The practice of adding fluoride to public drinking water has long been hailed as a triumph of public health, credited with reducing tooth decay in communities worldwide. Yet, this one-size-fits-all approach raises serious ethical questions that deserve scrutiny. While fluoride may benefit children’s developing teeth, its universal application to entire populations—regardless of age, health status, or individual needs—violates fundamental medical principles. By assuming everyone requires the same treatment, water fluoridation bypasses the doctor-patient relationship, ignores proper dosing, and risks harm to those who gain no benefit. This post explores why mass fluoridation is a flawed approach, using the analogy of adding aspirin to water to highlight its absurdity, and argues for a return to individualized care through physician-prescribed fluoride when necessary.
Read MoreI have written articles about systemic fluoride before, but today I want to focus on one manifestation of excess fluoride called fluorosis. Fluorosis means fluoride toxicity and its manifestations. The symptoms range from mild to severe and typically show up in teeth and bones but include other aspects of the body. Today, dental fluorosis has been trivialized, yet 8 to 51% of children in fluoridated communities suffer from dental fluorosis, and 3 to 26% of children in non-fluoridated communities suffer from dental fluorosis due to its presence in much of our food supply. In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control reported 41 % of American adolescents now have dental fluorosis. In this post, I will show you how to identify it, and talk about what you can do to prevent and cope with it.
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