Comment by hayst4ck

What needs to stop happening is people ignoring objective reality just because the results happen to align with the other "team's" position on something.

"Out of a population of about three-quarters of a billion, under 14 million people (approximately 2%) in Europe receive artificially-fluoridated water."

The problem I continually see in the USA is the ascription of differences of opinion on [any topic] to America's Great Divide between enlightenment and barbarism. I find it often helpful to just check, what do these policies look like outside of America? It doesn't mean Europe got it right on fluoride, it just suggests against adopting the framing that your POV is 100% objective reality proven beyond doubt by Science™ and no rational person not in the throes of "own the [other team]" bad faith might disagree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_country#...

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you made multiple strong claims without a single citation or study link. We could have a better conversation with data to look at. There's a decent (though somewhat biased) review of the debate in [1]. It's worth noting that if you read the linked studies there closely you'll find the truth is, as usual, nuanced. Specifically, that "fluoridation is a population-level caries preventive strategy" [which may or may not be effective at the individual or small community level due to other factors]. I.e., good at the national level for statistically significant reduction of tooth disease incidence, but at less-aggregated levels the confounding factors like diet and how often/well people brush their teeth are going to be bigger determinants of efficacy.

It's also worth nothing that 1) over-fluoridation is pretty bad and can affect poor or malnourished communities (ex, [2]); and 2) there are alternatives to fluoride that may be equally effective with fewer risks at higher concentrations (ex. nano hydroxyapatite).

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2222595/

[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1064338060067811...

> Thoroughly scientifically debunked. Repeatedly, over decades.

"The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children"

This is from an NIH meta-analysis. Its a pretty rigorous study.

https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/...

"It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ"

This is why there's such a fierce debate. Based on the most recent scientific literature there seems to be evidence of a dose-dependent effect of fluorine levels in water and lowered IQ in children, meaning it has some kind of neurotoxic effect. But we don't have robust evidence to say 0.7 mg/L has a similar effect. That doesn't mean it is DEFINITELY safe, it just means more research needs to be done and the current research that does cover the 0.7 mg/L range may not reach statistical significance.

The fact though the NIH suggests 1.5mg/L is likely unsafe, which is only 2x what America's tap water contains, I would not blame people for being uneasy about. It is often the case the that the FDA regulates food additives that have potential negative side effects to be limited to concentrations 10x lower than what is seen as unsafe.

I am not suggesting it's a straightforward choice to defluorinate water, but I see people often repeating claims like you have that dangers of fluoride are "thoroughly debunked" and that's simply not true. I don't blame people for having that sentiment either, because 0.7mg/L is seemingly still considered safe, and some of the loudest advocates of defluorination have no shortage of thoroughly debunked crazy views on things (possibly due to brains half eaten by worms). It makes it very easy to brush off the skepticism.

But it's also important to keep in mind science is built on the premise that one must be ready to re-evaluate past assumptions when new data arises, and generally speaking the new data around fluoride I hate to say seems to show there is indeed smoke.

It's also the case that when the US initially fluorinated water supplies it was a massive public health success, but these days it seems to make a much lower impact now that fluoride toothpaste use is ubiquitous (plus the levels were lowered from 1.0mg/L in the 70s, likely reducing its overall effectiveness). It is IMO both very reasonable to fund more research into this to know conclusively if 0.7mg/L is indeed safe, and also consider public health policy that focuses on promoting dental hygiene through other means in places that do defluorinate.

I do not agree with Utah's decision here mostly because it seems to neglect that defluorination will create a void that requires other public health policy efforts to fill it, poorer and less educated communities will suffer unless government led efforts to promote and make dental hygine affordable are not also undertaken.

While I would like to think that I have gotten a lot smarter in the last 20 years it seems more likely that other people have on average gotten a lot dumber.

While I’m sure there are many causes I’m of the opinion that no stone should remain unturned when looking for answers. Fluorine in water has a viable alternative (toothpaste that is spit out) so out of an abundance of caution my preference is for unflurinated water. In my past life as an applied researcher I have learned to be rather distrustful of academia and the ‘science’ that is produced, ‘fruit from a poisonous tree’.

The conclusion from the largest and strongest studyies is that there is a certain level of fluoride that harms IQ: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/....

"The NTP monograph concluded, with moderate confidence, that higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children"

They found fluoride in drinking water concentrations was associated with lower IQ, the opposite of your claim of "proven safe".

Show us some evidence that is proven safe, so far as I can tell all evidence points to unsafe or "we're not sure".

