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On August 19 2025 23:11 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2025 19:58 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On August 19 2025 19:10 oBlade wrote:On August 19 2025 16:50 KwarK wrote:On August 19 2025 14:40 oBlade wrote:
Article is pulling nonsense rhetorical tricks. Poisoning isn't mentioned "explicitly?" Poisoning in that sense is like when a kid drinks draino and dies. Nobody is for that. Fun fact, some fundamentalist Christian sects are for that. They call it Miracle Mineral Solution and they believe it cures everything. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/doj-press-releases-involving-fda-oci/leader-genesis-ii-church-health-and-healing-who-sold-toxic-bleach-fake-miracle-cure-covid-19-andThey’re popular with the RFK alternative health anti vax no COVID horse worm crowd. I know that you’d like to believe that they’d draw the line at fighting fluoride, a mineral that has proven repeatedly to be a public health miracle. I’d like to believe that too. I’d like to dismiss out of hand the idea that these people need to be stopped from drinking bleach. But we don’t live in that world, we live in the world where RFK’s alternative science alternative medicine conspiracy Christian nutters are drinking bleach. I do not dismiss the idea there is always a lunatic you can find under a rock somewhere. But even with fluoride in the water, this church is doing what you say. So let's not consider them in our worldview. Rabid opposition to public water fluoridation seems over the top. However, so does rabid defense of it to me. It may very well be a miracle. It remineralizes enamel so we don't die from our teeth in our 50s and 60s. But it's in toothpaste. We all have toothpaste and toothbrushes. And we also have the miracle of drills, anaesthetics, and polymers. Is there no risk in fluoride? There are studies of childhood IQ drops at like 3x the levels the US uses? We know fluoride, like anything, is toxic at the right levels. The question is how much and over how long. Seems fine to take a look at that to know whether the risk is worth it. On August 19 2025 17:32 Magic Powers wrote:On August 19 2025 14:40 oBlade wrote:
Overmedicalization - US medicates under 18 for mental health at least twice as much as the 2nd highest countries. This is 100% big pharma at work. There is nothing in the DNA of American children that makes them doubly mentally unhealthy as everyone else. Twice the drugs going out doesn't make you twice as healthy. Which medication(s) exactly are of concern if I may ask? Statins, opioids, and SSRIs (or really anything psychiatric, like ritalin). Those are the worst from the standpoint of waste and individual and societal dependence. + Show Spoiler +Antibiotic overuse is also a problem because of resistance, but it's a worldwide problem because patients and doctors everywhere are stupid and doctors are rushed and everyone wants patients to feel better. It's not one that's US specific, the problems in the US are related to being one of the only countries with direct to consumer prescription advertising, and with the lucrative bonuses for unscrupulous overprescribing. Like what happened to precipitate the opioid crisis. The same perverse incentives don't exist for antibiotics to my knowledge, although I wouldn't put it past them either. When someone comes in with the sniffles, and you give them a generic cephalosporin, there are not exorbitant kickbacks for that. Nor are cephalosporin people on TV saying "Got the sniffles? Ask your doctor for our antibiotics" the way they do with statins.
