no idea. Wallace's revelation contributed to the distrust of local government on September 19th, 1950. The public overwhelmingly rejected the fluoridation initiative, but Wallace's revelation inspired a bigger question Why would Stevens point officials betray their citizens?

Officially, the preemptive fluoridation program stemmed from hubris. The town council was so confident that the measure would pass, they started fluoridating early. But that may have been a cover story.

Perhaps the John Birch Society was right, and the officials of Stevens Point intentionally circumvented the democratic process, meaning it might have been a test run for a communist takeover. The test runs typically Prelude action. The Stevens Point fluoridation scandal never blossom to a full on Soviet coup. And there's no evidence that communist agents were involved in that process. The John Birch Society was prone to baseless allegations and conspiratorial thinking. They even claimed President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist agent because of his progressive economic policies.

Founder Robert Welch argued that communists would take over the world via the United Nations, and yet they never offered evidence for any of these claims.

By the 1960s, the communist fluoridation theory fell out of favor, even within anti Soviet anti fluoridation movements, the John Birch Society distanced themselves from their old conspiracy theories while they are still active today. They deny that fluoride and communism ever shared a connection.

Stanley Kubrick mocked the Birch Society's conspiracy in his 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, the movie satirizes Cold War era paranoia through the unhinged and ridiculous General Ripper. In a fit of paranoia, he triggers World War Three.

After ordering troops to nuke the Soviet Union, General Ripper then gives an off kilter speech saying, Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation, the fluoridation of water? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

In theaters across the country, audiences pointed and laughed. The idea that communists would want a fluoridate water seemed ridiculous even during the Cold War.

But we still have to rule on conspiracy theory. No one on a scale of one to 10 where one is completely unbelievable and 10 means it's true.

I give this theory a theory. There's no hard evidence that communist forces were interested in fluoridation. But spies like the Rosenbergs and the illegals prove that Soviets infiltrated American initiatives. So it's possible that some might have been involved in fluoridation programs.

Sure, it's possible, but there's no reason to think it actually happened. The only so-called evidence we have of the plot comes from uncredible sources like the John Birch Society, and they haven't earned my trust. I'm giving this theory a one out of 10.

The allegations are pretty incredulous, maybe because the truth lies in the inverse.

Fluoridation wasn't championed by foreign communists, but by American capitalists.

Up next, we'll follow the money behind fluoridation studies. Hi, it's Molly, in case you haven't heard, Parkhurst has an intense new original series. I think you'll really enjoy. It's called Medical Murders and it exposes the dark, disturbing and deadly side of medicine.

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Now back to the story. America's first artificial fluoridation programs began in the mid 1940s, and they were immediately controversial. Critics warn that fluoridation was dangerous, that preliminary tests were conducted without informed consent, and that it was all part of a communist plot.

But there was very little evidence of a Soviet connection to fluoridation programs. Instead, fluoride critics like the John Birch Society may have peddled conspiracy theories to protect America's corporate interests. Companies like HomeGoods manufacturer Procter& Gamble and Pharmaceutical Corp. Johnson and Johnson artificial fluoridation actually made these companies rich. When groups like the American Dental Association endorsed Fluoridation Corporation spun that into free advertising for their fluoride products. Which brings us to conspiracy theory number two, private corporations have championed fluoridation and covered up its dangers in the name of making a profit.

The aluminum company of America, or Alcoa, was one of the first corporations to get into the fluorite game.

They were a huge aluminum manufacturer and by the end of World War Two, they had dozens of factories throughout the U.S. and Europe. Alcoa was also highly controversial. Their working conditions were reported to be deplorable and their wages were notoriously low, their employees unionized in 1933 and staged many strikes in the following decade, and the bad press hurt their profit margins.

Then there was dentist Frederick McKay. He made things a lot worse for Alcoa in the 30s when he investigated Colorado Brown Stain.

This condition gave 90 percent of children born in the city of Colorado Springs and sightly brown stains on their teeth. But it was present in other areas as well. McCain noticed the discoloration was more common in communities near aluminum plants, so he suggested that aluminum caused the spots.