> What needs to stop happening is people ignoring objective reality just because the results happen to align with the other "team's" position on something.

I couldn't agree more. The study that is cited above started when Obama was president by the way.

> Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains.

What's amazing is these anti-science wackos are rejecting the largest-scale experiment of all time, with the best evidence that anyone is ever going to have on the subject. We have both temporal and spatial boundary conditions with and without community water fluoridation, where a large population has it and another large population doesn't have it. There is no evidence that the without-fluoridation population has higher intelligence! There is a huge body of evidence that the people without fluoridation have more decayed teeth.

> fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains.

We can never be sure who funded the studies and whether or not the results can be trusted. Studies have shown that studies cannot be trusted. I err on the side of caution.

You're welcome to put it in your own drinking water if you trust the studies.

> What needs to stop happening is people ignoring objective reality just because the results happen to align with the other "team's" position on something.

Nobody can perceive objective reality. Everyone is delusional concerning just about everything. The people who think they know what's going on, are most delusional of all.

Dark times are ahead, I'm afraid, and people's trust-meters are going to be valuable again.

> Except it's not—fluoride in the drinking water concentrations is proven safe and it doesn't affect brains.

You mean like this: Fluoride Exposure and Children’s IQ Scores A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

"Findings: Despite differences in exposure and outcome measures and risk of bias across studies, and when using group-level and individual-level exposure estimates, this systematic review and meta-analysis of 74 cross-sectional and prospective cohort studies found significant inverse associations between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ scores. [...]"

Maybe you should reconsider that what you heard once was the definite truth.

"The problem is science challenges those who derive power from means other than reason."

There's been a fundamental shift away from science in the last fifty years or so. Some is understandable—chemical pollution, etc. which is unreasonably blamed on science instead of industry's bad behavior—but there's another thread running here and it's an anti-establishment one.

The question I can't fully put a measure on is why nowadays so many people automatically reject anything that's mandated by government even when they'll benefit from that mandate. The fluoride debate is somewhat akin to the vaccination one, rather than weighing up the comparatively minor risks versus overwhelmingly beneficial outcomes of those mandates they'll simply reject them outright.

That doesn't make much sense to me.

Tolerating this slippery slope that “theres always the other side” is how we got to a place where I have to vaccinate again for measles at 40 because there are people out there saying the measles vaccine isn’t safe.

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I don’t agree with the framing of “we are experiencing an assault on objective truth…”.

We are experiencing a challenge to some existing status quo practices, some of which have come out of science in the past.

But nowhere in any conversation has the dialog been “we must question status quo institutional knowledge, and objective truth, to dismantle the institution”. (That’s left speak, actually, and I am acutely aware of leftist circles where that is the conversation.)

Look at RFK Jr. This guy doesn't need power and control. He’s a whacko with some different beliefs about health—who fundamentally believes he’s making humans safer because of his negative lived experience with health policy in the US.

Occam's razor points to there being a credible benign reason for him to be motivated to challenge existing policy. (And if there is one area of science ripe for iteration, it’s nutritional health.) We don’t need to grab for more extreme alarmist narratives to explain what’s happening.

It simply doesn't take some autocratic utopian agenda to question whether fluoride is worth it and advocate for political change.

It’s honestly really disingenuous and disheartening to hear people towing this “the right is trying to dismantle the fabric of western liberal democracy and install fascism” line.

It’s even worse than that. People aren’t even voting for their own self interest. The people in the poorest states and in poor counties in richer states in the United States are consistently voting against universal healthcare, affordable post high school education and are cheering the government taking away services that they depend on the most.

There are two basic categories of causes.

The first is being pure anti science - anti vaccine, anti fluoride, etc

The second is they are more concerned about “God and guns”, immigrants, and the demographic shifts in the US than their own interest.

Oh and the third is the cult of MAGA.

I’m 50, Native born American and on a meta level it concerns me. On a micro level, me and mine will be okay.

While I am not one of these shrill people saying I’m leaving the US tomorrow, my wife and I are definitely putting plans in place to have a dual residency (not citizenship) in Costa Rica closer to when I get ready to retire.

You're close but still a bit strawmanny. If we want poor kids to have better dental outcomes we should do more than just flouridate. We should find out why the poor have worse dental outcomes and address the root problem(s), which I would imagine in the US is something like soda consumption or lack of dentists in poor areas.

Objective truth isn't something you can know, but it's a destination that must exist for pursuit of knowledge/curiosity to have any meaning.

