So confident is Kennedy of Trump's unconditional support that he has already announced his first policy directive, effective on Jan. 21, 2025: an attempt to curtail the municipal fluoridation of American water that has been in continuous effect in most places for decades. Cities and counties dose their water with tiny amounts of fluoride, a naturally occurring substance, because study after study has proved that it prevents dental decay in children, who are saved from the grave health impacts not only of rotting teeth but the infections and disabilities that can follow.

Yet Kennedy somehow has come to believe fluoride is a poison that must be removed from water systems immediately. Perhaps he was influenced the John Birch Society, which has promoted the idea that fluoridation is part of a left-wing plot against Americans since the '50s. (Stanley Kubrick satirized this nonsense in his 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove," which featured a rant by the fanatical right-wing Gen. Jack D. Ripper, justifying a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union that will end the world: "Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?")

Although it's true that excessive consumption of fluoride can lead to ill effects, the levels of fluoridation in U.S. water systems are nowhere near such levels. That's why the American Dental Association and every other health authority have long supported fluoridation policy.

Whatever the source of his bizarre misapprehensions, Kennedy will sooner or later have to confront the simple fact that the scientific evidence shatters his baseless speculations, as it has on so many occasions. The most recent study of fluoridation's impact on human beings, and especially young children, comes from the University of Alberta in Canada. It was produced in the context of a decade-long debate in Calgary, that province's largest city, over whether to restore fluoride to its water supply after removing the chemical in 2011.

Published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health last February, the study of thousands of children in the cities of Calgary (with non-fluoridated water) and Edmonton (where water is fluoridated) showed that lack of fluoride had serious adverse effects on children's health. It had led to thousands of children suffering tooth decay so severe that they needed surgical care under general anesthesia, which is perilous for young kids and led to lasting impact on their health, schooling and emotional well-being.

Of course, the likeliest victims of Kennedy's conspiracy-mongering are the poor — including many lower-income Americans who voted for Trump at his urging. Should he succeed in outlawing fluoridation in water systems, it is poor children whose teeth will rot and whose lives will be blighted. More affluent and educated families will be able to provide fluoride treatment for their kids to save them from Bobby's destructive obsession.

The idea that such a radical scheme would go into effect on the first day of a new administration, without due process or reasoned consideration, is exactly the kind of maladministration we can expect from Trump. We've seen it before, after all.

But before any such anti-fluoridation scheme proceeds, perhaps someone should demand that Kennedy uphold his recent vow to restore our public health agencies to "their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science"-- instead of allowing him to impose his wacky views about fluoride on the entire country, without any study or evaluation.

Naming a health czar who parrots the superstitions of "Jack D. Ripper " is a bad omen of Trump's intentions. We're about to find out how far the new administration will veer into chaos, how much human misery this president will cause on a whim. The prospects are not reassuring.