[PLUG-TALK] topic of the day ... discuss!

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "glen" == glen  <gepr at ropella.name> writes:

glen> Russell Senior wrote at 05/03/2013 12:39 AM:
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation

glen> Strikes me as a very ham-handed and lazy approach to the problem
glen> of oral hygiene, an overly general modification to the
glen> environment in order to treat a very specific cohort of the
glen> population.  When applying overly general solutions to specific
glen> problems, you run the risk of an explosion in side effects.
glen> I.e. the cure becomes worse than the disease.  [...]

I think it's worth pointing out that there has been significant
opportunity to test these risks and they have been found to be very
low in practice.  Except for some mild cosmetic fluorosis of teeth, it
seems the risks (even if real) are very small and demonstrably not
explosive compared to the benefits.

General fluoridation of the water supply is ham-handed compared to
doing an assay of every meal to ascertain total fluoride ingestion.
And daily blood tests to ensure individuals are not accumulating a
personally toxic dose, along with periodic testing to ascertain what
their individual toxic dose might be.  It's a shame we can't do those
things at low cost.  Luckily, we have statistics, which lets us make
practical decisions based on populations and probabilities.

Is this really that different from putting iodine in salt?  Or vitamin
D in milk?  Or vitamin B12 (or whatever the hell they put in
"fortified" flour) in bread?  


-- 
Russell Senior         ``I have nine fingers; you have ten.''
seniorr at aracnet.com