So the issue of our antibiotics becoming useless and superbugs outpacing new drug developments is a problem, but the things the HHS report addresses when it suggests tightening direct to consumer advertising and prescription incentives are different, and their own separate issues. There is a small degree of credit to the notion that people who are sicker need more medicine. However, that's an argument again in favor of making them healthier earlier to begin with. As a specalist dentist with 8 years of training and massive experience with dental research. If you’re saying that "we need to take a look at flouride" you are already with the wrong crowd. You are correct that water flouridation doesn't matter if the population is brushing with fluoride toothpaste. But it's not an area that hasn't been studied. People who oppose fluoride aren't on that side because to little research, it's just a thing they like to say because they know it's an effective argument. I personally don't care if people use fluoride or not, its their teeth. I feel bad for the kids some times tho. But man up and state if you pick either the side with medical consensus or the theory conspiracy side with "nuclear waste in water" people. As a side note naturally occuring fluoride in water can be (and often is) much higher then what is added. Studies on high fluoride content that give health effects are often done in areas where it's not filtered out. The dental effects of fluoride are not in question. You recognize it has potential toxicity since you say much of the world needs to filter it out, but we also need to add a bit to get into the goldilocks zone. Fluoride only has topical dental effects. It has no systemic role in the body, and the body doesn't use it in any part of metabolism. If you have too little of it, it doesn't imbalance a process that uses it by slowing it down. If you have too much of it, it doesn't accelerate a process that uses more of it. That we know, it only makes the surface of your teeth stronger, and is toxic to your brain and messes up your bones and other stuff if you have too much of it. The thing is "too much" is a population level measurement. If you drink a lot of water, you get a lot more fluoride. If you drink a lot of stuff that isn't water, it was probably produced using municipal water anyway right, meaning you also get more fluoride. As an individual a person won't necessarily show up in the population study even if it stunted their development by 5 IQ points, say, if it's within what background noise looks like and therefore not significant based on the size complexity and duration of the study. The most recent study from the US, from 2016 to 2024, affirmed that over the WHO limit of 1.5 mg per liter is negatively correlated with IQ in childhood development. The US used to fluoridate at 1.2 mg per liter, which is under the WHO limit, but reduced that to 0.7mg for whatever reason. How is a kid not at risk of losing IQ points in development if they, for example, over years, drink over twice as much water as average? + Show Spoiler +Like we all agree it's a dental miracle. But if it makes people's teeth stronger because they're too stupid to brush their teeth, but it drops IQ in kids so they grow up to become parents who are too stupid to get their children to brush their teeth so they have to drink fluoride, the circular effect might not be worth it.
Not that this is happening, but this picture demonstrates the principle of why you need to study things so the public and government can know the tradeoffs involved to make decisions. There is not a study, that I know, that shows 0.7mg is "safe" - or rather measures how safe it is - rather, there are studies that show 2 and 5 and 10mg per liter are dangerous, and the US set 0.7 below that conservatively, after 1.2 ended up not being conservative enough anymore. (Please let us know otherwise.) Yet we, and kids, don't just get fluoride from water. It's in toothpaste, it's in mouthwash, ye olde dentist applies it, and now people even get 1.1% prescription toothpastes. You have to constantly study this because the habits of the population change and their sources of fluoride change, and furthermore you can't rule in, you can only rule out. And the studies take a long time because human children take the longest time to develop. It would obviously be prohibitive to filter to 0.000000000000mg/L even in the worst case, and people swallow more than that from toothpaste, but that's not a reason not to study as long as the government runs the water supply. We get information, not policy, from scientists. Dentistry does not have a monopoly on the interests of water. + Show Spoiler +Let me use a wonderfully manifested analogy. Imagine there were a compound, soluble in water, that gave you a small SPF protection when applied topically. The compound didn't do anything else that we know, but if a population drank water with 3x the regulated level the US govt put in water, or 33% more than the world limit, adverse effects appeared and could be correlated at an identifiable rate in the population. And the government put it in water so people would, say, shower with it and this would hopefully reduce incidence of sunburn and therefore later skin cancer and so on. All great but there's nothing wrong with just applying sunscreen.
Thank you for this informative post about things I definitely didn't know.
Anyway (no sarcasm), if we want to have a debate on caries vs fluoride (which we don't, I mean I don't even like doing that when I get paid for it) you also need to consider:
patient centered risk factors, different types of screening programs (preferably also a comparison globally), individual risk assessment (and tools for that), biological; clinical; behavioural and social factors affecting caries, the different risks of fluoride, general and tailored delivery systems on population and individual levels, levels of natural exposure, different access to dental care, available infrastructure and the local economic situation, epidemiological and demographic variations, different ways to analyze risk and benefits, ethical considerations and historical context.
And I've probably forgotten at least as many variables that are important.
But it doesn't matter.
Because as a person, either you trust the experts, or you trust other sources. And either one is fine because it's an individual choice. But "we need more research" and "what if X" is incredibly tedious because everything and much, much more has already been considered, weighed and debated by said experts. It doesn't mean it's always right but at any moment it's the best we've got and it's not going to be any better because groups of uniformed people with an at best partial view of the problem (and at worst being batshit crazy) trying to argue against it based on their convictions.
I'm happy to answer questions professionally but I'm done with trying to convert people.
