re: No More Fluoride Supplements for Young Children

Don Fletcher — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:52:24 GMT

In the area where I went to high school, Mount Forest Ontario the water in deep wells was naturally flouridated, that is, it contained a strong dose of calcium flouride. Of course the town water would not have been flouridated by design. During our health class the issue of flouridation of our water came up, and several of the children felt deprived because our town council would not support flouridation, with sodium flouride. However, during Ontario's debate over flouridation the dental health of our own town's children had been held up as evidence for use of flouride.

During a health checkup at school the doctor looked at my teeth and remarked that I had absolutely no evidence of any dental problem, and offered the opinion that the town's natural flouridation probably accounted for this. He was taken aback to discover that I had never lived in Mount Forest, and still did not, I was transported there daily.

Now anecdotal evidence is and should be severely discounted. You have no knowledge in this case that I had not been in some other area of natural flouridation. Whether I had or not, you, like that doctor, would not be well advised to develop a general theory based on one example when you have no evidence as to a hundred other causal links to my good dental health.

What everyone should be alert to is the absence of proof of effectiveness for this purpose, and lack of evidence of general safety. But our town in general had better than average dental health through age 19. We had exceptions.

During our provincial debate on flouridation a lot of debate time centered around the fact that our town's water had calcium flouride whereas the cities doing flouridation were using sodium flouride. Now, if there is a difference between the calcium and the sodium flouride, we should today be able to go back to Mount Forest, Ontario, and determine whether there is a difference in the health of people who have lived there as compared with the people of Toronto.