With contradictions you know what is not true, and through knowing what is not true, you can approach what is true. Truth is expressed in consistency, not completeness.

That's why anyone should be extremely suspicious of anyone who is not, or doesn't care about, being internally consistent.

You're getting downvoted because you're retreating into philosophical nihilism rather than actually addressing the points. If you disagree with how people interpret the studies, the studies themselves, or how science measures reality - just say that.

I also love SMBC's explanation of this: https://smbc-wiki.com/index.php/2010-09-23

You're refuting a statment based on studies and statistics by anecdotal evedince. Also, GP never denied that flouridation is still helpful for non-brushing residents.

> I don't use a toothbrush or toothpaste, and haven't ever really, as my ASD makes it unbearable.

99% of the world does brush their teeth, so I don't see how this is relevant to their health.

Black Tea has an astounding amount of fluoride. You dentist is stupid for only asking where you live and not what you eat and drink.

As a recent QLD convert thanks for this. I had been wondering why the water up here was so hard.

Are you in FNQ? Around Brissie and the Goldie we're all flouridated.

I've heard similar rumours about army recruitment in the 80s though.

There is difference between banning and just deciding putting fluoride in public drinking water too. Who are they banning? Themselves?

Not really when it comes to government initiatives. They'd like the water plants to stop adding fluoride, so they make a policy that the plants should not add fluoride.

Yeah but anyone can buy fluoride toothpaste so not really banned.

You can add fluoride in your own water if you want to. Nobody is preventing your own freedom to drink fluoride.

I really don't agree with that Paracelsian view. Some substances are Paracelsian, other are like lead, and I'd place fluorides in-between these two, a neither fully Paracelsian or non-Paracelsian poison.

Fluoride exposure beyond a small amount has a statistically significant effect on childhood IQ: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

You have to drink 32 ounces of milk per day to get enough daily calcium.

Good link.

There a really unfortunate use of "significant" in that document. The scientific meaning and the general meaning will cause very different interpretations from laymen.

Generally not, but we choose where we take our from water from.

If there's too much fluoride in the rock water we take soil or surface water instead, for example. If there's too much fluoride in the water we do not supply it to people's taps, but this is for values like 4 mg/L.

So we mostly don't take any measures. In Stockholm it's apparently less than 0.2 mg/L though.

Yes, I was going to mention this. Had a friend who went down the coast for a day trip with a bunch of mates. On the way back on the train (1.5 hour ride) they had a competition to see who could drink the most water and most of them had several litres, a few of them managed a bit more. My mate also had a bunch of chips/snacks, but not everyone did.

Later that night, he got a desperate phone from his friends mum, screaming at him "What did you take! What drugs did you take!!!", he replied that they hadn't taken anything, but wasn't really believed. His friend was rushed to hospital with severe seizures and convulsions. The doctors eventually put him on a saline drip and he recovered.

Basically his friend lowered the salt content in his body so much that his body could not pass electrical signals. My friend was fine because he had consumed a bit of salt in his snacks. Kinda crazy.

Indeed: "Water Intoxication" - https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/water-intoxic...

Your GDP per capita is 50% higher than ours. You have money for this.

If there's no will to raise up the poor, you it should be straightforward to use the state directly to ensure that everyone is taught how to brush their teeth and ensured to have access to brushes and toothpaste.

I agree with this in an American context. In Sweden, it will be much less true. This difference can also however be attributed to government "interference" with higher taxation supporting better social care for those at the poorer end of the scale.

Freedom comes at a cost, the US and Sweden are paying that cost in different ways.

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https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP14534 is one study. We did earlier studies in the 50s when we made the decision to only use fluoride orally.

So anyone willing to tell me how this constitutes a low quality comment that warrants this reception?

This is factually incorrect. Even though in most European countries there is a formal separation of religion and state, there is nothing that "forbids" any political party from having a strong religious affiliation. In fact, in nearly every European country there are major political parties with a strong Christian affiliation. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_democracy

There are even countries which have political parties that are Islamic affiliated.

The separation between religion and state refers to two things: the state not being able to enforce any religious aspects on citizens (freedom TO exercise any religion without interference from government), and religious entities not being able to influence or pressure the government outside the electoral process (freedom TO govern without interference from religious entities). Neither of these things prevents a political party founded on religious beliefs to participate in the electoral process.

> The European way is all about having a strong firewall between religion and politics

I find this quite contrary to my experience of e.g. modern Germany, Spain, Poland, Italy where many politicians are explicitly religious, laws are written with majority religious affiliation in mind, religious taxes may still be levied. Even France still feels in many ways like a "catholic country", even if they do have good explicit separation of church and state.

