"New York’s Fluoridation Fuss, 50 Years Later"

"In March 1957, as Elvis was buying Graceland and the Soviets were preparing to shock the world with Sputnik, Robert F. Wagner, the famously cautious mayor of New York, was having trouble taking a stand.

In two days, the city’s Board of Estimate would hold a hearing on one of the most contentious issues of the Cold War: whether to begin fluoridation of New York’s drinking water, which the Board of Health had urged more than a year earlier to fight cavities. Critics had denounced it as forced medication, dangerously toxic or a Communist plot.

'I need hardly point out what the stakes are,' Louis I. Dublin of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and former president of the American Public Health Association wrote to a supporter. 'A success here will show the way for the rest of the nation. Failure will encourage our opponents in their obstructive tactics resisting public health advances everywhere.'"

Ralph Blumenthal reports for the New York Times February 23, 2015.