Fluoride: the mother of all band-aids

Not even the most wildly supportive research suggests that fluoridating water cures tooth decay. It merely defers the problem and the expense of treatment. The price for treating less decayed teeth now, is that someone in the future can deal with elderly people suffering continuous fractures.

You don’t have to look too hard to see why. Fluoridation lets government and Big Sugar alike look like they are doing something tangible about dental health without actually doing anything which challenges the status quo. At the same time politicians can justify the closure of public dentistry facilities (such as school clinics) because they have “solved” the problem. And they can defer discussion about who should pay for dental health until somebody else’s watch. Best of all, the “treatment” is administered without asking any voter to change their lifestyle.

Strangely, neither government nor Big Sugar appears to be contemplating the possibility of removing or changing the sugary drinks that cause the problem in the first place.

If mass medication is the way we solve society’s lifestyle influenced health problems, then why stop at fluoride? Bowel cancer is growing at unprecedented rates, so let’s back the Metamucil trucks up to the reservoirs and the bottling plants. Too many of us still smoke, so how about dumping a load of whatever they put in nicotine patches into the water as well. Maybe if we tip in a few hundred gallons of anti-depressant, we could even do something about our falling consumer confidence (there’s an idea, Kevin). The possibilities are endless.