But that wouldn't stand for Alcoa executives. They encourage their chief chemist, H.V. Churchill, to test water sources near Alcoa factories to prove that aluminum wasn't to blame.

Churchill only partially fulfilled that objective. He found that there was no correlation between aluminum in the water and Co. BROUNSTEIN.

But he did find that fluoride, an aluminum byproduct, actually was the cause.

This discovery was a blessing in disguise, Alcoa executives didn't want to be blamed for brown tooth splotches, but they could reframe the narrative and garner praise for fighting the battle against cavities.

And Alcoa attorney named Oscar Ewing even left the company in the mid 1940s to accept a position as a federal security administrator. But Ewing was an attorney and a politician, not a doctor. Yet he still oversaw the U.S. Public Health Service. Under his leadership, the U.S. s endorsed water fluoridation as safe and healthy.

Artificially fluoridated water was a boon for Alcoa's bottom line. They didn't have to pay to dispose of fluoride waste anymore, and they didn't have to field criticism from locals who drank chemical runoff. Instead, they could sell fluoride to municipalities and make money off their industrial byproducts.

Today, artificial fluoride remains a multimillion dollar industry. A 2013 study estimated that nationwide 324 million dollars worth of fluoride was purchased for water fluoridation programs that year alone.

But industrial manufacturers aren't the only corporations benefiting from fluoride. The HomeGoods and pharmaceutical market also makes millions off the additive.

That's because dentists still endorse fluoride as a healthy medication and pharmaceutical companies, personal dental manufacturers and other corporations create products that use fluoride, these companies profit off dentist endorsements and then use those profits to make donations back to dental groups.

Everyone's on the take, so the cycle continues, according to a..

Fluoridation activist Carol Kopf of the Fluoride Action Network, the American Dental Association continually issues and updated shopping list. These items all have the ADA seal of approval and are supposedly good for your teeth. As of this recording. The list included eight Coalgate products, eight Johnson and Johnson products and 18 items made by Procter and Gamble. Most of the goods contain fluoride. Collectively, those and other companies donated over 28 million dollars to the American Dental Association between 2006 and 2009.

We should note that the A.D.A is a private business, not a government entity. They don't have the power to implement or discontinue water fluoridation programs, but they are considered an authoritative voice in the field of dental science.

So as long as the FDA approves fluoride products, they can't acknowledge that fluoridated water might be dangerous.

And in fairness, topical fluoride products have risks, too. Well, fluoride overdoses are rare. Over two thirds of cases occur because a consumer, usually a child, swallows too much fluoridated toothpaste.

But advertising those statistics could hurt sales. Instead, the ADA pretends that fluoride is always safe and healthy, no matter what the form, and they allegedly try to suppress its risks.

BuzzFeed reporter Neede Subrahmanyam described a chilling after effect in a. fluorides studies any time researchers uncovered evidence that fluoride might be dangerous. The ADA quickly arrived to dismiss the findings. Subaru Arman's spotlighted a 2013 study that suggested fluoride consumption in pregnant women could harm the fetus, specifically resulting in a child with a lower IQ.

Yet right after the findings were published. The ADA and the UK's National Health Services both publicly dismissed the study. They didn't offer counter evidence. They just said the study's conclusions were wrong. It's impossible to objectively discuss evidence when officials refuse to have a conversation about fluorides, potential dangers. They say it's because the science is settled, but maybe it's because they're thinking with their pocketbooks rather than their conscience.

And there are other companies with influence over the ADA, like the Sugar Research Foundation. That's a coalition of sugar manufacturers with one goal, as they put it in a 1949 document. They, quote, find how tooth decay may be controlled effectively without restriction of sugar intake.

In other words, fluoridated water is a godsend for the sugar industry. If it can reduce the rates of cavities, sugar won't be blamed for rotting teeth.

In his book, The Case Against Fluoride, chemist and anti fluoride activist Paul Connett noted that sugar lobbies paid considerable sums of money to water fluoridation research in 1949.

Additionally, Dr. Frederick Stehr of the Sugar Research Foundation gave pro fluoride testimony to the Food Nutrition Board in 1958. A decade later, Dr. Steyr added that fluoridated water was, quote, essential and even warned against fluoride deficiency, which is a baffling claim.

