Fluoridation – ethics of choice and common sense
To the editor:
Tooth decay is not caused by a lack fluoride, it is caused by a lack of common sense dental hygiene and typically poor sugar infested diet. If fluoride has any value in preventative dental health, it needs to be applied directly to the teeth. It is extremely inefficient, dangerous and unnecessary to flood our gut, blood, bones, brain and tissue to achieve this end!
Fluoridated toothpaste or, if affordable, a dentist’s fluoride treatment is obviously the simplest and best approach. By the way, the dentist does not send you home with multiple gallon jugs of fluoridated water to drink, he applies it directly to your teeth!
You do not drink shampoo to clean your hair or drink hydrogen peroxide to clean a wound so why the heck should we be flooding our system with fluoridated water to get a little on our teeth. A first or second grader could see the total lack of practical common sense here and, even more importantly, we are apparently being given zero choice in this matter. That is what really totally infuriates me!
The FDA classifies fluoride as a drug and it is common knowledge that to prescribe a drug without a doctor’s license is a criminal offense. In the 1960s, a well funded propagandist machine characteristically paid for and “cherry picked” their information to successfully convince politicians (and ultimately the public) that fluoride in everybody’s drinking water was “God’s gift” to humanity. Somehow, the drug prescribing issue was not addressed and, as a result, we end up with a stunningly bizarre situation.
Thousands of local bureaucrats, such as our own self-appointed water czar, cannot only prescribe this drug but (here is the stunner!) – they can actually administer it to every single one of us – and in totally unknown dosages! So concerning this particular drug they can assume completely totalitarian power over how I choose to manage my personal health.
My much trusted personal physician does not have that power and it is my choice to accept or refuse treatment at the hospital. Hey, the Supreme Court recently, in effect, mandated that no public entity can force feed us broccoli so how ridiculously absurd and unethical it is that these public water organizations can assume more “one size fits all” drug prescribing and forcible dispensing power than any other entity in the land – truly stunning!
So Pine Islanders are now about to be force fed this drug by a process that, but for a “convenient” lobby influenced subversion of law in the 1960s, would (and should!) be a criminal offense. That is obviously not a sound basis on which to implement the proposed change to our water content and I vehemently urge major reconsideration of this insane “one size fits all” proposal.
The flawed manipulated science that fed the original propaganda has been persuasively refuted over and over in more recent times and very large numbers of medical professionals dispute the actual value of fluoride at all – certainly the absurdity of flooding one’s entire system to get some on one’s teeth. I leave the details of the scientific discussion to the island group that is already doing superb research. Suffice to say, based on current findings, informed concerned citizens across the USA are successfully getting fluoride out of their water supply and some entire nations are banning this practice!
Our very own Pine Island water czar seems to have an enormous bug up his tailpipe regarding his plan and seems “strangely” intent on implementing with great haste and as little public input as possible – a sure way to stir up the “hornets nest” of indignant well thought out opposition. He is clearly going to have to do battle with a very committed growing group of deeply offended intelligent island residents – an essentially unnecessary battle that could so easily be avoided.
Just have a little more respect for your water consumers who paid $2,000 plus to use your service! Recognize that those that choose to believe that they need fluoride on their teeth can do so without infuriating the rest of us – dentist application or purchasing fluoride toothpaste!
This issue has an additional dimension beyond your “disputable” science laden letters and quarter page Eagle advertisements, which have most recently “touted” the common practice of fortifying food products – such as iodine to salt, vitamins to milk or orange juice and folic acid to cereal. Mentioning this fact of current food production actually helps to make my point. Every one of those products are consumed according to individual choice and not by some kind of institutional mandate.
So in your next letter or advertisement could you please sincerely address my deep concern for the ethics of choice in this matter and explain (aside from the bizarre legal loophole) why you consider that you have the right to more absolute power over my health choices than my doctor or any other power in the land – including, apparently, the U.S. Supreme Court. I respectfully await your justification.
Terence Clements
Bokeelia