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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

This stood out to me:

> The American Dental Association has strongly urged NTP to add a disclaimer to the report highlighting its scientific limitations.

A recurring theme in alternative health circles is that dentists, doctors, etc. fundamentally can’t be trusted due to profit motives: that “real” medicine is suppressed because there’s no profit in it.

I think this quote is worth highlighting because it’s the exact opposite: water fluoridation is virtually free, and has a lopsided positive impact on dental health. In other words: it’s hard to square with the normal claims of profit seeking.

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There's profit motive everywhere. "Alternative" medicine is a many billion dollar massive business that often has higher margins than "big pharma" because they aren't highly regulated, yet a ton of people consider it more credible because they think only mainstream medicine has profit motive.

Somebody is getting paid for that fluoride.

Someone is always getting paid for something. That doesn’t mean dentists have a financial interest your municipality’s water supply.

They don't except for "eye wash" procedures like fluoride trays and polishes. The ADA has a vested interest in fluoridation because of reputation, and chemical suppliers do to a minimal degree.

A long time ago, it was decided US fluoridation "improved public health" with the quick win of moving the needle of tooth decay while failing to consider the long-term, detrimental health effects of systemic fluoride ingestion. The rest of the world doesn't do it because of the evidence against it and widespread availability of modern dental care products containing fluoride.

The trivialization of anti-fluoridation is primarily due to mass media indoctrination, i.e., Dr. Strangelove, and association with conspiracy wingnuts.

A reputational interest is impossible to falsify. But I also disagree: I don’t think the ADA would lose any face over a change in this position to most people (and to the anti-fluoride people, nothing will change).

> The rest of the world doesn't do it because of the evidence against it and widespread availability of modern dental care products containing fluoride.

Much of continental Europe does fluoridation through dietary additions (e.g. salt). Just because it isn’t in the water doesn’t mean it isn’t added. There are some countries that notably don’t fluoridate at all, and many fall into two camps: they either don’t have safe municipal water supplies, or already have naturally high fluoride levels (sometimes higher than the US’s introduced levels).

You’ve flipped the causality, by the way: it’s in Dr. Strangelove because it is a conspiracy wingnut thing to obsess over.

Learning that the ADA's recommendation has led to decades of mass poisoning of the population into intellectual impairment will absolutely damage the reputation of the ADA.

First: this isn't true. Even TFA's position is conflicted: the majority of evidence points to current municipal fluoride levels having no meaningful impact on mental development. There are large parts of the world (including parts of Switzerland and Japan) with significantly higher levels of fluoride in their groundwater than the U.S. adds, and even these areas do not support the hypothesis.

Second: if you think that the average American will remember the ADA for fluoride, I'll ask you for your opinion on General Motors. They actually did poison our air and soil with a known neurotoxin for over 50 years, and they seem to be doing fine in the court of public opinion.

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