Fluoride isn't a nutrient. Many experts admit that no one is at risk of fluoride deficiency.

Instead, people need to be worried about fluoride, overexposure and all the skeletal conditions that come with it.

So it's very possible that the Sugar Research Foundation downplayed the compounds risks in the 1950s and 60s. As long as the average American had healthy teeth, there was no need to regulate sugar. And if a few people developed more serious problems, well, that wasn't the sugar industry's problem. This isn't the first time that a corporation has lied to protect its pocketbook. In 1999, the U.S. Justice Department successfully sued cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris for fraudulent and unlawful conduct. The corporation had hidden evidence of tobacco's dangers.

And yet, according to the Atlantic journalist David Heath, Philip Morris still releases misinformation about tobacco's cancer risks today.

But Philip Morris is just one company. The ADA, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control all support fluoridation, and they don't have the same financial incentive to lie. Furthermore, the CDC says that water fluoridation actually saves consumers money.

They claim that every dollar communities spend on fluoride saves a patient up to 135 dollars in medical costs. So if the ADA really was motivated by their profit margin, they probably wouldn't advocate for such cheap preventative care.

But it's undeniable that water fluoridation has ties to big business. I'll just look at the donations these companies have made to the A.D.A, which explains why authorities are so reluctant to respond to studies on fluorides dangers.

For that reason alone, I give this theory an eight out of 10. Maybe the first fluoride programs began with pure motives improve people's teeth, but I agree. These days, corporate dollars are obviously tied to artificial fluoridation programs.

And thanks to aggressive lobbying, the United States government may be willing to turn a blind eye to fluoride to risks.

In fact, some theorists believe that fluoride dangers are part of the appeal.

Perhaps agents within the CDC, the ADA and the show want you to be medicated.

They're counting on fluoride to dull your senses because the chemical can prevent you from resisting authority and make you easier to manipulate.

Up next, fluorides history as a mind control drug. Now back to the story.

Since 1945, various states and municipalities have added fluoride to their water supply. Evidence suggests that fluoride can cause health conditions, including dental fluorosis lowered I arcus or bone cancer.

Yet institutions continue to push the additive.

Conspiracy theorists have suggested that water fluoridation is part of a communist plot or that it's championed by big industries. But maybe the truth is more sinister. That's the idea behind conspiracy theory. Number three, fluoridated water is part of a federally funded mind control program.

Officially, dentist Frederick McKay was one of the first to theorize that fluoride in drinking water could strengthen your teeth. But according to a 1954 statement from chemist and author Charles E. Perkins, another group experimented with fluoride before McCay, the Nazi Party. According to Perkin's, scientists, working under a Nazi R&D initiative found that patients dosed with high concentrations of fluoride became submissive and docile, easier to control, which was what the Nazi party needed during World War Two.

They allegedly dosed Jewish communities with fluoride to make them more compliant during the Holocaust. We should note here that Perkins is the only source for these claims, most of which were vague.

He didn't say how the Nazis medicated the population or what concentrations they used, nor did he explore how Nazis discovered fluorides sedative capabilities. But there are fluoride critics who point to two factors which might make it effective for mind control.

The first is fluorides ability to diminish intelligence quotient. As we discussed in part one, a series of studies done between the 1990s and 2010 suggested that children who drank heavily fluoridated water had lower IQ use. The second factor is fluorides effect on the pineal gland. This P shaped gland accumulates fluoride as you drink it, and over time the gland calcifies.

Calcification is a natural process that can disrupt the glands functioning. It can also lead to sleep disorders, maybe even degenerative conditions like Alzheimer's.

As the name implies, calcification is the result of excessive calcium in the pineal gland. But that's not the only compound that plays a role. Hydroxy appetite can also cause calcification.

That's a compound made of, you guessed it, fluoride. In nineteen seven, Dr. Jennifer Luke of the University of Surrey in England found that fluoride accumulation in the pineal gland accelerated this calcification. Today, the pineal gland remains widely misunderstood. Same with the consequences of calcification.

Scientists know that the gland regulates the sleep wake cycle and female puberty, but it may have other functions researchers haven't yet identified.