I would have said that government and (Christian) religion are completely inextricable for most Europeans, even if the majority of the population isn't seriously devout or even practicing.

> Canada does the opposite of America even if it hurts Canada - it’s a part of its identity.

As a duel citizen of the US and another Commonwealth nation, I have to say that this is exactly the ridiculous self-caricature perspective that gives foreign nationals a sort of combination of pity and contempt for the average US citizen.

While it's true that your cartoonish portrayal of freedom is one possible interpretation, there are most certainly others, many of which present citizens with actual measurable freedoms that they would not enjoy in the US.

For instance, Australians have, since the late 1990s, been relatively free of mass shootings, especially in schools or other public areas. Because the police are allowed to force you to take a random breathalyser test without probable cause, we are generally substantially freer of drunk driving. Because we have a social safety net, people are free from the need to opt out of life saving surgery because they fear the abject economic violence that the US visits upon the "uninsured".

On the other hand, the US has substantially more sensible libel laws than most Commonwealth countries. These things can cut both ways, but it would be a mistake to interpret other countries as attempting a childish breath holding exercise just to differentiate themselves from the hip and cool nation.

"freedom from", you will not be given a prevention from some horrible disease. You can buy it if you can afford it, but a significant portion of the population can't, and some of them will not be able to enjoy life because of it.

"freedom to", a prevention will be provided. You can always decide to take alternatives, if you can afford it. A significant portion of the population can't. They will be able to enjoy life.

Equating freedom with the liberties the rich have is absurd. In any society, the rich will have the most freedom, even in the most oppressive ones. The true litmus test for freedom is seeing the freedoms the poor can enjoy. By that standard, the US doesn't score very well.

As a European who has lived in both countries I can only laugh at this. From our perspective, US and Canada are 99% identical, culturally.

> Freedom applies to individuals, not collectives.

In the US, it most certainly does. We have freedom to associate, and associations also have freedoms. Were it not so, we wouldn't have even been able to arrive at the conclusion we have with regard to corporate money in politics.

But nobody is forced to drink municipal water. You can go to the grocery and pallets of gallon jugs if you prefer.

yes, and i think that’s a pretty recent reading of the US comprehension of freedom. my sense is that the collective individualistic tendencies have ballooned.

even as recently as the early 90s, my civics classes emphasized the importance of other people’s rights and that of the expression of your individual rights infringed on the rights of others then it was an irresponsible and improper use of individual rights.

it seems like this has devolved into people whose perspective on individual rights loosely aligns enough to coalesce and shout the loudest to create policy. until someone in the in-group’s individual freedom is impacted and the group fractures into smaller coalitions. rinse. lather. repeat.

Why are the remaining individuals in the community forced to include your individual in their decisions?

(I'm not being serious, I'm pointing out that you may not have found your first principle just yet)

AKA as the spoiled brat kind of freedom.

But, taking the individual freedom argument to its ultimate implications, the Free individual is also Free to not drink tap water in a community that decided to add fluoride to their water supply, and is also Free to move to a community that decided against it.

In reality though, the freedom of the companies, which is just the freedom of the super rich ~100 - 1000 people (proxied via companies without taking direct responsibility: The sacred duty of company is to maximize shareholder returns!)

10,000 food additives that are banned in Europe are perfectly fine in US.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-food-additives-banned-europe...

https://isitclean.org/the-ingredients-banned-in-the-eu-but-l...

You joke, but a lot of these freedom-rah-rah-rah people absolutely cried like babies and resisted seatbelt laws back in the 80s and 90s, too. Half my family believed it was evidence a communist takeover, and they all had those little defeat devices that you plugged into the latch, which silenced the car's seatbelt-off indicator.

"You can't tell me what to do" has been a religion in the USA for a long, long time.

Or you have just been sweeping preventable birth defects under the rug. The UK determined that had been happening and are going to start doing it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c206d60xe7no

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8264257/

2023 Study:

"Despite Public Health Initiatives across Europe recommending that women take 0.4 mg folic acid before becoming pregnant and during the first trimester, the prevalence of NTD pregnancies has not materially decreased in the EU since 1998, in contrast to the dramatic fall observed in the USA. This study aimed to estimate the number of NTD pregnancies that would have been prevented if flour had been fortified with folic acid in Europe from 1998 as it had been in the USA."

