Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

mcgill.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 169 posts

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#71

Post by amenghra »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #54
xvector wrote: post #47

Wow, the FDA is worse than useless. So much regulatory red tape. These guys had every single reasonable safeguard in place and the FDA kept putting requirement on top of requirement until literally no one would qualify for the study. 20-30 years later and humanity has had precisely zero benefit because of the FDA's simply absurd, technically impossible level of overcaution in this scenario. It is incredible how much…

Why is all of humanity gated by the FDA? The FDA doesn't regulate every jurisdiction on the planet. Go take it to some other country if the FDA is the problem. Why didn't that happen here for many decades?

Some (most?) countries first wait for FDA’s decision before performing their own (lighter) reviews.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#72

Post by amenghra »

jolt42 wrote: post #22
pdabbadabba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you bring up fluoride—does anyone know the state of the literature on the effectiveness of fluoride treatments? I’ve been getting them for years. But with the recent trends towards PE owned dental practices and efforts to juice their profitability, I’m more and more skeptical of anything my dentist tries to sell me on.

Seems solid to me. They can predict reduction of caries before they add it to city supply water, which still happens in China I believe.

Majority of USA has fluoridated water per the cdc website. No need to go to China if you want data for studies.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#73

Post by mapt »

zenexer wrote: post #59
derektank wrote: post #50

It seems like FDA restrictions on clinical trials have really shot us all in the foot by depriving us the opportunity to collect data on this bacteria before it was made available as a supplement. There is clearly a demand for this product and it seems quite likely that Hillman et al could have gotten a cohort together to conduct a trial if they hadn't been faced with such extreme restrictions on testing. Why is info…

Because the participants could very easily spread it to other people. This wouldn’t just affect them. That’s why the trial was ultimately required to take place under quarantine. It’s not even a question of whether it would spread, but whether it might spread. There’s a reasonable chance that this bacterium would, in fact, spread, and nobody has proven otherwise. The FDA is doing its job here: it’s protecting the mas…

The FDA, however, is not regulating the spread of the 800 other known species of oral bacteria as well as presumably numerous unknown ones, which do cause some known harm. The extreme suspicion of commercially introduced anthropogenic agents seems a bit ridiculous in both natural ecology and the human microbiome. Prove this compound conclusively safe, but not these other ten million compounds we're just going to allow to run wild. Or for competitors - rely on the 'proof' of safety established in the 1920's or the 1970's before we had any idea whatsoever what we were doing scientifically. Or just rely on doctors/dentists unsupported first-principles advice - we've never demonstrated scientifically that floss works, for example.

We should all be quarantined, all the time, by this criteria. Regulatory bodies have a great cognitive bias towards fictional 'purity' of systems that are in actual scientific fact, messy and routinely contaminated in various ways.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#74

Post by ecuaflo »

derektank wrote: post #50

It seems like FDA restrictions on clinical trials have really shot us all in the foot by depriving us the opportunity to collect data on this bacteria before it was made available as a supplement. There is clearly a demand for this product and it seems quite likely that Hillman et al could have gotten a cohort together to conduct a trial if they hadn't been faced with such extreme restrictions on testing. Why is info…

Didn’t they have every opportunity to conduct a trial given they started outside the US in Prospera, an autonomous zone of Honduras?

“So to start, they’ll be selling Lumina in Prospera, a libertarian charter city in Honduras. Prospera allows the sale of any biotech product under an informed consent rule: as long as the company is open about risks and the patient signs a waiver saying they were informed, people can do what they want.”

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/defying-cavity-lantern-biow...

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#75

Post by [deleted] »

zenexer wrote: post #59
derektank wrote: post #50

It seems like FDA restrictions on clinical trials have really shot us all in the foot by depriving us the opportunity to collect data on this bacteria before it was made available as a supplement. There is clearly a demand for this product and it seems quite likely that Hillman et al could have gotten a cohort together to conduct a trial if they hadn't been faced with such extreme restrictions on testing. Why is info…

Because the participants could very easily spread it to other people. This wouldn’t just affect them. That’s why the trial was ultimately required to take place under quarantine. It’s not even a question of whether it would spread, but whether it might spread. There’s a reasonable chance that this bacterium would, in fact, spread, and nobody has proven otherwise. The FDA is doing its job here: it’s protecting the mas…

[deleted]

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#76

Post by jtc331 »

mishu2 wrote: post #43

It may still take us some time to reach that goal, but the good news is that we have an effective solution available right now: keeping good oral hygiene is known to prevent both caries and gum disease, and takes less than 10 minutes a day for the average person. If you need more information, we recently developed a free website to get you started: https://lifelongsmiles.hk/

My wife seems to be basically immune to cavities; I get them easily. I brush very carefully; she brushes only quickly. Our diets are the same — if anything she probably gets more sugar. We have the same water source. Etc.

Clearly there’s a lot more to this than what you’re claiming.

Unless you’d propose that all of my current problems are due to conditions while I was child or similar.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#77

Post by bondarchuk »

mapt wrote: post #73
zenexer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the participants could very easily spread it to other people. This wouldn’t just affect them. That’s why the trial was ultimately required to take place under quarantine. It’s not even a question of whether it would spread, but whether it might spread. There’s a reasonable chance that this bacterium would, in fact, spread, and nobody has proven otherwise. The FDA is doing its job here: it’s protecting the mas…

The FDA, however, is not regulating the spread of the 800 other known species of oral bacteria as well as presumably numerous unknown ones, which do cause some known harm. The extreme suspicion of commercially introduced anthropogenic agents seems a bit ridiculous in both natural ecology and the human microbiome. Prove this compound conclusively safe, but not these other ten million compounds we're just going to allo…

Breathing an 80/20 nitrogen/oxygen mixture is also not regulated, yet breathing mustard gas is. So biased.

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#78

Post by Loughla »

teslabox wrote: post #25
pdabbadabba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you bring up fluoride—does anyone know the state of the literature on the effectiveness of fluoride treatments? I’ve been getting them for years. But with the recent trends towards PE owned dental practices and efforts to juice their profitability, I’m more and more skeptical of anything my dentist tries to sell me on.

I learned about Novamin a few years ago [0], and ordered BioMin Restore [1] to give it a try. I'm now a devoted customer. There are other Novamin/hydroxyapatite toothpastes, but I only have experience with this one brand. I think this company's latest news is the version of their toothpaste that has fluoride [2] is now FDA-approved for sensitive teeth, so they're going to be able to sell it in the United States speci…

Is there any science available about that, that isn't from the company selling it?

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#79

Post by Zircom »

devbent wrote: post #29
teslabox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned about Novamin a few years ago [0], and ordered BioMin Restore [1] to give it a try. I'm now a devoted customer. There are other Novamin/hydroxyapatite toothpastes, but I only have experience with this one brand. I think this company's latest news is the version of their toothpaste that has fluoride [2] is now FDA-approved for sensitive teeth, so they're going to be able to sell it in the United States speci…

It has recently become harder to order novamin versions of sensadyne in the US through Amazon, so I'm hoping something gets onto the shelves soon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B06XK6XJBP?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...

Bought just this past Sunday and delivered this morning, had zero issues finding and ordering it :)

Re: Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated

#80

Post by ljf »

dtech wrote: post #69
bjourne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fluoridated drinking water may explain the difference.

UK tap water isn't fluoridated

Not strictly true: https://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/learn-more-about-your-water...

Quote:

The water companies that are currently required by the Secretary of State to fluoridate some or all of their water supplies are:

United Utilities

Northumbrian Water

Anglian Water

Severn Trent Water

South Staffordshire Water

Post reply on HN