April is Autism Awareness Month,  I have learned from the splendid webzine/blog AGE OF AUTISM.  I’d been meaning to write something on this subject anyway, and so April, though waning, provides an ideal opportunity.

The fact is, I’ve long felt an affinity with autism parents in their fight to save their children damaged by a health system run amok.   My interest in the subject began well before I ever became aware of the dangers lurking in fluoridated water. 

More than 30 years ago I watched close friends struggle to raise a profoundly autistic child: at a time when the condition was virtually unknown, a dark mystery, hopeless, with no help to be found anywhere. Today, with one percent of American children diagnosed on the spectrum and amidst constant media attention, I see the same struggle played out in the home of my beautiful 7-year-old nephew.  Reading AGE OF AUTISM, learning the stories of all those brave and determined parents (and grandparents, and siblings…), gives me some perspective, and heightens my motivation to carry on in my own sphere of advocacy.

Indeed, these two parallel battles—against dangerous vaccines and against water fluoridation—have a great deal in common.  Both confront the same implacable antagonist:  a gigantic multi-tentacled government/corporate health bureaucracy,: immensely rich and powerful, served by an obedient, well-fed lapdog press, and utterly indifferent to the human misery it causes.   

Some time back, I had occasion to talk to Dr. Paul Connett, head of the Fluoride Action Network and a leading light in the anti-fluoridation fight.  In the course of our conversation, he made a particularly interesting comment. Speaking of the bureaucrats’ arrogant stonewalling in the face of mounting, irrefutable evidence of harm, he observed that if they ever admitted fluoridation was a mistake, vaccines would come next, a real problem for them.   .   

Indeed.  Just imagine all the litigation. 

Since the top leadership of such bureaucratic entities is self-selecting for the kind of sociopathy that doesn’t mind hurting kids, it’s unrealistic to expect they’ll ever come around.  We need to stop putting energy into trying to make them see reason, and instead, find ways to bypass them until such time as they can be replaced.  And that’s already happening.  Parents are ignoring the “experts” and resisting the outrageous vaccination schedule.  Health-conscious people everywhere are disregarding the “experts” and finding alternatives to city tapwater. 

If the autism/vaccines issue overshadows fluoridation in the media, that’s only natural.   The tragedy of austistic regression is often dramatic and immediate.  What could be more heartbreaking than the plight of parents who see their bright-eyed toddler slip away following a round of shots?  Autism has struck at an entire generation of our children, affecting schools, health care, the very fabric of American life, with no end in sight.   And while the medical establishment joins with mainstream media in a massive coverup and squanders untold millions on fruitless research designed to draw attention away from vaccines and toward genetics, courageous parents have banded together to share information, locate resources, and support each other on the difficult journey through a nightmare thicket of health problems to an uncertain destination.  Some call this the story of the century. I can’t say I disagree.

By contrast, mass poisoning through fluoridated drinking water is gradual and insidious.  Though all of those exposed –-about 70% of the U.S. population—suffer health harm, there is usually no obvious trigger event.  The toxin builds up silently in the body over months and years, working its damage on bones, thyroid, kidneys, to emerge later in life as a full-blown disease:  osteoporosis, say, or hypothyroidism.  Consequently, the subject is less “sexy”to a drama-obsessed press content to relegate it to light local coverage and Dr. Strangelove jokes.  Even the ever-increasing appearance of white specks on the teeth of young children from fluoridated areas—an early sign of toxic overexposure long dismissed as irrelevant by organized dentistry—has failed to spark any investigative spirit in the mostly bought-and-paid-for mainstream press.

We fluoridation fighters have got our work cut out for us.  Meanwhile, this month we celebrate the courage and strength of the autism community.  Who could be more deserving than they?