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> but all of that is irrelevant in the face of these basic points: > - Is there a chance that fluoride ingestion could be detrimental to human health? - Can tooth decay be prevented by diet and brush/floss with good quality toothpaste? When evaluating those points, be sure to assess what actually happens, in real life, to real people, and not what could happen in theory. For example, even if tooth decay could be effectively "prevented by diet and brush/floss with good quality toothpaste" in theory, the effect might be smaller (possibly much smaller) in practice, as people in general suck at lifestyle changes, dieting being a prime example, and then a noticeable subset of the population has problems with regularly brushing their teeth (for some reason, this is surprising to many). Unless you have a way for fixing that (so far no one has), this may well make fluoridated water come out ahead in comparison. -- EDIT: The above is similar to the argument for, e.g., opt-out health insurance and social retirement savings plans - you're still free to choose an alternative or decide to stay with the default, but if for some reason you can't understand the choice or can't be arsed to make one, you and everyone else are better off with you having some insurance and savings by default. The similarity is that we know for certain that the "incapable of making a choice" bucket will contain a substantial segment of the population, so at policy level, making health insurance/retirement savings opt-in with nothing as default, is just deciding to screw all those people over. |
And no, your health insurance / social retirement example doesn't fit. Sticking to the default in these cases does not amount to willingly poisoning oneself.