801–810 of 1001 posts
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> via toothpaste. I wonder how many people really brush their teeth on a regular basis. > either campaign to change it or vote with your feet. I imagine that campaigning to change it requires notifying people there is a problem, and getting it into the news and spreading that news.
Sadly people that don’t brush are probably not drinking plain water either.
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This take has a few problems: Poor people in the US are capable of using fluoride toothpaste and flossing. At least at homeless shelters at outreach things I’ve been to, toothpaste and toothbrushes are freely available. Your argument hinges on them being incapable on the whole and needing a Benevolent But Superior Intelligence to provide an alternative for them. Second, it completely ignores any debate over effective…
“Objective truth” - I’d love to know how one goes about this, feels like a Nietzsche reading here would be helpful
I also love SMBC's explanation of this: https://smbc-wiki.com/index.php/2010-09-23
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The difference is that fluoride is effectively an industrial waste product and thus it benefits multiple parties to use it. If vitamins were also an industrial waste product, we would indeed be adding them to lots of things.
>The difference is that fluoride is effectively an industrial waste product and thus it benefits multiple parties to use it Source? Moreover, how much of a market can municipal water fluoridation create that companies would bother lobbying for it?
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In the political philosophy of the US, the unit whose freedoms matter is the individual, not the community. Freedoms for individuals necessarily come from reducing the freedom of "the community."
yes, and i think that’s a pretty recent reading of the US comprehension of freedom. my sense is that the collective individualistic tendencies have ballooned. even as recently as the early 90s, my civics classes emphasized the importance of other people’s rights and that of the expression of your individual rights infringed on the rights of others then it was an irresponsible and improper use of individual rights. it…
Putting fluoride in water promotes freedom. That sounds crazy, but let me justify it. If you are poor you can't go anywhere or buy anything. You're not free if you're poor. If you are sick, you may be confined to a hospital bed or not feel good enough to do anything. If you are sick you're not free. Putting fluoride in water reduces dental costs and incidence of cavities and therefore tooth infections, particularly a…
But you will brush your teeth anyway, and then you apply fluoride topically. It works. Here in Sweden we decided against fluoride for this reason and the fact that it is in fact toxic. It isn't sensible to use systemic exposure when we can use topical exposure and can improve mouth health by education, so that people do what they're supposed to. The fluoride approach achieves a basic level of health, but you can do s…
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> I wonder how many people really brush their teeth on a regular basis. Whatever the number is it's not appropriate for the state to medically intervene on their behalf.
Why not?
Why is it appropriate especially in light of many people actively opposing the intervention?
These are questions about what is the proper relationship between the state and the citizen.
And they are a litmus test for current political belief bifurcation in the US.
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> Second, it completely ignores any debate over effectiveness or side effects. It could well be that fluoride in water is great for teeth but bad for brains. Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains. > Im not clear the validity of those claims Thoroughly scientifically debunked. Repeatedly, over decades. > That seems the core issue- without bias from st…
> Thoroughly scientifically debunked. Repeatedly, over decades. "The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children" This is from an NIH meta-analysis. Its a pretty rigorous study. https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/... "It is…
How exactly do you propose we do this? It's tough to prove absence of harm.
The meta-analysis put together tons of research under different situations, and found a weak and relatively small dose-response relationship above 1.0 mg/L and failed to find a relationship below. The evidence between 1.0mg/L and 1.5mg/L is particularly weak. And, of course, most dose-response curves are sigmoidal, so the failure to find a response under 1.0 mg/L is most easily explained by the inflection point being above that level.
If you're not satisfied when combining 74 studies fails to find a relationship, will you be happy with 75? 76? 100?
(Sure, a big proportion of the studies and study power focused on higher levels of fluorination-- and I always support filling gaps in research; but it's not like we have an absence of research below 1.5 mg/L).
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You can buy a bottle of it, swish it around your mouth and spit it out. https://www.actoralcare.com/en-us/products/mouthwash/anticav...
Yes, I considered that, and I appreciate the suggestion, but I think it's not very office-friendly to spit out liquids.
That’s going to go poorly. A Canadian city removed fluoride from water in 2011 and reversed that decision 10 years later. There’s hard data on the effects and they’re not good [0]. [0] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed...