Conspiracies Declassified

by Brian Dunning

  Then, in 1931, scientists working with Dr. McKay discovered that high natural fluoride levels in the drinking water were responsible for both the dental discoloration and the resistance to decay. High levels of fluoride in drinking water create dental fluorosis, or harmless discoloration. This very same fluoride confers a hardness to the tooth enamel that make it resistant to decay. If you wanted healthy teeth, it seemed you had to take the bad with the good.

  But many years of study eventually taught us that we could reduce the fluoride levels just enough to avoid the ugly dental fluorosis, but still protect against tooth decay. This level has been adjusted a few times, but the best data we have now shows that a level of 0.7 parts per million is ideal. When the city of Grand Rapids began a fifteen-year test of fluoridated municipal water in 1945, cavities dropped by 60 percent, making tooth decay a preventable disease for the first time in history.

  So how did we get from an important public health measure to a 1964 movie talking about it as a Communist plot? During the Red Scare of the 1950s—a period of hysterical fear of Communist influence within the United States—many patriotic Americans began taking a dim view of anything they perceived to be Communist or Socialist in nature. For some, public measures such as vaccination and welfare were regarded as the leading edge of Communism forcing its way into American society. Fortunately, this was still a fringe view that most people didn’t take very seriously, and by the time Dr. Strangelove was produced, irrational fear of fluoridation was seen by most as a comically silly viewpoint, so the filmmakers gave it to their character who had a mental illness. Although it was merely a Hollywood black comedy, Dr. Strangelove did have the effect of making fluoride conspiracy-mongering more mainstream.

  But then the 1970s came along with its hippie and New Age movements, where anything technological was out, and anything natural was in. As this perspective has become more and more popular in the decades since, concerns about fluoride in the water have grown increasingly common. In fact, for the first time in the history of modern medicine, we are actually seeing a public health measure beginning to fail as a growing number of cities and towns are deciding to take fluoride out of their water supply.

  The Explanation

  Whether conspiracy theorists like it or not fluoride is the thirteenth most common element in the Earth’s crust, so it’s naturally occurring in groundwater and is there to stay. It is not some evil man-made poison. Now, just because a compound is natural does not mean that it’s safe, but the toxicity level of every compound is determined by the dose. Just as oxygen is toxic at a high enough concentration, so is fluoride safe at a low enough concentration.

  Most anti-fluoride theorists seem to miss the idea that the term fluoridation often means reducing a high fluoride level. The goal is to bring the fluoride level to 0.7 parts per million; sometimes that means adding fluoride, and sometimes it means taking it out. Removing it is much more difficult and expensive, so some municipalities with naturally high fluoride levels don’t do anything about it. Now, the concentrations of fluoride found in natural groundwater are usually quite low, but are sometimes as high as 20 parts per million. Let’s take a look at the effects:

  • Below 0.7 ppm, your teeth are at increased risk of cavities.

  • Between 1 ppm and 4 ppm, your teeth are at risk of discoloration from fluorosis, which is totally harmless, just unattractive.

  • Above 4 ppm, you are at increased risk of skeletal fluorosis, which is usually without symptoms, but in extreme cases can cause pain in major joints. When Dr. McKay discovered Texas Teeth, the regions where he found it had naturally occurring fluoride levels of between 2 and 12 ppm.

  This is why regulators try to keep the levels below 4 ppm in all cases, and right at 0.7 ppm ideally.

  It is true that many countries outside of the United States do not fluoridate water, especially in Europe. Although the activists attempt to portray this as enlightened European recognition that all fluoride is poisonous, that’s not true. In these nations, they typically fluoridate salt instead of municipal water. The reason has to do with their infrastructure being different from that of the nations that fluoridate water. It is simply easier and cheaper for them to deliver the ideal concentration by adding it to the salt.

  Skeptoid ® Says . . .

  Hemlock, bubonic plague bacterium, plutonium, box jellyfish neurotoxin, asbestos, arsenic, mercury, anthrax, radiation, and rattlesnake venom are all 100 percent natural, and yet none are harmless. The same goes for fluoride.

  It’s important to note that the Internet is full of sites that provide incredibly bad misinformation about fluoride, much of which is untrue. These claims are so numerous that it is impossible to disprove all of them here. The bottom line is that if you have a question about the safety of fluoridation of water, don’t go to an Internet site that sells magical water filters or supplement products or superfoods they claim will remove fluoride. Instead, simply ask your dentist, who probably knows better.

  Plum Island

  * * *

  Date: 1954–Present

  Location: Plum Island, New York

  The Conspirators: US Department of Agriculture, US Department of Homeland Security, other government agencies

  The Victims: Unsuspecting innocent civilians

  * * *

  The Theory

  According to conspiracy theorists, Plum Island, New York, is home to a secret government laboratory. It’s been blamed for everything from creating bizarre hybrid creatures to creating diseases in order to wipe out large segments of the American population. Most notably, it has been blamed for creating Lyme disease and releasing it onto the public. Conspiracy theorists charge that Plum Island’s primary duty is the creation of germ warfare agents, which it regularly tests on the local population.

