Bonus post: why would someone want to drop our kids IQ's?

This is a must read. The post is primarily about the fight to rid US cities of water fluoridation, which I've been very vocal about in the past. I've long been aware of the effect fluoride has--making people more passive and more easily lead, but the IQ reduction is a new angle.

You can read the full report here.

At present, 37 studies out of 43 done in China, India, Iran, and Mexico show water fluoridation lowers IQ in children. Even the lowest level of fluoride assessed in these studies – 1.8 parts per million– lowered IQ.

"That gives you no margin of safety to protect all the kids in the United States, or any large population," Dr. Connett says. "One of the things a toxicologist has to do is to apply a margin of safety to protect everybody, because some kids are going to be at least 10 times more sensitive than other kids. Once you've got the level that has caused harm, you've got to apply safety factors of at least 10 or probably 100... [T]here's no way you could condone the drinking of fluoridated water against this harm of lowering your IQ. This is very serious."

A Harvard study evaluated 27 of these studies. Twenty-six of the 27 studies showed a statistically significant reduction in IQ of seven points. Dr. Connett notes that if you shift the IQ of an entire population downward by just five IQ points, you will have halved the number of geniuses in society, and you double the number of mentally handicapped. To lose half of your brightest individuals, and double the number of people who needs special services certainly has enormous social and economic ramifications for a country like the United States in the global economy.