Expertise, Health, and Popular Opinion: Debating Water Fluoridation, 1945–80

Abstract

Historians have often painted the 1950s and early 1960s as a time of technological optimism, faith in science and medicine, and belief in experts. In fact, there was more anxiety about medical and scientific progress than has often been acknowledged. This anxiety was perhaps most strongly expressed in one of the most hotly debated issues of the day – water fluoridation. Fluoridation referendums can tell us much about how voters responded to the voices of organized medicine and its critics. Doctors and dentists claimed that water fluoridation was perfectly safe and that it would dramatically reduce the incidence of tooth decay, and yet Canadians repeatedly voted against fluoridation in municipal referendums. There is little question that the 1950s and 1960s marked a high point in scientific optimism and faith in experts, but even then there were cracks in the facade. As with the concern over nuclear fallout and ddt, there was fear about where technology might lead us, concern that doctors and dentists might be influenced by large corporations, and worries that further research would show that there were dangers not yet known. In examining these issues, this article adds to a growing body of literature that no longer sees a significant break between the “conservative” 1950s and the “radical” 1960s, and instead suggests that there is more continuity between these periods than has often been acknowledged.