  The Truth

  The Plum Island Animal Disease Center works primarily to keep foot-and-mouth disease at bay to protect the American agriculture industry.

  The Backstory

  Plum Island is a real place, and has long been associated with the American government. The island is strategically located right in the middle of the narrow entrance to Long Island Sound, where most of New York’s busiest and most important harbors are located. Ever since the days of the American Revolutionary War, it has been under government control.

  In 1897 a defensive fort called Fort Terry was built on the island, but after World War II, the fort became obsolete. In 1952 the US Army Chemical Corps took a look at the island and planned to build a chemical weapons factory on it. However, the new buildings were taken over by the Department of Agriculture in 1954 before any chemical weapons work was started.

  It turned out that the Department of Agriculture was strategically more important to the United States than chemical weapons. Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a rapid-spreading viral infection, was turning out to be a clear and present danger to Americans, specifically via the livestock industries. FMD rarely kills the livestock it infects, but it makes them unsuitable for milk or meat production. Just think of the ripple effects throughout the economy and food security if a nation the size of the United States suddenly lost all its livestock industries: cattle, pigs, sheep. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) was established to work on treatments for FMD but also for all other threats to livestock: swine fever, vesicular stomatitis, rinderpest. The Department of Agriculture saw the same benefits as the Army did with the Plum Island location. It’s far out from shore, and so it is effectively isolated from the vulnerable population, yet it’s close to cities all around so workers could get there easily.

  On Plum Island the livestock are kept indoors, and the entire facility is negatively pressurized so that air only flows in, not out. The deeper inside you go to the higher security levels, the lower the pressure. Yet, at least twice animals have been found to be infected where they weren’t supposed to be, but all such accidents have, apparently, been contained within the facility. News reports of such accidents began to drive i
ncreased suspicion of the facility—suspicion that, at least at certain times in its history, was not entirely unjustified.

  Skeptoid ® Says . . .

  Plum Island’s history is not completely innocent. There is evidence that PIADC research was used in the planning of potential animal disease attacks against enemy nations in the 1960s. However, in 1972, the United States signed the Geneva Protocol and Biological Weapons Convention, banning all biological warfare. President Nixon did order all such research to cease, and from all that’s known from the PIADC records, it did.

  The main source of the conspiracy theories about PIADC was a 2004 book called Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory. Conspiracy theorist author Michael Carroll made many imaginative claims about the island, including one that said Plum Island created Lyme disease. Carroll also pointed to pretty much every animal disease outbreak on the continental United States that he could find and made speculative charges that Plum Island was somehow responsible. Carroll planted the seeds of conspiracy, and they’ve only grown—like a viral outbreak. For example, Plum Island was notably featured in a 2010 episode of the TV show Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, where he approached the island by boat and was refused permission to land, thus proving (according to the show) that the darkest of the theories about it must all be true.

  The Explanation

  Because FMD continues to be a serious concern, it is essential to continue to research treatment and prevention. So PIADC has their hands full with real work, that’s thoroughly proven to exist, and would scarcely have time or staff available for fanciful projects like creating hybrid monsters or unleashing disease outbreaks on American civilians for their own amusement. And when it comes to Michael Carroll and his claims of Lyme and other diseases? Lyme disease predates written human history; its bacterium was even discovered in Ötzi (also known as the Iceman), the ice mummy who died in the Alps 5,300 years ago. Carroll’s claims are clearly at variance with the known histories of these diseases.

  And when it comes right down to it, there is little secrecy at PIADC. The facility is well known, listed in the telephone directory, and shown on public map databases. The microbiologists and other scientists who work there are listed on their website, and they publish the research in scientific journals. A lot of them are from Yale University and the University of Connecticut. Many of them discuss their current projects on their pages at the PIADC website. Want to know what really goes on at PIADC? Email and ask any of the scientists who work there, using their contact links. You could choose to decide that they’re lying, but since their publications verify their work, you’d have a hard time proving it to anyone.

  But just because there’s not a lot of secrecy about the island, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get there. To maximize the containment of diseases and minimize any risk of anything getting out, access to the island is strictly controlled and visitors are seldom permitted. This is why Jesse Ventura and his camera crew were not allowed to simply roll up to the island and go blustering about, not because the scientists are secretly breeding hybrid monkey soldiers, or whatever it is that Ventura suspected.

