Fluoridation
SIR,—The benefit and harmlessness which John Rowan Wilson claims for fluoride, at one part per million in water, in reducing dental decay are hotly contested by competent experts, but I will confine myself to the issue whether fluoridation is ethically acceptable. He says there is no objection to chemicals in the water supply because chlorine is a chemical. But chlorine and all other chemicals hitherto added to water are used solely to treat the water and their purpose and function cease before they reach the body. Fluoride, however, would be added solely to treat the body, the water being merely the vehicle for conveying it to the body. This distinction is crucial and fluoridation is fully recognised by water authorities (if not by the Minister) as an entirely novel and unprecedented procedure.
Mr Wilson says fluoride is not a drug but more a component of diet. While the BMA regard fluorida- tion as 'medical treatment' and the consensus is that fluoride is not nutritional, the distinction is immaterial to the ethical issue. The material fact is that fluoridation is the compulsory administration of a substance intended to affect the development of the body--a procedure so far unheard of in our society. Your contributor then argues that the preservation of freedom of choice in this connection 'makes no sense' because those affected are children not in a position to make a choice. But parents act for child- ren in this position and, if they wish their children to have additional fluoride, they can have it now in tablets or other ways that do not compel other people also to have it.
The suggestion that the defeat of fluoridation means a victory over the next generation is sheer sentimentality. There would be no victory over even the present generation—only a victory for individual freedom. We submit that the freedom to choose what shall go into our bodies is a basic human right not derived from government and therefore inalienable by _government, and that fluoridation breaches that right and should be rejected as wholly incompatible with a free society.
A. E. JOU
Chairman, National Pure Water Association Hawkley. Liss, Hants [This correspondence is now closed.—Editor,
SPECTATOR.]
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