As a side note, I don't really have any opinions about water fluoridation because it's never really been an issue in Sweden, we solve it in other ways. But there are reasons, especially historical ones, for other countries choosing it as an option.
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On August 20 2025 02:39 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2025 23:11 oBlade wrote:On August 19 2025 19:58 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On August 19 2025 19:10 oBlade wrote:On August 19 2025 16:50 KwarK wrote:On August 19 2025 14:40 oBlade wrote:
Article is pulling nonsense rhetorical tricks. Poisoning isn't mentioned "explicitly?" Poisoning in that sense is like when a kid drinks draino and dies. Nobody is for that. Fun fact, some fundamentalist Christian sects are for that. They call it Miracle Mineral Solution and they believe it cures everything. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/doj-press-releases-involving-fda-oci/leader-genesis-ii-church-health-and-healing-who-sold-toxic-bleach-fake-miracle-cure-covid-19-andThey’re popular with the RFK alternative health anti vax no COVID horse worm crowd. I know that you’d like to believe that they’d draw the line at fighting fluoride, a mineral that has proven repeatedly to be a public health miracle. I’d like to believe that too. I’d like to dismiss out of hand the idea that these people need to be stopped from drinking bleach. But we don’t live in that world, we live in the world where RFK’s alternative science alternative medicine conspiracy Christian nutters are drinking bleach. I do not dismiss the idea there is always a lunatic you can find under a rock somewhere. But even with fluoride in the water, this church is doing what you say. So let's not consider them in our worldview. Rabid opposition to public water fluoridation seems over the top. However, so does rabid defense of it to me. It may very well be a miracle. It remineralizes enamel so we don't die from our teeth in our 50s and 60s. But it's in toothpaste. We all have toothpaste and toothbrushes. And we also have the miracle of drills, anaesthetics, and polymers. Is there no risk in fluoride? There are studies of childhood IQ drops at like 3x the levels the US uses? We know fluoride, like anything, is toxic at the right levels. The question is how much and over how long. Seems fine to take a look at that to know whether the risk is worth it. On August 19 2025 17:32 Magic Powers wrote:On August 19 2025 14:40 oBlade wrote:
Overmedicalization - US medicates under 18 for mental health at least twice as much as the 2nd highest countries. This is 100% big pharma at work. There is nothing in the DNA of American children that makes them doubly mentally unhealthy as everyone else. Twice the drugs going out doesn't make you twice as healthy. Which medication(s) exactly are of concern if I may ask? Statins, opioids, and SSRIs (or really anything psychiatric, like ritalin). Those are the worst from the standpoint of waste and individual and societal dependence. + Show Spoiler +Antibiotic overuse is also a problem because of resistance, but it's a worldwide problem because patients and doctors everywhere are stupid and doctors are rushed and everyone wants patients to feel better. It's not one that's US specific, the problems in the US are related to being one of the only countries with direct to consumer prescription advertising, and with the lucrative bonuses for unscrupulous overprescribing. Like what happened to precipitate the opioid crisis. The same perverse incentives don't exist for antibiotics to my knowledge, although I wouldn't put it past them either. When someone comes in with the sniffles, and you give them a generic cephalosporin, there are not exorbitant kickbacks for that. Nor are cephalosporin people on TV saying "Got the sniffles? Ask your doctor for our antibiotics" the way they do with statins.
