Mr. FORD. I do not think the Public Health Service or any other agency should be a propagandizing agency for any pet project that they have, but I think they have a responsibility to make what scientific data that they have available, available for communities which express an interest.

Mr. PELLY. Here is a program that is very controversial and on which scientists themselves seem to disagree, and it seems to me that the Public Health Service has taken upon itself to decide that it is scientifically justifiable and they have actually carried on a program of propaganda. I myself have no knowledge or basis for saying whether the program is good or bad, but I do object to the departments of Government accomplishing by regulation what is not the intent of the law.

Mr. FORD. I certainly concur in that general observation, but from my own experience and observation in my own community I doubt if anybody but the local people decided that they wanted the program. We decided it; we like it; and we certainly object to Uncle Sam telling us we cannot do it unless he wants to tell the communities that have natural fluorine they cannot use it either.

Mr. PELLY. We had some legislation recently dealing with the grants-in-aid program, and we were told if the Public Health Service desired to do so, with the Surgeon General's approval, they could take the grants-in-aid funds and finance fluoridation in a community. It seemed to me that was going pretty far.

Mr. PRIEST. Will the gentleman yield? I believe it had to be with the approval of the local community. They could not go ahead without the approval and cooperation of the local community.

Mr. PELLY. I would say they would not necessarily have required local approval but would have been financing a research program which would not require local approval or State approval.

Mr. PRIEST. It seemed to me that even in the beginning it required the cooperation and approval of the local community or the State, or whatever subdivision of government was involved.

Mr. PELLY. I would certainly defer to my distinguished colleague on health legislation, because he has had great experience in that. The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions? Mr. Younger.

Mr. YOUNGER. Mr. Ford, it is your idea, I gather, that you believe a local problem should be settled locally. Do you also believe it would be wise to have a local vote on the subject?

Mr. FORD. I think there should be a local vote if the local community thinks that is proper. If a local community does not want a vote, I do not think the Federal Government should impose its will in that regard either. I think that would be definitely beyond the authority of the Federal Government.

Mr. YOUNGER. There is no legislation that you know of about putting chlorine in water, is there?

Mr. FORD. I am not familiar with that.

Mr. YOUNGER. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions?

Mr. BENNETT. Have you given any thought to the question of whether the Public Health Service should be restricted in its activities in selling the idea of fluoridated water to States and localities? It has come to my attention that the Public Health Service over the

past few years has devoted considerable time to sending people around to States and localities in order to sell them on the advisability of fluoridating their water. I am inclined toward your view that the matter should be within the discretion of the local community, but I am wondering if it might not be advisable to give consideration to whether the United States Public Health Service should be limited in its activities to sell this program and to try to convince communities that are otherwise not interested that they should have it. In other words, should the United States Public Health Service be restricted in spending public money to go out and try to sell the program?

Mr. FORD. Mr. Bennett, I personally feel about the activities of the Public Health Service in this field as I strongly felt about the public-housing people going out in local communities and trying to impose upon local communities low-rent public housing. I violently opposed that, and I suspect I would oppose any propaganda_program by the Public Health Service in this field. Let me say I am not qualified to say whether or not fluoridation is successful except from what information is given to me. I am not a doctor or a scientist. But the proper officials in the communities I mentioned, who are technicians, do believe there are benefits from the program and they have convinced the govening fathers that it should be used. I do not believe the Public Health Service initiated the action the communities have taken. In the case of Grand Haven, I suspect that because of the success of the program in Grand Rapids, they followed suit some years later.

Mr. BENNETT. I am perfectly willing to leave the matter up to the people who are directly concerned. On the other hand, I question the wisdom of the Federal Government appropriating money for an agency to try to propagandize in favor of a program. In view of the controversial nature of the subject and the violent objection that many people and many communities have, I doubt the wisdom of having any agency of the Federal Government going out and trying to sell it.

Mr. FORD. It is pretty hard to try to draw a line of distinction. Will we get into the same problem as to whether we should adopt the program of immunization against poliomyelitis? The local people should decide whether they want their children inoculated, or whatever the term is.

Mr. BENNETT. Once you authorize the Federal Government to spend money to sell a program, you are giving that program the blessing of the Federal Government and whether it is good or bad or whether it is desirable in a particular community or not, you are nevertheless making a Federal program of it.

Mr. FORD. I think this committee probably would be the best vehicle to determine whether or not the Public Health Service has gone beyond its proper function.

Mr. BENNETT. That is all.

Mr. HESELTON. Have you seen the reports from the departments on this legislation?

Mr. FORD. No, sir.

Mr. HESELTON. With reference to the question of constitutionality raised by Mr. Springer, I would like to quote this sentence from the report of the Department of the Interior:

It would appear also that to the extent H. R. 2341 purports to control State action concerning local health matters it would be subject to constitutional objections.

I thought you might like to have that particular expression in your presentation.

Also, I thought you would be interested in this quotation from the report of the Bureau of the Budget:

Furthermore, the actual adoption of the practice of water fluoridation is, of course, a matter for decision by the local community and should remain so. It is believed that the States are quite competent to make such a decision without Federal intervention.

So apparently there is no disposition on their part to impose a Federal decision on the local communities.

Mr. SPRINGER. I have been looking at the Constitution here, and the only section which has to do with providing for the common defense and general welfare would be section 8. I see nothing in the Constitution relating to the word "health." I do not think health was considered when the Constitution was written, and there is no amendment that would bear on this at all. The question that arose in my mind was, if you can regulate this, why could you not regulate everything having to do with public health in any city? Why not regulate the size of a hospital in a particular city and how the hospital shall be conducted if we have this power over health? That is the point that has arisen in my own mind. I do not know what the decisions say. I think whoever wrote the bill tried to get around the constitutionality by these words

or make any water so treated available for general use in any hospital, post office, military installation, or other installation or institution owned or operated by or on behalf of any such agency.

I do not know; they might have some control over a post office or military installation, although it does appear to me that is stretching it to an extreme point. This is just a curbstone opinion, but looking at the Constitution, I do not see anything in the Constitution that gives power over health.

The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions?

We thank you, Mr. Ford, for your appearance here this morning. We are glad to have your views.

Mr. FORD. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. I have a list of witnesses prepared by Mr. Wier of those interested in this bill, and the order in which those names have been given to me would seem to indicate it was the intention to call Mr. Claude Palmer next. Is that right?

Mr. PALMER. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Palmer, if you will give your name and the position that you occupy and for whom you speak here this morning, we will be glad to hear your testimony.

STATEMENT OF CLAUDE N. PALMER, MEMBER, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, NATIONAL COMMITTEE AGAINST FLUORIDATION

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen.

I am Claude N. Palmer. I am a director of the National Committee Against Fluoridation, which is incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia.

I am employed as director of trade relations by a trade association in the fresh fruit and vegetable business. My appearance here has nothing to do with my commercial employment. I am appearing here solely as a member and director of the group opposed to fluoridation in Washington.

Mr. Chairman, with your permission we would like to change the order of our witnesses and have our counsel, Mr. Vincent Kleinfeld, follow me if that is agreeable.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to call to your attention, Mr. Palmer, and others waiting to testify either for or against this bill, that the tremendous schedule of work that this committee has before it has required it to fix a limitation of 3 days for the hearings on this bill, and we wish to hear during those 3 days those who are for and against, so that we would ask each of you to conserve time so that we may hear as many witnesses as possible. Otherwise, it will be necessary to take the statements of the witneses and make them a part of the record without their personal appearance. I might say in that connection we find very frequently witnesses prefer to do that, so that if there are any witnesses here today for or against this legislation who would like to present a statement and have it made a part of the record, if they would kindly notify the clerk, we will see that that is done.

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That is my intention and I think the intention of other witnesses for the Wier bill. I have filed a written statement with the clerk, and I intend to cover the salient points briefly, which I have in note form.

The CHAIRMAN. In the event you do abbreviate your statement, you may rest assured that your full statement will be made a part of the record.

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, sir.

If it is proper, I would like to say just a word or two about the testimony of the previous witness. Certain of his statements I am sure our group would agree with wholeheartedly.

Do you mind my standing, Mr. Chairman? I speak a little better standing.

The previous witness said that the results of fluoridation in Grand Rapids were "alleged." He used the word "alleged" several times. We find that most of the reports on the brilliant results of fluoridation on children's teeth are not based on a very scientific basis.

Also, the witness said that this is a matter for the States and local communities to decide. We would agree with this wholeheartedly if it were not for the fact that as some of the members of this committee have said, the Federal Government is already into that problem up to its neck. The Public Health Service seems to be the sparkplug that generates the desire for fluoridation in communities throughout the country and as far away as Alaska.

The previous witness has referred to Grand Rapids as a city of 176,000 people. If the people of voting age in the city of Grand Rapids had received information on both sides of this question, not merely the information that the United States Public Health Service and the local health officials wished to give them, if they had received a fair appraisal of the question of fluoridation on both sides, I doubt very much that_Grand Rapids would have fluoridation because, as your colleague, Dr. Miller, once said on the floor of the House, almost every time the question of fluoridation has come to a public vote, it has been defeated. We know of only one city, San Francisco, where a vote on the question won. In that case most of the people who voted for it thought they were voting for the continuance of the use of chlorine in the water as a purifier.

I am not a scientist. I have been a student of this subject for about 2 years. There are volumes of printed literature on the subject, excerpts from some of which I am attaching to my prepared statement. Just as a matter of information, the organization I am speaking for was the result of the efforts of two freedom-loving women who perhaps did not have so much objection to the presence of a certain amount of fluorine in public drinking water as they did to the fact it was being forced on them without their consent. Their objective was to give the public both sides of the story and they expected the District government to cooperate. However, whenever members of the District government were invited to appear, representatives of the District government refused to cooperate. In one radio broadcast of a half hour, 15 minutes were to be given to us and 15 minutes to the other side, and the local dental authority said he would not appear, that he preferred to let sleeping dogs lie. I do not know whom he was referring to as the dogs, but they were not there.

We have had various requests from various parts of the country, and from as far away as Alaska, to form a national organization which could spearhead this drive against compulsory fluoridation, and recently we changed the name from Citizens Committee on Fluoridation to National Committee Against Fluoridation. We were against this before, but some people did not quite understand that.

We have found great disagreement among the proponents of fluoridation as to the quantity, as to the method, and as to the results. You will find some disagreement among our witnesses. Some of the witnesses who will follow me may disagree with some of the things I say. That is because the whole subject is up in the air. It is unknown. Science does not know the effect of fluorine, even in minute quantities, over a life span. The question of deaths from heart disease and nephritis in Grand Rapids was brought up. We will not claim that the fluoridation of water had any effect in the deaths from those chronic diseases, but it cannot be proved that it did not.

In my prepared statement there are several references to the chemical properties of fluorine and its derivatives. I want to read one. paragraph from an advertisement of the International Nickel Co., which manufactures equipment for the handling of chemicals and apparently at last felt it had discovered a way to handle fluorine. The text is brief, and I quote:

Imagine, if you can, an element so fierce it burns up steel. One that claws its way through firebrick, makes water burn like alcohol, destroys almost every