"Conclusions: This study suggests that failure to implement mandatory folic acid fortification in the 28 European countries has caused, and continues to cause, neural tube defects to occur in almost 1,000 pregnancies every year."

The most famous NTD is Spina Bifida, and most of them aren't really fixable by modern health care. So this is 1000 babies a year who are either born with severe birth defects, or, in what I'm guessing is many cases, terminated when they could have been born healthy with a flour enrichment mandate.

It would be interesting to know why EU countries chose not to mandate it. Also, I wonder if EU flour millers/producers add it voluntarily, and whether flour produced in Canada destined for EU markets leaves out the folate that's mandated for inclusion in the Canadian market.

Anti-folates (similarly with magnesium and a few other things) are closer to chemotherapy than anything else. They promote cancers because they promote nearly every human cell, and the logic behind removing them is that since cancer cells divide so comparatively rapidly they'll be selectively targeted by a lack of division-enabling nutrients. Most people absolutely shouldn't be restricting their folate intake.

If we take your claim to its logical conclusion (that we shouldn't add those vitamins and minerals to our foods because they might hurt a small percentage of people), the other side of the coin is that we should _remove_ extra vitamins and minerals. If we don't, we're just implicitly medicating a whole population rather than proactively medicating them. Peanuts hurt some people; let's ban them everywhere. End-stage kidney patients without full renal failure often can't tolerate salt or phosphorus; let's not salt any of our food and ban the sale of eggs and meats. Diabetics can't easily tolerate a high glycemic load; let's be extra safe and not use any sugars or alcohols.

Or...make reasonable population-level interventions and let people with special needs handle their own special needs. There are gluten-free breads, no-excess-folate flours, and all sorts of things on the market.

While we're talking about baseline levels of B vitamins (folate), did you know that most bakers are also dumping a rich, broad-spectrum source of most B vitamins and trace minerals into your bread? It's not just folate. They then let that yeast further multiply for 2hr+ just to bump the vitamin levels up (or, worse, add extra yeast at the start to speed up the baking cycle).

Presumably, if you're in the US or any of those countries that mandate folate then you don't eat bread or anything containing flour—or you have to get special flour without it.

I'd imagine that must be very difficult for you.

BTW, that fluoride reference refers to excessive fluoride in water whether natural or added. I've not entered the fluoride debate here except to ask a question. I'd certainly object if fluoride levels were excessive in my water supply.

So instead of the niche individuals and groups working around society to meet their needs—because this absolutely can be done today—-those with an anti-flouridation belief are mandating that the majority give up economy of scale for something that it still wants and needs.

It’s doubtful that this stance is being promoting in good faith.

This is getting wildly off topic, but I firmly believe that "we tried everything and free market capitalism is the best we have" is a myth.

It's incontrovertible that, under certain conditions, an unrestricted price system (a "market") is the most efficient allocation mechanism possible. There's a lot of research on that kind of thing.

The myth is that we have ever tried anything resembling that on a nationwide scale, or maybe even that it is achievable at all. There is a fundamental "paradox of tolerance" in economics, where market participants have strong and persistent incentives to distort or damage the market. This is why business interests so often align with free-market liberalism or conservatism.

Most of the so-called deregulation under the current Trump administration for example as little to do with improving the efficiency of market allocation. It's much more about making sure very large and powerful corporations can get even larger and more powerful, and removing the regulatory apparatus to prevent them from distorting and damaging markets to suppress competition, or to suppress labor costs.

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Can communities choose to permit murder or ban people of certain races? Is America not free because they cannot choose to vote for a government that would prohibit women from voting or jail people for expressing political opinions?

You're using an extreme definition of freedom that I suspect is not quite the trump card you think it is. No, "communities" can't just do whatever they want because they "choose" to, and nobody ouside the lunatic fringe thinks that's a prerequisite for freedom.

Federal limit is 1.5 mg/l. All water suppliers have to regularly chemically/biologically analyse their water and publish fairly detailed reports. Example: https://www.bwb.de/de/assets/downloads/analysewerte-wasserwe... Some states add extra reporting requirements.

Sorry if you read my post as snarky - I don't think I missed that point, I meant the question at the end more as food for thought.

The OP contrasts adding fluroide to water vs. not adding fluoride to water and brings up the freedom question. I find that very interesting. But he omits that there's also the variant I sketched, namely that fluoride could still be made available to the population, but not through water.

Now, how does this factoid relate to the freedom (positive or negative) question?

So, please don't read my post as negative, my intent was to bring an additional perspective to the table.

Isn’t that iodine and not fluoride?

