One community fights back against government-sponsored water poisoning... Bravo, residents of Cumberland, Maryland! In a scenic city in mountainous western Maryland which marked the eastern boundary of the great, unsettled "frontier" back in the late 1700s, the pioneering spirit of what it used to mean to be American is alive and well. How so? Because a vocal group of the residents of Cumberland, Md. and surrounding Allegheny County are fighting tooth and nail to resist their local government's decision to pollute their drinking water with... The industrial waste product that's so poisonous, it was once legal to use only as a RAT POISON AND INSECTICIDE! I'm talking, of course, about fluoride. I know, I know - fluoride prevents cavities, right? Studies show that it really doesn't, but I'm probably not going to convince you of that fact in this small dispatch. But even if fluoride in the drinking water meant an absolute guarantee of never having to go the dentist again, EVER, you shouldn't consume it. Why? Because cavities can't kill you, but fluoride
can... And Marylanders in old Cumberland-town know it. They know all about the brain damage, premature puberty, cancer, and yes, even tooth discoloration that has been linked with prolonged fluoride exposure. They know all about the lead, arsenic, and other toxins that accompany the hydrofluorosilicic acid that the City Council wants to force down their throats. That's the reason they adopted a charter provision in the early 1960s that forever prohibited the fluoridation of their public water - and have fought challenge after challenge to it ever since... But now, that charter has fallen. In 2000, a City of Cumberland referendum laid low the fluoride prohibition. Since then, the residents of this historic mountain hamlet have been forced to quaff and cook with poison-laced H20. Some there haven't given up, though. Some determined western Maryland natives have brought suit against Cumberland and nearby Frostburg. And even though a federal judge in Baltimore (over 100 miles away, by the way) has tossed out the suit in a recent hearing, their fight continues... To them, I say: BRAVO! To you, I say: If you're drinking fluoridated public water, grab a shovel and start digging yourself a well (or else you may be digging your own grave). Failing that, buy a good-quality fluoride filter for your home's water supply - right now. ************************ Urgent Health Alert: Smokers, take up red wine drinking - NOW! I'm going to get in trouble for that headline, I just know it... But a new study conducted by Alexandra Hospital in Greece and presented at the recent Viennese convention of the European Society of Cardiology backs me up. The research focused on arterial function among cigarette smokers. According to the study's results, the significant arterial dysfunction that typically follows the smoking of a single cigarette was COMPLETELY ELIMINATED among test subjects who chased their nicotine with 2 glasses of red wine! That's right - the red wine "erased" the cigarettes' negative effects on arterial function! As for lung function, that's another matter, but this is encouraging news for smokers who fear (or who suffer from) smoking-related heart health issues. What's really interesting, though, is that part of the research studied the effects of red wine with NO ALCOHOL IN IT on arterial resilience - and found it to be just as effective as the regular, alcoholic red wine... Which means that something in red wine OTHER than the alcohol is responsible for its arterial health benefits. Given this, maybe some day soon, a safe-to-drink, non-intoxicating beverage, pill, or other consumable that counteracts the negative effects of cigarette smoking on the heart and arteries could be on the horizon... "Wining" about good health,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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