I watch a lot of health-related series online, or perhaps I should say I start watching a lot of them, because the quality varies widely, and sometimes claims therein raise my skepticism hackles enough to make me click the X.

I recently watched all 120 minutes of GMOs Revealed: Dementia in the Water with all my alarms blinking because the two guests were so far out in the ether they were mesmerizing. Both have theories that purport to explain every disease in America’s current pantheon of epidemics.

First up was Gerry Curatola, a dentist who claims fluoride makes bones as well as teeth harder but also brittle, and that long-time exposure to fluoridated water is responsible for a dramatic rise in hip fractures among older people, plus all those other diseases I alluded to. He also thinks the bacteria that cause both tooth decay and gingivitis are actually helpful in a healthy mouth, and that toothpaste is bad for you. Just keep your oral microbiome in balance and you will not only be disease-free, you will have sweet breath on waking.

The second guest, Stephanie Seneff, is a MIT researcher with a PhD in comp sci and a BS in biology who uses data search algorithms to find truth in science. Although she didn’t lead with this, she believes that vaccines may cause autism. First scientist on that team! The culprit is aluminum, and it’s one of the three things she thinks everyone should avoid being exposed to: the others are statins and glyphosate. Her primary contention is that our blood is starved for sulfates, mostly because of exposure to these three substances. Sulfates enable our blood to do its basic bloody things, like flow. She loves cholesterol, and claims heart disease, and especially thrombosis, is all due to sulfate starvation. She goes farther. Our bodies can produce sulfate from its parts if necessary, and that leads to other conditions: dementia if the brain is used, arthritis if the joints are used, and so on. She says flu is actually good for us, and helps the body produce sulfates.

Her work is under review but has not yet been accepted for publication.

I’m very open to long-standing beliefs turning out to be Bad Ideas. Antibiotics For All led to resistant diseases and dysbiosis. The food pyramid recommending 11 servings of grain per day, may as well have recommended a side of diabetes with IBD on top. And science never, ever claimed we need to drink 8 cups of water daily.

I even have read recently about the serious side effects of statins, not a habit to adopt casually. Nonetheless, parsing the number of extreme claims in this two-hour show felt like being subjected to a mental battering ram. Could any of these ideas prevail, and end up changing common practice?

A safe prediction: Not in my lifetime.