Comment by verall
21 days ago
> Poor people in the US are capable of using fluoride toothpaste and flossing. At least at homeless shelters at outreach things I’ve been to, toothpaste and toothbrushes are freely available. Your argument hinges on them being incapable on the whole and needing a Benevolent But Superior Intelligence to provide an alternative for them.
This is so incurious. Obviously most people, poor or not, have access to fluoridated toothpaste and toothbrushes, and can brush.
Yet OP cites data (not explicitly, but you can start here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6974062/, there are many like it).
Fluoridated water makes the most impact on poor and undeserved communities: Why?
Is it because poor people are less capable of brushing or have less access to fluoridated toothpaste?
Is it because poor people are poor because they have poor self control, which prevents them from regular brushing?
Does it matter? Nothing hinges on them being incapable at all - your conjecture can be as uncharitable - poor people are dirty and incapable - or charitable - poor people have less money and time to seek dental care, have higher rates of untreated mental and physical illness i.e. ADHD, disabilities that interrupt daily tooth-brushing routine - as you want.
But the result is still that if we want children from poor families to have less cavities by the time they reach adulthood - we should fluoridate the water! If you trust the western medical establishment, it's broadly safe. If you don't, then none of the evidence above matters to you anyways.
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.
What is strawman in my comment? I'm genuinely interested.
> We should find out why the poor have worse dental outcomes and address the root problem
The root problem is that parents that are absent, either for noble reasons (working multiple low-wage jobs) or less noble reasons (addiction, abandonment) will not have the presence to enforce good dental hygiene.
There will always be some subset of parents that are more or less absent, and the main solution that exists for that in the US currently i.e. the foster care system has measurably terrible outcomes, and so it is only applied in the most egregious cases.
Why should we let perfect be the enemy of good here? I'm all for removing fluoride from the water, once it has no benefit on the population. But currently, it has a huge benefit, just on people who are least likely to advocate for it.
"You're just pushing your "Benevolent But Superior Intelligence" onto people" is an appeal to emotion, not a solution to real problems that real children face.
More emotionally: it's fucking embarrassing we let bullshit arguments like this hurt people in real life.