  In addition, the events of 9/11 drew increased attention to the security at PIADC. It’s possible that some terrorists could break in, steal a disease agent, and wreak havoc on the American economy by spreading FMD or another disease. There was even a highly publicized strike by maintenance workers on the island in 2002, and since security can’t be maintained without maintenance, the striking workers were immediately fired and replaced—which highlighted another security problem: vulnerability to work stoppages. Security has been tightened since 9/11, while at the same time, containment technology has been improving to the point that the isolated location on an island really isn’t needed anymore. So it appears that the future of the PIADC will be to move to a new, modernized location in Kansas where the additional physical space and improved access will allow construction of a BSL-4 (biosafety level 4) facility. Level 4 is the highest level of safety, which simply wasn’t possible at Plum Island’s small and aging facilities.

  Skeptoid ® Says . . .

  The Montauk Monster was a dead animal found washed ashore on a beach in Montauk, New York, in 2008. It was unlike anything anyone had seen, so it was popularly believed to have been a horrific government-created hybrid beast that must have escaped from Plum Island. (Or a weird alien if you were watching History Channel’s Ancient Aliens.) Turns out it was simply a dead raccoon, which had decomposed so much in the ocean that it was tough for most people to recognize.

  FEMA Prison Camps

  * * *

  Date: ca. 1982–Present

  Location: United States

  The Conspirators: FEMA, the US military, other government agencies

  The Victims: American citizens

  * * *

  The Theory

  For as long as the United States has existed, the Constitution has allowed the government to deploy the military domestically during certain emergencies. These government powers are further defined by a number of statutes in addition to the Constitution, which describe the conditions under which they can be used, the scope of the deployment, who would have the authority to order this, and under what conditions.

  In reaction to the existence of these government powers, a community of conspiracy theorists exists that believes FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) maintains a nationwide network of prison camps intended for the incarceration, and possibly the execution, of millions of law-abiding American citizens. If the government has the power to use the military against its own citizens, they reason, huge numbers of citizens would be arrested and the military would need to have someplace to put them. Why? Well, so the government can impose martial law, and perhaps reduce the population to a more manageable size . . . or something like that. It is not often made very clear. Over the years, these theorists have named some 800 sites that they believe are the locations of these FEMA camps.

  The Truth

  FEMA does not have any prison camps being maintained in a state of readiness to incarcerate and execute law-abiding US citizens.

  The Backstory

  Article I of the US Constitution states (in part):

  Congress shall have power . . . to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and repel Invasions.

  The president doesn’t even need Congress to do the same thing: Title 10 of the US Codes allows the president to call up the military in support of civilian law enforcement agencies to suppress such things as insurrections, rebellions, and domestic violence—basically, riots.

  There has always been a bit of a back-and-forth struggle in efforts to limit these powers. The US Congress passed the Insurrection Act of 1807, which limited the president somewhat in his ability to do these things on his own authority, and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limited the president’s powers even more. But then, especially since the 9/11 terrorist acts, legislators have tried to roll back these limits a number of times, returning more power to the president, recognizing that in a national emergency the president can act more swiftly on his own.

  History gives us at least one such case when the president employed these powers to avoid congressional delays. In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the infamous Executive Order 9066. Fearful of domestic Japanese espionage and sabotage during World War II, Roosevelt ordered 110,000 law-abiding Japanese-American citizens rounded up and held without recourse in internment camps. Most lost whatever property they had owned, in addition to their liberty.

  All this, say the conspiracy theorists, is evidence that broad usage of the military against the citizenry is imminent. The first time this became a widely held claim was in 1982, when federal agencies held training exercises called Rex 82 (Readiness Exercise 1982) Proud Saber, in which they practiced dealing with a large-scale civilian emergency such as a major strike, an unlawful assembly, or a m
ass looting. They practiced martial law, arresting and holding potentially large numbers of people, and mass relocations. The exercise was well publicized, and the alternative media exploded with reports that what was happening was real and that FEMA was building camps all around the country to imprison civilians. Rex 82 was followed by a similar exercise, Rex 84 Night Train, bolstering the conspiracy theorists’ beliefs.

  Skeptoid ® Says . . .

  One of the most frequently seen manifestations of this conspiracy theory first appeared in the 1994 film America Under Siege by conspiracy theorist Linda Thompson. She went to an Amtrak repair facility in Beech Grove, Indiana, and asserted that it was actually a FEMA camp intended to hold massive numbers of civilian prisoners, and pointed her camera at the barbed wire atop its fences as evidence. (She apparently had not considered the possibility that Amtrak installed the fencing simply because it didn’t want to have its stuff stolen.)

  Many theorists feel that their beliefs were confirmed when then-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (most famous for punching a US Capitol Police officer when she refused to show required credentials for bypassing Capitol metal detectors) gave every indication that she fully believed these stories. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, McKinney announced to a press conference that 5,000 young men had been illegally arrested by the National Guard, wrongfully imprisoned, and then executed: