Both Sides of Fluoride Debate Create More Parody Pages

By AARON MESH

 It must be something in the water: Neither side on the May fluoridation ballot measure can resist setting up parody social-media sites mocking the opposition's message.

For the second time in two months, someone has set up a decoy Facebook page mocking the pro-fluoride campaign, Healthy Kids Healthy Portland. This page, called Healthy Kidz PDX, uses the same images of smiling children, but with the slogan, "Help Damage Our Brains and Give Us Dental Fluorosis."

The page contains status updates satirizing pro-fluoride arguments: "How many times do we have to tell you hippies, fluoride's not a poison in small doses? Just because there's no way to regulate the dose that you drink from the water supply doesn't change that. We're still pretty sure it's a small dose. Right? Yeah, it's small. Definitely smallish."

Healthy Kidz PDX has also started a Twitter account. It's competing with a Twitter account set up by a fluoride supporter to lampoon anti-fluoride campaign Clean Water Portland.

This Twitter parody is called Unclean Water PDX. Its tweets include:


Healthy Kidz PDX has 169 Twitter followers. Unclean Water PDX has three.

Both campaigns have decried decoy social-media pages and urged their volunteers not to create them.

In early February, Healthy Kids Healthy Portland was outraged by a Facebook page called "Healthy Portland Healthy Kids," which offered links to studies linking fluoridated water to cancer. The directors of the anti-fluoride campaign, Clean Water Portland, found the page's designer and made him take it down.

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