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To be fair, drunk driving and unvaccinated kids both have quantifiable risks to innocent bystanders. Are those really comparable to dental caries? They are no

• 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.