Historically, the pineal gland was associated with cognition and spirituality, ancient Greek and Byzantine doctors believed it was the seat of memory. 17TH century philosopher Rene Descartes believed it was where the soul resided. Many contemporary New Age gurus believe the spiritual third eye is in the pineal gland.

Ultimately, the pineal gland and consciousness have always been inextricably linked, which may be why anti fluoride activists say that this effect on the pineal gland hurts your ability to think freely and resist authority.

That, coupled with fluorides IQ lowering properties, makes it the perfect drug to pacify the public.

According to author Charles Perkins, British soldiers were the ones to discover these Nazi mind control programs, then United States officials caught wind of fluorides capabilities, although Perkins didn't specify how. However, he did imply that the U.S. quickly implemented similar experiments tossing American citizens with fluoride just to see what happened.

This wouldn't be the first time the government illegally experimented on unwitting American citizens. The most famous and unsettling example was the Tuskegee syphilis experiments that ran from 1932 to 1972. A historically black university, the Tuskegee Institute, partnered with the Public Health Service to study the long term progression of untreated syphilis. They recruited 600 black men, 399 of whom had undiagnosed syphilis. But researchers didn't tell the subjects what they were studying or that they had the disease. Instead, physicians told the subjects they had, quote, bad blood.

For 40 years, doctors tracked the progression of their subjects syphilis. But they refused to give these patients penicillin or any other medication that could treat the disease.

128 participants died of syphilis related complications. 40 men unwittingly passed it to their spouses, 19 of those women transmitted it to their children during birth. Additionally, several more participants went blind or suffered from dementia as the disease went untreated.

Researchers conducting the study paid off local doctors to ensure these conditions went untreated because the participants were mostly poor black sharecroppers in segregated Alabama, they were unlikely to seek medical care elsewhere.

So it's not hard to imagine that the government or other health associations are still conducting experiments on powerless citizens and public fluoridation programs don't have an opt in feature. If your tap water is fluoridated and you don't want to drink it, your only option is to buy bottled water or install a filter. But ordinary Britta's don't remove fluoride. Only specialty filters can remove the chemical and they cost hundreds of dollars.

This means underprivileged people are more likely to drink that fluoridated water. And yet low income children still have more dental problems than high income children, even though their communities are fluoridated at the same rate.

Race and socioeconomics play a role as well, especially in the United States, where skin color and economic opportunity are inextricably linked. The CDC acknowledged that black children are more likely to develop dental fluorosis from overexposure to fluoride than white children. It's undeniable that people of color and people relegated to a lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately affected by water fluoridation.

But that doesn't automatically mean these communities are mind controlled. There's no evidence that suggests fluoride exposure makes people more compliant or changes their behavior in any way.

We know a lot about how mind control works or rather how it doesn't work.

Thanks to a declassified CIA project called M.K. Ultra from the 1950s to the 1970s, agents Dozhd ordinary civilians with hallucinogens, often without their knowledge or consent, just to see if they could be manipulated.

However, M.K. Ultra primarily focused on LSD. If the CIA knew Fluorite had mind altering properties, they probably would have looked into that compound as well. But there's no evidence they did.

Furthermore, Charles Perkins is the only source who claims to have firsthand knowledge of the Nazi mind control experiments, Perkins was an adamant anti fluoride activist and had a history of fudging the facts to advance his goals.

His book, The Truth About Water Fluoridation, made several accusations about the history of fluoride without any evidence to back them up. For example, he echoed John Birch style conspiracy theories about communist fluoridation plots, saying they were common knowledge and ironically, his claims of Nazi mind control programs didn't appear in his manuscript. Instead, Perkins made those allegations after publication in response to criticism over his lack of evidence.

Several critics, even within the anti fluoride community, dismissed Perkins work.

We have no reason to believe fluoride can pacify the masses, although we have reason to believe it can potentially affect IQ and calcify the pineal gland.

But some researchers think that fluorides dangers have been overstated. Let's look at those IQ studies. Dozens of teams explored the relationship between fluoridation and IQ, particularly in China. In 2006, they expanded their research into Iran, Mexico, India, Canada and Africa.

