Five Phony Public Health Scares.

• Author: Eaton, Joel A.
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

In "Five Phony Public Health Scares" (November), Ronald Bailey mentions the campaign against fluoridation of water. Fluoridation, arguably one of the great successes of public health policy, shines a light on the progressive mindset.

Here we have a policy opposed by persons concerned about effects of a chemical accumulating in human bodies over decades, persons who would apply the precautionary principle to fluoridation in exactly the way progressives have used it to forestall every other technological advance in memory. Yet our news media have taken those progressives seriously, while scoffing the fluoridation skeptics off the stage of public opinion as a bunch of ignorant rednecks.

I can't see that the progressives are any more enlightened than the fluoridation skeptics.

Joel A. Eaton

Waverly, TN

Eaton. Under the precautionary principle...