Mass medication

Do you have fluoride in your drinking water? This is something of a hot issue in the City by the Sea just now, because we don't have fluoride in our water and after a twenty year debate the city council has recently decided to add it without consulting anyone. Like many of my fellow City-by-the-Sea-ians, I'm not thrilled by this. So many people drink bottled water or, like me, have rainwater tanks, I don't see that adding fluoride to the city's water will do much good. If they really wanted people to ingest fluoride to benefit their teeth they could subsidise fluoride tablets or distribute fluoride toothpaste or... or something. Make it the individual's choice (or the parents' choice in the case of children, I suppose).

I find this a curious reaction in myself, because I'm all for vaccinations and whatnot. If we could eradicate, say, chickenpox, by all having a vaccination, I'd be right there. But thinking it over, I've decided that it's to do with the shared nature of the problem. If I catch a contagious disease, for example, then someone else might catch it, and so on until we have an epidemic, so vaccinations are the for public good. On the other hand, if I don't look after my teeth, well, that's my problem and it's hardly going to affect anyone else's life greatly. It's the same reason I sighed when the government made it compulsory for bakers to add folate to bread on the grounds that it will be beneficial for pregnant women. That's true, but it's no reason to medicate the entire population. Sigh.