Jesse Ventura's Prozac Ignorance

My daily break from all things serious is listening to "Darkness on the Edge of Town", the self-proclaimed "best in paranormal talk radio" show on 100.3 FM KTLK. Their guest last Monday was none other than former Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who is out promoting his latest book on conspiracy theories. Among the wacky ideas he was peddling was this doozy about fluoride in drinking water:


"Do you want to know who the first person was to put fluoride in water? The Nazis. Now I'll tell you why. Do you know what fluoride is the 90% main ingredient to? Prozac. So when you're drinking fluoride water you're essentially drinking liquid Prozac. That's called the dumbing down of society. Think about that. Yet they force it upon us and they tell us it's for our teeth."


You can download the June 6, 2011 episode from the KTLK website, and this comment was made at the 31:47 mark.


It's really disturbing that anyone would believe this, and even more disturbing that this type of sheer ignorance is being promoted by our former Governor. First, I'm not aware of any credible data that fluoride in drinking water has any type of mood-elevating or anti-depressant activity akin to Prozac. Second, there is no evidence that fluoride is released from Prozac when it is metabolized in humans. Lastly, fluorine is not the "90% main ingredient" of Prozac. Below is the chemical structure of Prozac (aka fluoxetine) and its elemental analysis showing that fluorine comprises approximately 18% of its molecular weight.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions about Governor Ventura's belief that this is a Nazi-inspired plot to control the entire United States population.