Fluoride and the Fat Man

A man in my neighborhood has a weight problem. Obesity by itself is not such a big deal, but this man likes to take his shirt off when doing yard work. It’s a public eyesore. So a group of neighbors came up with a solution. They gang-tackled the man and forced Fen-phen tablets down his throat. The man became incensed. “Stop!” he shouted. “You have no right to do this! This stuff is dangerous. I could get heart-valve damage.”

The man didn’t understand. Those neighbors had every right to force Fen-phen down his throat. You see, they voted on it. A majority of the neighbors wanted the man to take the weight-loss drug.

Now, perhaps the reader is calling this ridiculous, which of course it is. No one has the right to decide what medication his neighbor will take. Not even a doctor can force a patient to take a drug against his will; yet, against all logic, this is exactly what we are doing with water fluoridation.

Perhaps some of you are saying, “Wait a minute here. It’s okay to restrict the rights of the individual if it’s for the public good. This is just like chlorination of water or mandatory vaccinations.” But in reality, water fluoridation isn’t even remotely comparable to chlorination or vaccination.

Chlorine is added to the water to kill bacteria. It treats the water to make it safer to drink. If we don’t kill the bacteria in the water, we run the risk of large numbers of people dying from cholera. Vaccinations, which are administered by doctors, are intended to prevent infectious diseases. They are not mandatory—individuals have the right to opt out of vaccinations, even though there may be a valid argument to be made in their favor. Failure to immunize could result in deadly diseases being passed from person to person.

Fluoridation, on the other hand, does nothing to make the water more safe. It is a medication, it’s sole purpose being to treat or prevent a dental disease. One cannot opt out of fluoridation. Once it is in the water supply, it is in every food or beverage made with this water, making it impossible to avoid. Tooth decay is not infectious—there has never been an instance in which a child got a cavity from playing near another child with tooth decay. And no one has ever died from getting a cavity. So how can we argue that it’s okay to trample the rights of the individual for something so trivial as this?

No doctor would prescribe a medication without knowing the patient’s body weight and medical history, yet that is what ordinary voters are doing with fluoridation. We are putting fluoride in the water at 1 ppm, assuming that everyone drinks exactly the correct amount of water for their body weight and knowing that adverse health affects can occur if we merely double the prescribed dosage. Infants, who are not supposed to have any fluoride in their diets, will be grossly overdosed if fed on formula that is reconstituted with tap water. Athletes and manual laborers who drink a lot of water will also be overdosed.

There are others at risk. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) states that,

“Existing data indicates that subsets of the population may be unusually susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride and its compounds. These populations include the elderly, people with deficiencies of calcium, magnesium, and/or vitamin C, and people with cardiovascular and kidney problems...”

So we are putting a large number of people at risk for some potentially serious health problems in a forced medication program that will harm many and benefit only a few. What gives us the right to do that? If the goal is to improve the dental health of poor children, there are vastly superior options available—options that would not stomp on the rights of others.