The Search for Truth: Is Science Losing Ground to Religion?

Dec. 27, 2006 — -- The small Alaska city where I make my home is far from a backwater community. It is the state capital, and a college town, and because of its isolation it is one of the most "wired" communities in the nation.

So solid scientific facts are not hard to find. Just a click of the mouse can answer many questions.

That's why it was so disturbing recently when the Juneau city assembly ignored the advice of local dentists and several scientists and voted to stop adding fluoride to the city's water. We can get by without fluoride in the water, since good dental hygiene will protect our teeth from decay, but that's not the issue. The issue is a growing lack of public confidence in science, and that's something that all of us should worry about.

As Neal Lane, former head of the National Science Foundation, once told me, science is the driver of many forces, including our national economy.

The anti-fluoride campaign began decades ago as a darling of a right-wing political organization and propaganda still gushes forth. Yet the National Institutes of Health, the American Dental Association, the U.S. Surgeon General and many others have looked at the evidence and concluded that fluoride helps protect us, and especially our children, from cavities. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently hailed the fluoridation of drinking water as one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th Century.

Oddly enough, you don't hear much about chlorine, one of the most common chemicals used to purify our drinking water. Without it, we would spend a lot of time throwing up from sicknesses like giardia. So we add chlorine, despite the fact that it reacts chemically with any organic matter found in water. A common byproduct is chloroform, which the National Academy of Sciences identifies as a cancer-causing agent.

Instead, we ban fluoride. The logic flies in the face of science, and that's why it should concern us all. It's hard to look at public reaction to many issues -- from fluoride to evolution -- and not conclude that people, especially Americans, are losing faith in science.