Many of these regions, like India and China, have extremely high concentrations of natural fluoride in their soil. It seeps into water supplies and exceeds recommended doses. Parts of India have naturally fluoridated water at concentrations above five parts per million.

The CDC capped American artificial fluoridation at one part per million, a fifth as much as we discovered last week.

Some countries, like China, found that it might decrease a child's IQ by about half a point. But that's hardly significant. Not to mention lower intelligence doesn't necessarily correlate with compliance. Then there are these arguments that fluoride can calcify the pineal gland. And that's true, but there have been no peer reviewed studies linking the pineal gland with submission. Fluoride induced calcification can lead to health problems, including sleep disorders or maybe Alzheimer's, but not mind control. Overall, I give this theory a two out of 10, yes, fluoride changes the way the brain works, but that doesn't mean it can subdue your will.

And since the only source for this theory, Charles Perkins, lacks credibility.

I don't buy it. I agree that it's unlikely fluoride can control minds, but that doesn't mean that the government didn't experiment to see what it could do.

As we saw with MK Ultra, groups like the CIA were very interested in identifying mind control drugs.

It's possible they tested fluorides capabilities and abandoned it as a failure.

Maybe records relating to those studies just haven't been declassified yet. I give this theory a four out of 10.

The truth about fluoride may not lie in dark conspiracies or nefarious government plots. In his book The Case Against Fluoride, Paul Connett acknowledges that fluoridation advocates probably have pure motives. The vast majority of people won't suffer from severe fluorosis or half a point in decreased IQ and fluorides. Dental benefits largely outweigh the health risks. The needs of the many outweigh the harm to the few.

When fluoridation programs began, dentistry was a fairly new and disrespected profession. Dentists were eager to prove they were trustworthy and that their vocation was rooted in science rather than folklore.

And when researchers suggested that fluoride could strengthen teeth, they had a narrative to latch onto. They could point to early case studies and chemical analyses to demonstrate the dentistry was evidence based.

By contrast, the early anti fluoride movement was riddled with conspiracy theories and baseless allegations. Groups like the John Birch Society made arguments based on emotion, not reason.

So the fluoridation debate split into two camps logic vs. emotion, science vs. politics. Evidence versus conspiracy theory. But things are changing from 1945 until 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended that communities fluoridate their water at a concentration of one part per million.

But in 2015, they and the CDC revised their recommendations, lowering it to point seven parts per million.

They justified the revision by citing all the fluoride products in the marketplace toothpaste, mouth rinses and dental treatments. They finally admitted that most citizens were probably getting too much fluoride, so they didn't need as much in their water.

And very recently, in June 20 20, an activist group called Food and Water Watch sued the Environmental Protection Agency to have artificial water fluoridation banned entirely. They cited several recent studies to demonstrate the dangers of fluoride exposure.

As of this recording, the hearings are underway in San Francisco, California.

If the plaintiffs win, the United States would have to drastically limit their fluoridation program after nearly eight decades. If they lose, well, they might still get a lot of press coverage and turn public support against fluoride.

Either way, it seems likely that sometime in the future, water fluoridation will end in the United States. And it may not be because activists blow the whistle on a conspiracy or because nefarious cabals are exposed. It will be because of the forward march of science.

Thanks for tuning in to conspiracy theories, we'll be back Monday with a new episode, you can find all episodes of conspiracy theories and all other podcast originals for free on Spotify.

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Until then, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth.

Conspiracy theories was created by Max Cutler in Dessaix Park, the studio's original executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, Sound Design by Trent Williamson with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Joshua Kern. This episode of Conspiracy Theories was written by Angela Jorgensen with writing assistance by Ali Wicker and stars Molly Brandenberg and Carter Roy.

Hi, listeners, trust me, you don't want to miss the intense new park EST original series, medical murders from trauma surgeons to hospice staff, medical professionals are trained to give exceptional care. But what about those who use their skills not to heal but hurt? Every Wednesday meet the worst the medical community has to offer men and women who took an oath to save lives, but instead use their expertise to develop more sinister specialties, follow medical murders free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.