811–820 of 1001 posts
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I think one thing you're not considering (especially when you say we should vote with our feet) is poverty. It’s true that fluoride toothpaste is widely available, but for people in poverty, of which there are millions in our country, basic hygiene items like toothpaste and a toothbrush aren’t guaranteed. Neither is it guaranteed that everyone has a perfect daily brushing habit like the dentist tells us; there are pe…
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It is trivial today to get whatever level of fluoride is recommended for dental health, via toothpaste. So there is no compelling need to fluoridate as there exist viable alternatives to achieve the same that fluoridation is for any other purpose than dental health. In the USA, dental care is not covered by public insurance, and is an optional add-on to insurance through one’s employer. So without addressing at all w…
> This issue just doesn’t seem important enough to me to spend any effort arguing either way. Your comment is well-stated, and in the spirit of a free and liberal society. The problem—not with your argument, but with the world—is that today there seems to be literally no issue unimportant enough not to argue about, or use as the battlefield for an unending ideological proxy war. My guess is that few of the people arg…
So my instinct is to really be afraid of this anti-fluoride wave, even tho practically I don’t care one way or another.
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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…
> 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…
While I’m sure there are many causes I’m of the opinion that no stone should remain unturned when looking for answers. Fluorine in water has a viable alternative (toothpaste that is spit out) so out of an abundance of caution my preference is for unflurinated water. In my past life as an applied researcher I have learned to be rather distrustful of academia and the ‘science’ that is produced, ‘fruit from a poisonous tree’.
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Yes, I considered that, and I appreciate the suggestion, but I think it's not very office-friendly to spit out liquids.
Spit in the bathroom, not the office?
Anyway, an llm suggested that eating some almonds can help neutralize pH. This is the type of solution I can work with.
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…
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Canada does the opposite of America even if it hurts Canada - it’s a part of its identity. Redefining freedom as “forcing something on people for their own good” is not how anyone actually defines freedom. It’s like saying children have the most freedom because their parents force them to do things that will benefit them.
As a European who has lived in both countries I can only laugh at this. From our perspective, US and Canada are 99% identical, culturally.
It's interesting how the MAGA crowd keep looking for reasons why they dumb. One time it was the covid vaccine, now it's the drinking water. You just dumb, guys.
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Those are two odd examples. The Affordable Care Act is similar to the Netherlands health insurance system: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2011/lessons-abroad-du... (“These similarities are not entirely coincidental. American public officials, health industry leaders, and scholars made frequent visits to the Netherlands in the run-up to the debate over U.S. health care reform, borrowing ideas and, on occasion,…
The U.S. has a pitiful amount of high speed rail. It serves no point to mention that this pitiful amount of high speed rail is based off of TGV. The comparison to the Dutch healthcare system is not apt. While the Heritage foundation may used ideas from the Dutch system our system is quite a bit more Byzantine and inefficient. We spend twice as much per capita on healthcare and have worse outcomes and fewer people cov…
Why does the US execution not match that of the countries it looks into? I think it's because talented people in the US disproportionately go into the private sector, leading to an incompetent public sector. American distrust of their government is arguably justified.
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What I love about this comment is that one person thought "of course every other country just does the right thing when the US doesn't" and posted it, and then a bunch of other people thought "of course every other country just does the right thing when the US doesn't" and upvoted it, and not a single one of them thought to check what the "right thing" is. Meanwhile, back here on Earth-1, there's no right thing, and…
How much natural fluoride does Europe have in their water?
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So then, you'd also be against adding folate/folic acid to bread for the same reason? For those who don't know many countries including the US mandate the inclusion of folic acid in bread and certain other foods to ensure pregnant women get enough. A deficiency of folic acid during pregnancy causes birth defects in infants. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate
I am against adding anything to a whole population to treat a few, folate included. Here is why. Folate is a known stimulant of some cancers. https://aacrjournals.org/cebp/article/17/9/2220/169762/Folic... https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13668-018-0237-y https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1463-1318.... (And you know that the first line cancer treatments, like methotrexate, are anti-folates.)…
If we take your claim to its logical conclusion (that we shouldn't add those vitamins and minerals to our foods because they might hurt a small percentage of people), the other side of the coin is that we should _remove_ extra vitamins and minerals. If we don't, we're just implicitly medicating a whole population rather than proactively medicating them. Peanuts hurt some people; let's ban them everywhere. End-stage kidney patients without full renal failure often can't tolerate salt or phosphorus; let's not salt any of our food and ban the sale of eggs and meats. Diabetics can't easily tolerate a high glycemic load; let's be extra safe and not use any sugars or alcohols.
Or...make reasonable population-level interventions and let people with special needs handle their own special needs. There are gluten-free breads, no-excess-folate flours, and all sorts of things on the market.
While we're talking about baseline levels of B vitamins (folate), did you know that most bakers are also dumping a rich, broad-spectrum source of most B vitamins and trace minerals into your bread? It's not just folate. They then let that yeast further multiply for 2hr+ just to bump the vitamin levels up (or, worse, add extra yeast at the start to speed up the baking cycle).