Quote Originally Posted by denuseri View Post

One should study history so that one does not repeat it.
Speaking of history, it strikes me that this single theme of panics about drinking water would be material for a thesis. I recall that in the Middle Ages, one of the recurrent excuses for pogroms against the Jews was the claim that they were causing the Plague by poisoning wells.

The fact that the more recent versions have so much involved threats to men's fertility and potency suggests the Freudian association between water and sexuality.

It also offers the familiar spectacle of the Right pointing its guns in exactly the wrong direction, since the real and well documented threat to men's fertility in the developed world is the prevalence of oestrogen analogues in factory-farmed meat and milk. And the same people who fear the government secretly medicating them would rise up to defend industry from regulation to prevent its free-enterprise hidden medication.