So if the Science™ said it was good to add antibiotics (reduces illness!) and anti-psychotics (reduces violence!) to the water supply, you'd be for it?

What do you mean by "without cost-gating"?

Public healthcare systems in other countries have procedures they don't cover, and significant wait periods (i.e., shortages) to see doctors and specialists and have procedures done. Because of the cost.

I'm not saying they aren't better than America's, but the idea you can just let people have it and not worry about costs isn't true. Health is like around quarter of entire government expenditure, it's fantastically expensive. Around the same amount of welfare expenditure, so you could double the number of people receiving welfare or double the amount that welfare recipients get for the same price, for example, which would be lifechanging for millions of the poorest and most disadvantaged people.

> except the one where measles is making a comeback?

Measles is growing globally. In the "European region" there were double the number of measles cases in 2024 as there were in 2023. https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/european-region-report...

Or the iron that I wish they wouldn't add as it means I can't eat them due to my medical condition.

Those don’t have a monopoly.

One man's slippery slope, is another man's exploration of an idea. I don't think exploring widely is unproductive.

I could also say, that discussing slippery slopes (a linguistic discussion) is itself what moves the discussion too far from the original topic. You protest too much.

The trouble with slippery slopes is that not all of them are fallacious, as you are suggesting. This is a reasonable point: if we are doing delivery of medicine through tap water, where's the line? A few people have seriously suggested putting low doses of lithium in the tap water as a societal antidepressant.

>The difference is that fluoride is effectively an industrial waste product and thus it benefits multiple parties to use it

Source? Moreover, how much of a market can municipal water fluoridation create that companies would bother lobbying for it?

Do you think there's a difference between a/ treating water to make it clean and b/ adding minerals and vitamins for the benefit of others, whether they want it or not?

Forgot about that one, yup.

There is no leap, when I finally got good access to dental care, I've had dentists tell me water fluoridation is what kept me from tooth decay in the chronic absence of dental care and basic hygiene.

That sounds like what I meant.

Sure, go ahead, no taxes! But along with OP's rules against using public roads, or public infrastructure: You also can't use the public's air, because regulation keeps it clean. You can't eat at any restaurants, because the government regulates them and make sure they are serving safe food. No access to medicine, either, for the same reason. No airline travel, which is heavily regulated and safe, No working for any company subject to OSHA and other workplace safety regulations. No calling the police or fire department if you need help. Just you in your homestead in the woods--oh, and if someone robs your homestead, you don't have access to the courts to get your money back, either, money that you can't use anyway because it's issued by the government.

No taxes in exchange for you not benefiting from anything taxpayer-funded. How does that libertarian paradise sound?

Meta analysis of the various studies (74 of them from a large range of countries):

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

reality check: europe never had fluoride in the water. still looking for the dental crisis.

40 out of over 60ish counties in Florida already are fluoride free

I'm aware of the history (I said "beloved of", not "invented by"). My point is that it's idiosyncratically American to think of decisions about municipal water treatment as being fundamentally questions of political liberty.

"Your community could decide" is not freedom in the American political sense. In US political theory, the unit of freedom is the individual, full stop.

Or just not consume any water.

Are we also "free" to not pay "voluntary" taxes then? We have to understand that we're N-levels deep into this spaghetti mess, and as a consequence of that it's very hard to argue anything from first-principles or absolutes.

Do they do much floridation though?

UK: 34th

USA: 69th

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/healthies...

Yeah, that’s just the start.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

This demonstrates an intentional effort by the founders to strictly limit federal authority by explicitly enumerating government powers and leaving everything else beyond federal reach. It underscores that their conception of freedom involved a government that was deliberately restrained, designed primarily to safeguard individual liberties by minimizing governmental interference, rather than merely protecting from outright tyranny.

You can presumably buy a different brand of flour or find a different source quite easily? Same applies to most other “fortified” products. With water your’e basically forced to waste money on bottled water or very expensive filtration systems.

But yes, adding additional vitamins or minerals to food products is generally unnecessary when supplements are generally cheap and highly available these days.

I support the language here: https://fra.europa.eu/en/eu-charter/article/3-right-integrit...

Article 3 - Right to integrity of the person

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity.

2. In the fields of medicine and biology, the following must be respected in particular:

(a) the free and informed consent of the person concerned, according to the procedures laid down by law;

(b) the prohibition of eugenic practices, in particular those aiming at the selection of persons;

(c) the prohibition on making the human body and its parts as such a source of financial gain;

(d) the prohibition of the reproductive cloning of human beings.