So the issue of our antibiotics becoming useless and superbugs outpacing new drug developments is a problem, but the things the HHS report addresses when it suggests tightening direct to consumer advertising and prescription incentives are different, and their own separate issues. There is a small degree of credit to the notion that people who are sicker need more medicine. However, that's an argument again in favor of making them healthier earlier to begin with. As a specalist dentist with 8 years of training and massive experience with dental research. If you’re saying that "we need to take a look at flouride" you are already with the wrong crowd. You are correct that water flouridation doesn't matter if the population is brushing with fluoride toothpaste. But it's not an area that hasn't been studied. People who oppose fluoride aren't on that side because to little research, it's just a thing they like to say because they know it's an effective argument. I personally don't care if people use fluoride or not, its their teeth. I feel bad for the kids some times tho. But man up and state if you pick either the side with medical consensus or the theory conspiracy side with "nuclear waste in water" people. As a side note naturally occuring fluoride in water can be (and often is) much higher then what is added. Studies on high fluoride content that give health effects are often done in areas where it's not filtered out. The dental effects of fluoride are not in question. You recognize it has potential toxicity since you say much of the world needs to filter it out, but we also need to add a bit to get into the goldilocks zone. Fluoride only has topical dental effects. It has no systemic role in the body, and the body doesn't use it in any part of metabolism. If you have too little of it, it doesn't imbalance a process that uses it by slowing it down. If you have too much of it, it doesn't accelerate a process that uses more of it. That we know, it only makes the surface of your teeth stronger, and is toxic to your brain and messes up your bones and other stuff if you have too much of it. The thing is "too much" is a population level measurement. If you drink a lot of water, you get a lot more fluoride. If you drink a lot of stuff that isn't water, it was probably produced using municipal water anyway right, meaning you also get more fluoride. As an individual a person won't necessarily show up in the population study even if it stunted their development by 5 IQ points, say, if it's within what background noise looks like and therefore not significant based on the size complexity and duration of the study. The most recent study from the US, from 2016 to 2024, affirmed that over the WHO limit of 1.5 mg per liter is negatively correlated with IQ in childhood development. The US used to fluoridate at 1.2 mg per liter, which is under the WHO limit, but reduced that to 0.7mg for whatever reason. How is a kid not at risk of losing IQ points in development if they, for example, over years, drink over twice as much water as average? + Show Spoiler +Like we all agree it's a dental miracle. But if it makes people's teeth stronger because they're too stupid to brush their teeth, but it drops IQ in kids so they grow up to become parents who are too stupid to get their children to brush their teeth so they have to drink fluoride, the circular effect might not be worth it.
Not that this is happening, but this picture demonstrates the principle of why you need to study things so the public and government can know the tradeoffs involved to make decisions. There is not a study, that I know, that shows 0.7mg is "safe" - or rather measures how safe it is - rather, there are studies that show 2 and 5 and 10mg per liter are dangerous, and the US set 0.7 below that conservatively, after 1.2 ended up not being conservative enough anymore. (Please let us know otherwise.) Yet we, and kids, don't just get fluoride from water. It's in toothpaste, it's in mouthwash, ye olde dentist applies it, and now people even get 1.1% prescription toothpastes. You have to constantly study this because the habits of the population change and their sources of fluoride change, and furthermore you can't rule in, you can only rule out. And the studies take a long time because human children take the longest time to develop. It would obviously be prohibitive to filter to 0.000000000000mg/L even in the worst case, and people swallow more than that from toothpaste, but that's not a reason not to study as long as the government runs the water supply. We get information, not policy, from scientists. Dentistry does not have a monopoly on the interests of water. + Show Spoiler +Let me use a wonderfully manifested analogy. Imagine there were a compound, soluble in water, that gave you a small SPF protection when applied topically. The compound didn't do anything else that we know, but if a population drank water with 3x the regulated level the US govt put in water, or 33% more than the world limit, adverse effects appeared and could be correlated at an identifiable rate in the population. And the government put it in water so people would, say, shower with it and this would hopefully reduce incidence of sunburn and therefore later skin cancer and so on. All great but there's nothing wrong with just applying sunscreen. Thank you for this informative post about things I definitely didn't know. Anyway (no sarcasm), if we want to have a debate on caries vs fluoride (which we don't, I mean I don't even like doing that when I get paid for it) you also need to consider: patient centered risk factors, different types of screening programs (preferably also a comparison globally), individual risk assessment (and tools for that), biological; clinical; behavioural and social factors affecting caries, the different risks of fluoride, general and tailored delivery systems on population and individual levels, levels of natural exposure, different access to dental care, available infrastructure and the local economic situation, epidemiological and demographic variations, different ways to analyze risk and benefits, ethical considerations and historical context. And I've probably forgotten at least as many variables that are important. But it doesn't matter.Because as a person, either you trust the experts, or you trust other sources. And either one is fine because it's an individual choice. But "we need more research" and "what if X" is incredibly tedious because everything and much, much more has already been considered, weighed and debated by said experts. It doesn't mean it's always right but at any moment it's the best we've got and it's not going to be any better because groups of uniformed people with an at best partial view of the problem (and at worst being batshit crazy) trying to argue against it based on their convictions. I'm happy to answer questions professionally but I'm done with trying to convert people. As a side note, I don't really have any opinions about water fluoridation because it's never really been an issue in Sweden, we solve it in other ways. But there are reasons, especially historical ones, for other countries choosing it as an option.
