Should we force fluoride?

Even if fluoride does prove to be beneficial to our health, is it really that cost effective to wash our cars and dogs with it too? Not only do we have to drink it, we have to pay for it as well.

While maybe it seemed like an easy option to just load up the town water supply with fluoride and be done with it, for all these years perhaps a more sensible option would have been to develop targeted interventions that didn't have to impact everyone.

Moving forward, for instance, we could focus on parent education and appropriate subsidisation of fluoride products to support the dentition of children. And in the meantime, academics can move ahead with their research and work out whether governments mandating fluoridation are doing us a favour or causing us undue suffering.

Whether or not fluoride is a health revolution or failure is open to discussion, but the whole issue does make one question the ethics of health policies that dabble in murky water. If we're not convinced of the benefits of a health policy, maybe we should fight for the right to make our own decisions around the issue - especially when it comes to matters that divide both the academic and general community.

Even with the recent changes in Queensland that will allow the fluoridation debate to occur at a local level, at the end of the day, someone will have the power to make a call on the behalf of a community and decide what's best for their health. Whether they actually know what they're on about is anybody's guess.

So like it or not, we could be sipping daily cocktails of a poorly understood substance which may or may not be in our best interest. At least with a martini you know what you're getting yourself in to. It's a shame the same can't be said about fluoride.