When did it become okay to cheat in order to achieve an agenda and amass power? That certainly wasn’t what I was taught in parochial school. Perhaps the change in our values originated in the writings of George Orwell who coined the terms “DoubleThink” and “NewsSpeak” to describe a world where the “Ministry of Truth” distributed deceitful propaganda in order to manipulate the minds and behaviors of the people.

In any event, SAPHE 2.0 (House Bill 4101) is poised to pass into law before mid-summer. It is a multi-year effort by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) to establish an “equitable and efficient local public health system” that keeps us all safe from whatever a handful of people at the top of the pyramid decide is pertinent, whether it applies to backyard chickens or school closures. Although it is ostensibly an appropriations bill, it is capitalizing on the pandemic fear in order to militarize public health with expanded powers, and its promotion is an example of NewsSpeak.

According to the analysis of University of Massachusetts Professor Peter Vickery, J.D., SAPHE 2.0 cedes law-making powers to a non-accountable entity in violation of our state constitution. And, although the state DPH may be involved, so are private organizations who are providing input including training modules. From my examination of a few of those training modules, the bottom line seems to be: Don’t talk to or listen to anyone who disagrees with decisions made by those in the chain of command above you.

Ultimately, what SAPHE 2.0 does is disempowers local Boards of Health (BOH) and residents by requiring municipalities comply with the “standards,” a.k.a. the foundational framework, identified by the DPH and administered by a regional leader. If towns and cities who have opted in don’t comply, they forfeit the federal funding available to their region. Even the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) has serious reservations about the financial impact from this vaguely worded diktat that has neither legislative nor local oversight.

If you manage to get ahold of the most recent DPH standards document underpinning the vague language in the bill, you see it includes a standard that participating municipalities increase the fluoride concentration in their drinking water to an optimal concentration. They do this despite the growing opposition to fluoridation programs due to scientific evidence of harm to susceptible populations who include pregnant women and their children, the elderly and those in fragile health, such as diabetics and anyone with thyroid, kidney, autoimmune or inflammatory disease.

I suspect that most of the local BOH that already have opted in didn’t read the fine print. Those communities include many that are already fluoridated and who have citizenry fighting it, like Rockport, and communities who managed to end fluoridation, like Amesbury. Communities that have never fluoridated, like Worcester, Leominster, Methuen and many communities on the Cape and in the Berkshires, have also been opted in by their local BOH. They will be in for a rude awakening in short order if the bill passes out of Ways and Means.

I suggest that residents in every Massachusetts community make a loud noise locally and on Beacon Hill, because if they don’t, they may find themselves captive to a militarized and Orwellian public health system that holds the strings to their purse. For more information, see: HealthRightsMA.org/tool-kits

Karen Favazza Spencer is a retired analyst from Leominster and a member representative on behalf of the Food & Water Watch in a lawsuit against the EPA, which claims the agency’s violations of federal law negatively affected children whose mothers consumed fluoridated tap water during pregnancy or used it to prepare infant formula.