We aren't living in history.
You are 100% correct that it's a historical accident that fluoride is the one thing we add to water, because one time people were too poor and too stupid to brush their and their kids' teeth with fluoride so we helped their teeth out a little.
Therefore the US should do it that exact way forever, and also Sweden shouldn't because that's just like the way it is and stuff. Even though looking it up, your country did at one point, and then stopped (and the US nearly halved the concentration like a decade ago as I already said, and as you definitely knew anyway). Maybe you weren't there to go "Trust the experts."
Your own country doesn't fluoridate tap water and you have a problem with my government's Health Department engaging in deeper research to further evaluate its own practices. That's amazing. There's just no other word for it. You're against knowing more about the one thing we do put in water, fine, do you have any opinion about something else new we might want to add to water? Otherwise this whole thing reads like a basic status quo appeal.
For example, the US fortifies flour with vitamins so people who eat like shit get more than basic carbs from it. Why not in water too? Or instead? Everyone needs water, flour doesn't make it to everyone, depending on diet, gluten issues, etc. Zinc's good for the immune system. Why doesn't the US put it in water? How about sugar? A nice boost of energy. Ah right, diabetics might have an issue. How about some isotonic saline? Get those electrolytes back? Forget fluoride, what does your scientific mind suppose the reason is that we don't add a single other supplement to water when it could be so beneficial?
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On August 20 2025 03:06 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2025 02:39 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On August 19 2025 23:11 oBlade wrote:On August 19 2025 19:58 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On August 19 2025 19:10 oBlade wrote:On August 19 2025 16:50 KwarK wrote:On August 19 2025 14:40 oBlade wrote:
Article is pulling nonsense rhetorical tricks. Poisoning isn't mentioned "explicitly?" Poisoning in that sense is like when a kid drinks draino and dies. Nobody is for that. Fun fact, some fundamentalist Christian sects are for that. They call it Miracle Mineral Solution and they believe it cures everything. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/doj-press-releases-involving-fda-oci/leader-genesis-ii-church-health-and-healing-who-sold-toxic-bleach-fake-miracle-cure-covid-19-andThey’re popular with the RFK alternative health anti vax no COVID horse worm crowd. I know that you’d like to believe that they’d draw the line at fighting fluoride, a mineral that has proven repeatedly to be a public health miracle. I’d like to believe that too. I’d like to dismiss out of hand the idea that these people need to be stopped from drinking bleach. But we don’t live in that world, we live in the world where RFK’s alternative science alternative medicine conspiracy Christian nutters are drinking bleach. I do not dismiss the idea there is always a lunatic you can find under a rock somewhere. But even with fluoride in the water, this church is doing what you say. So let's not consider them in our worldview. Rabid opposition to public water fluoridation seems over the top. However, so does rabid defense of it to me. It may very well be a miracle. It remineralizes enamel so we don't die from our teeth in our 50s and 60s. But it's in toothpaste. We all have toothpaste and toothbrushes. And we also have the miracle of drills, anaesthetics, and polymers. Is there no risk in fluoride? There are studies of childhood IQ drops at like 3x the levels the US uses? We know fluoride, like anything, is toxic at the right levels. The question is how much and over how long. Seems fine to take a look at that to know whether the risk is worth it. On August 19 2025 17:32 Magic Powers wrote:On August 19 2025 14:40 oBlade wrote:
Overmedicalization - US medicates under 18 for mental health at least twice as much as the 2nd highest countries. This is 100% big pharma at work. There is nothing in the DNA of American children that makes them doubly mentally unhealthy as everyone else. Twice the drugs going out doesn't make you twice as healthy. Which medication(s) exactly are of concern if I may ask? Statins, opioids, and SSRIs (or really anything psychiatric, like ritalin). Those are the worst from the standpoint of waste and individual and societal dependence. + Show Spoiler +Antibiotic overuse is also a problem because of resistance, but it's a worldwide problem because patients and doctors everywhere are stupid and doctors are rushed and everyone wants patients to feel better. It's not one that's US specific, the problems in the US are related to being one of the only countries with direct to consumer prescription advertising, and with the lucrative bonuses for unscrupulous overprescribing. Like what happened to precipitate the opioid crisis. The same perverse incentives don't exist for antibiotics to my knowledge, although I wouldn't put it past them either. When someone comes in with the sniffles, and you give them a generic cephalosporin, there are not exorbitant kickbacks for that. Nor are cephalosporin people on TV saying "Got the sniffles? Ask your doctor for our antibiotics" the way they do with statins.
