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>The decision to put fluoride in municipal water supplies is based on its effect on dental health, not a priori reasoning about elemental weights. Yes, and the
by SilasX 3y ago
>The decision to put fluoride in municipal water supplies is based on its effect on dental health, not a priori reasoning about elemental weights.
Yes, and the decision to put lithium in municipal water supplies would be based on its effect on mental health, not on a priori reasoning about elemental weights.
Do you remember the comment you made? If not, I'll quote it for you:
>It should not be especially astonishing that public health programs for dental health and public immunity are substantially less controversial than putting a mood stabilizer in the water would be.
Your comment was an attempt to differentiate the two policies on the grounds that one is "for dental health" and one is "for mental health". I was replying that "what they're intended for" has no causal power (and thus shouldn't affect how controversial it is) -- the chemical mechanisms that play out don't look at policymaker intent. I don't know what you find so objectionable about that point.
As a courtesy, if you switch to a different, better argument, you shouldn't conflate it with the bad argument I was just replying to. But sure, I'll reply to the different argument.
>Despite your assertion, the effects of fluoride, including their effects beyond safe levels in water, have been extremely well studied.
Its understood now, was less so at the time. Doing it at the time seemed just as reckless as the lithium intervention, because the water supply is a system with many different touch points and many different interactions, same as with lithium and brains.
- woodruffw 3y ago> I was replying that "what they're intended for" has no causal power (and thus shouldn't affect how controversial it is) -- the chemical mechanisms that play out don't look at policymaker intent. I don't know what you find so objectionable about that point. It's not objectionable so much as it's backwards: policymakers can't control what a chemical or element does, but they can make policy decisions based on specific known properties of a chemical or element. It's not like we just YOLO'd fluoride into the water in the 1960s and have cargo-culted that practice into the present: the science on safe fluoride levels was sound back then, and continues to be substantiated by current research. I think you read too much about "intent" into the original comment. The comment's whole point was that fluoride's value for dental health is incontrovertible, and was incontrovertible ~60 years ago. That's how it fits into the above. If there was any evidence either now or 60 years ago that municipal fluoridation at CDC levels did anything except improve the public's dental hygiene, then there would be a reasonable call for controversy here. But no such evidence exists.