USA - Tim Ryan’s Long, Weird History of Palling Around With Fluoride and Vaccine Skeptics

Tim Ryan’s Long, Weird History of Palling Around With Fluoride and Vaccine Skeptics

Why the 2020 candidate’s quest to win the “yoga vote” might come back to haunt him.

TIM MURPHY

Senior ReporterBio | Follow

At a 2018 question-and-answer session at a summit for wellness influencers in San Diego, an attendee wanted to talk to Tim Ryan about fluoride.

Ryan, a Democratic congressman from Northeast Ohio, had co-sponsored a resolution in 2015 hailing water fluoridation as a public health triumph. But the woman told Ryan that water fluoridation had given her severe acne. And as she recounted her subsequent investigation into its effects, Ryan’s position appeared to soften.

“Well you’ve already got me to reconsider,” Ryan told her. “I want to get you with my staff.”

“That’s government in action right there, folks,” he continued after the audience applauded. “We’ll get on it. And the stories—that’s how you move people, with stories.”

At that point, the moderator of the town hall, Mark Hyman—an Ohio physician who wrote the preface to Ryan’s second book—chimed in. “And it’s not just acne,” he said. “There’s many, many issues with fluoride.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said.

What does palling around mean?

Associate as friends or chums, as in Bill and Jim have been palling around for years . This expression makes a verb of the noun pal , which comes from the Gypsy word for “brother.” 

Never heard of the word before