So the issue of our antibiotics becoming useless and superbugs outpacing new drug developments is a problem, but the things the HHS report addresses when it suggests tightening direct to consumer advertising and prescription incentives are different, and their own separate issues. There is a small degree of credit to the notion that people who are sicker need more medicine. However, that's an argument again in favor of making them healthier earlier to begin with. As a specalist dentist with 8 years of training and massive experience with dental research. If you’re saying that "we need to take a look at flouride" you are already with the wrong crowd. You are correct that water flouridation doesn't matter if the population is brushing with fluoride toothpaste. But it's not an area that hasn't been studied. People who oppose fluoride aren't on that side because to little research, it's just a thing they like to say because they know it's an effective argument. I personally don't care if people use fluoride or not, its their teeth. I feel bad for the kids some times tho. But man up and state if you pick either the side with medical consensus or the theory conspiracy side with "nuclear waste in water" people. As a side note naturally occuring fluoride in water can be (and often is) much higher then what is added. Studies on high fluoride content that give health effects are often done in areas where it's not filtered out. The dental effects of fluoride are not in question. You recognize it has potential toxicity since you say much of the world needs to filter it out, but we also need to add a bit to get into the goldilocks zone. Fluoride only has topical dental effects. It has no systemic role in the body, and the body doesn't use it in any part of metabolism. If you have too little of it, it doesn't imbalance a process that uses it by slowing it down. If you have too much of it, it doesn't accelerate a process that uses more of it. That we know, it only makes the surface of your teeth stronger, and is toxic to your brain and messes up your bones and other stuff if you have too much of it. The thing is "too much" is a population level measurement. If you drink a lot of water, you get a lot more fluoride. If you drink a lot of stuff that isn't water, it was probably produced using municipal water anyway right, meaning you also get more fluoride. As an individual a person won't necessarily show up in the population study even if it stunted their development by 5 IQ points, say, if it's within what background noise looks like and therefore not significant based on the size complexity and duration of the study. The most recent study from the US, from 2016 to 2024, affirmed that over the WHO limit of 1.5 mg per liter is negatively correlated with IQ in childhood development. The US used to fluoridate at 1.2 mg per liter, which is under the WHO limit, but reduced that to 0.7mg for whatever reason. How is a kid not at risk of losing IQ points in development if they, for example, over years, drink over twice as much water as average? + Show Spoiler +Like we all agree it's a dental miracle. But if it makes people's teeth stronger because they're too stupid to brush their teeth, but it drops IQ in kids so they grow up to become parents who are too stupid to get their children to brush their teeth so they have to drink fluoride, the circular effect might not be worth it.
