4 ms·

> (A good proxy for this stuff is asking anti-fluoridation advocates whether they eschew green/black tea or defluoridate their groundwater. If they don't do eit

> (A good proxy for this stuff is asking anti-fluoridation advocates whether they eschew green/black tea or defluoridate their groundwater. If they don't do either, then they're almost certainly in the "precious bodily fluids" crank camp.) Could be, but not necessarily. It depends on the justification given. You can choose to drink green/black tea or not, but you can't really choose where you have fluoride in your tap water, at least not practically.

woodruffw 2y ago
That's why I included groundwater defluoridation as a criterion. But that's also why it's a proxy, not a surefire way to determine someone's crank status. I'm sympathetic to the consent argument, on principle. But in practice people seem to have no objection to the government eliminating other degrees of choice, like drunk driving or sending your unvaccinated kids to school. So claims that municipal fluoridation at safe levels is a unique violation of consent comes across as special pleading.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  To be fair, drunk driving and unvaccinated kids both have quantifiable risks to innocent bystanders. Are those really comparable to dental caries? They are not contagious.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    There's a quantifiable economic risk: a society that has to spend more on addressing caries has less to spend on education, libraries, hospitals, defense, etc. (This justification is also not novel to fluoridation: compare smoking in public places, where indirect secondhand smoke is unlikely to cause any health issues for bystanders but is still rationalizable in terms of social benefit.)
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      The economic argument opens the door to a lot more invasive interventions. Why not add semaglutide? It is likely that obesity costs significantly more to society than caries. I do not like the smoking example much, either. Even if difficult to quantify, making other people breathe your smoke is obviously different than something where the consequences are guaranteed to be 100% your own (aside from the aforementioned economic argument).
      - woodruffw 2y ago
        For one, because we haven't done as much research on the long-term effects of semaglutide, especially on demographics it isn't current prescribed to. Fluoride, on the other hand, is well-researched. I think there's a larger argument about invasiveness being something that we can also quantify, and intervening on obesity is more invasive than intervening on caries, as you've noted. But the research argument above is perfectly sufficient on its own. If you don't like the smoking argument, consider enrichment/enforcement of foods (including public school foods). Iodized salt, enriched flour, fortified milk, etc.

woodruffw 2y ago

That's why I included groundwater defluoridation as a criterion. But that's also why it's a proxy, not a surefire way to determine someone's crank status. I'm sympathetic to the consent argument, on principle. But in practice people seem to have no objection to the government eliminating other degrees of choice, like drunk driving or sending your unvaccinated kids to school. So claims that municipal fluoridation at safe levels is a unique violation of consent comes across as special pleading.

rootusrootus 2y ago
To be fair, drunk driving and unvaccinated kids both have quantifiable risks to innocent bystanders. Are those really comparable to dental caries? They are not contagious.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  There's a quantifiable economic risk: a society that has to spend more on addressing caries has less to spend on education, libraries, hospitals, defense, etc. (This justification is also not novel to fluoridation: compare smoking in public places, where indirect secondhand smoke is unlikely to cause any health issues for bystanders but is still rationalizable in terms of social benefit.)
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    The economic argument opens the door to a lot more invasive interventions. Why not add semaglutide? It is likely that obesity costs significantly more to society than caries. I do not like the smoking example much, either. Even if difficult to quantify, making other people breathe your smoke is obviously different than something where the consequences are guaranteed to be 100% your own (aside from the aforementioned economic argument).
    - woodruffw 2y ago
      For one, because we haven't done as much research on the long-term effects of semaglutide, especially on demographics it isn't current prescribed to. Fluoride, on the other hand, is well-researched. I think there's a larger argument about invasiveness being something that we can also quantify, and intervening on obesity is more invasive than intervening on caries, as you've noted. But the research argument above is perfectly sufficient on its own. If you don't like the smoking argument, consider enrichment/enforcement of foods (including public school foods). Iodized salt, enriched flour, fortified milk, etc.