FLUORIDATION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 785, 6 August 1954, Page 5

FLUORIDATION

Sir.-I know of a child who is so indulged that she refuses to go to bed until everyone else goes; so mother and father, and granny, too, have to don pyjamas and lie in their beds until she is safely "off," and then they sneak out again. This is not more absurd than compelling the whole population to drink fluoride rather than curb the children’s consumption of sweet-stuff; as lop-sided a scheme, indeed, as only specialists could devise. We are spending more than half as much on_ icecream as on bread-plus sugar and sweets as well. But why worry, when we can buy such excellent dentures! Decaying teeth are not a_ hopeless tragedy nowadays. The margin between safe and harmful dosages of fluorine is a narrow one; and varying water consumption by individuals, owing to climate and methods of cooking, make it impossible to ensure the correct intake of fluoride through the water supply. A better way is to give children one fluoride tablet per day in a drink, just the exact amount wanted. Surely R. B. D. Stocker does New Zealand mothers less than justice if he thinks they "cannot be bothered" to administer the tablets. Mass medication violates a basic personal right, and it will be a bad day for freedom when our people become so browbeaten by Authority that they give up

fighting:

ADIT

(Havelock North).