Not that this is happening, but this picture demonstrates the principle of why you need to study things so the public and government can know the tradeoffs involved to make decisions. There is not a study, that I know, that shows 0.7mg is "safe" - or rather measures how safe it is - rather, there are studies that show 2 and 5 and 10mg per liter are dangerous, and the US set 0.7 below that conservatively, after 1.2 ended up not being conservative enough anymore. (Please let us know otherwise.) Yet we, and kids, don't just get fluoride from water. It's in toothpaste, it's in mouthwash, ye olde dentist applies it, and now people even get 1.1% prescription toothpastes. You have to constantly study this because the habits of the population change and their sources of fluoride change, and furthermore you can't rule in, you can only rule out. And the studies take a long time because human children take the longest time to develop. It would obviously be prohibitive to filter to 0.000000000000mg/L even in the worst case, and people swallow more than that from toothpaste, but that's not a reason not to study as long as the government runs the water supply. We get information, not policy, from scientists. Dentistry does not have a monopoly on the interests of water. + Show Spoiler +Let me use a wonderfully manifested analogy. Imagine there were a compound, soluble in water, that gave you a small SPF protection when applied topically. The compound didn't do anything else that we know, but if a population drank water with 3x the regulated level the US govt put in water, or 33% more than the world limit, adverse effects appeared and could be correlated at an identifiable rate in the population. And the government put it in water so people would, say, shower with it and this would hopefully reduce incidence of sunburn and therefore later skin cancer and so on. All great but there's nothing wrong with just applying sunscreen. Thank you for this informative post about things I definitely didn't know. Anyway (no sarcasm), if we want to have a debate on caries vs fluoride (which we don't, I mean I don't even like doing that when I get paid for it) you also need to consider: patient centered risk factors, different types of screening programs (preferably also a comparison globally), individual risk assessment (and tools for that), biological; clinical; behavioural and social factors affecting caries, the different risks of fluoride, general and tailored delivery systems on population and individual levels, levels of natural exposure, different access to dental care, available infrastructure and the local economic situation, epidemiological and demographic variations, different ways to analyze risk and benefits, ethical considerations and historical context. And I've probably forgotten at least as many variables that are important. But it doesn't matter.Because as a person, either you trust the experts, or you trust other sources. And either one is fine because it's an individual choice. But "we need more research" and "what if X" is incredibly tedious because everything and much, much more has already been considered, weighed and debated by said experts. It doesn't mean it's always right but at any moment it's the best we've got and it's not going to be any better because groups of uniformed people with an at best partial view of the problem (and at worst being batshit crazy) trying to argue against it based on their convictions. I'm happy to answer questions professionally but I'm done with trying to convert people. As a side note, I don't really have any opinions about water fluoridation because it's never really been an issue in Sweden, we solve it in other ways. But there are reasons, especially historical ones, for other countries choosing it as an option. We aren't living in history. You are 100% correct that it's a historical accident that fluoride is the one thing we add to water, because one time people were too poor and too stupid to brush their and their kids' teeth with fluoride so we helped their teeth out a little. Therefore the US should do it that exact way forever, and also Sweden shouldn't because that's just like the way it is and stuff. Even though looking it up, your country did at one point, and then stopped (and the US nearly halved the concentration like a decade ago as I already said, and as you definitely knew anyway). Maybe you weren't there to go "Trust the experts." Your own country doesn't fluoridate tap water and you have a problem with my government's Health Department engaging in deeper research to further evaluate its own practices. That's amazing. There's just no other word for it. You're against knowing more about the one thing we do put in water, fine, do you have any opinion about something else new we might want to add to water? Otherwise this whole thing reads like a basic status quo appeal. For example, the US fortifies flour with vitamins so people who eat like shit get more than basic carbs from it. Why not in water too? Or instead? Everyone needs water, flour doesn't make it to everyone, depending on diet, gluten issues, etc. Zinc's good for the immune system. Why doesn't the US put it in water? How about sugar? A nice boost of energy. Ah right, diabetics might have an issue. How about some isotonic saline? Get those electrolytes back? Forget fluoride, what does your scientific mind suppose the reason is that we don't add a single other supplement to water when it could be so beneficial?
"Tell me you don't understand the contents of my post without telling me".
Like holy shit oBlade, it's actually impressive.
Your own country doesn't fluoridate tap water and you have a problem with my government's Health Department engaging in deeper research to further evaluate its own practices.
Nah dude, I have a problem with the people parroting "we need more research" towards the experts.
Newsflash, the experts actually want to do new research. They do it all the time. Your health department are supposed to have experts in it. They did this research because of many previous studies on the topic.
No one is saying *that* is the problem. In fact, it's the way it's supposed to work, and public policy is supposed to work over time.
Everyone (except you apparently) are agreeing that the problem is that there are groups of people with set beliefs actively working against public policy that is based on research and expert opinion and one of their foremost talking points is "we need more research", not as an actual argument to do more research but to shut down current policy.
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EPT
