Meanwhile, an Update From the Great Big Fluoride Debate

It's been an hour and a half after the massively packed city hall hearing on water fluoridation got started, and we're still barely done with the scheduled part of the hearing—the high-powered and much-decorated parade of panelists and experts personally invited by city officials to testify on the health and economic benefits of fluoride.

Not that there hasn't been any drama. One woman, with a baby strapped to her chest, was escorted out after an outburst that came when Randy Leonard compared fluoridation to vaccination before the school year. A decent-size group of protesters gathered outside. Dozens of people have been forced into overflow rooms elsewhere in city hall and in the Portland Building. And, briefly, the whole thing had to be put on pause after the TV feed from the meeting went out—provoking, rumor has it, an angry mob outside the council chambers.

Mostly, though, the hearing has been sedate. Local dental experts showed slides detailing the deplorable state of our kids' dental health. There were stories of kids with tooth infections so bad they almost died. And experts from Kaiser and OHSU and, formerly, the CDC, addressed and debunked the series of studies that question the risk of insanely high doses of fluoride—doses we wouldn't be getting in Portland.

We were told infant formula is safe to mix with fluoridated water. That toothpaste is safe. That fluoride won't make your kids dumber or give you cancer. They also spoke about the millions of dollars that would be saved in dental care costs and emergency room visits if Portland invested in fluoride.

"The internet is rife with misinformation," said Bill Maas, a former CDC executive now working for Pew Charitable Trusts, who flew in from Maryland to speak.

Leonard said it even better: "If you've taken too much aspirin, it can cause severe internal bleeding and even lead to death. But every doctor tells someone my age to take an aspirin."

There were snickers and hissing, however, when one expert said it was "chaotic" and futile for one person to try to sort through the hundreds of fluoride studies all by themselves. Curiously, the city, I'm told declined an offer to have a separate panel of anti-fluoride experts present their own analysis.

We'll keep updating as more happens.

Update 7:20 PM: This is my last update of the night, five-plus hours in, even though dozens of people remain on the list. This last batch comes after Mayor Adams limited testifiers to two minutes, instead of three, and I have no idea how council will get through all of it before tomorrow morning. The mayor just left for an event at the convention center, but will be coming back. That left Dan Saltzman in charge, and he's been way less strict about shutting down outbursts and claps.

Frankly, we're hearing a lot of the same stuff on both sides now. And people are clearly getting punchy.

Kissing is bad for the spread of cavities, we heard. And I swear I'll start taking shots every time I hear the "Oh, you don't have Portland teeth" anecdote. Or the next time someone someone in the crowd mutters something about "strawman" arguments. In a SUPER weird twist, a woman also was accused of stealing someone else's bag—and maybe reading her testimony in front of council? The woman accused of stealing was roughly escorted from the council chambers, pulled up by a guard hard enough that she fell down, and cops were called.

So what else was interesting? One opponent brought a big graph that he says showed that dental costs in fluoridated parts of the region weren't lower than the costs in non-fluoridated parts. Sam Chase, Metro councilor-elect, joined the head of the county's health department, in making short remarks in favor of fluoridation.

A Harvard-trained Kaiser doctor said he didn't "think it was prudent to hold off on one of the top 10 advances of the 20th century" based on "flawed" studies on IQ and cancer effects.

"If I had even the slightest concern that adding fluoride to my water would put my wife at risk for cancer, or lower the IQ of my children," he said, "I would not support it."

Another fellow reading some anti-fluoride studies found out he'd only been given one minute instead of two, prompting the mayor to apologize: "We cheated you out of a minute." "What a surprise," the man went on, before mentioning corruption in the American Cancer Society and referencing a 300-page legal document he uncovered during research for a lawsuit. He did finish with a good point: "Fluoride will not take the place of parenting." And sugar.

Laughs broke out when one foe