Earl Baldwin's letter

Additives and our daily bread
Sir, Whether bread should be fortified with folic acid (report and leading article, Apr 5; letters, Apr 6) is not a straightforward question, and what you describe as a “wholly spurious” argument in favour of choice reflects a tenable point of view. A key issue is whether people should be forced to do something for their own (or others’) good. The answer will tell what sort of society we live in.
Relevant factors will include whether this is a medical treatment — ingesting folic acid is, wearing seatbelts is not — because more restrictive rules apply to the former than to the latter (see the European Biomedicine Convention and the General Medical Council’s ethical guidance in seeking patients’ consent). Whether a substance is an essential nutrient is important (folic acid is, fluoride is not), together with how difficult it may be for a person to get the requisite amount and how else it might be delivered. The inherent uncertainty of science is a good reason for caution: evidence and interpretations change, and synthetic forms of a nutrient do not always equate with the natural. Protection of the unborn child, as here, may sway the balance for some.
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You don’t have to be a “fundamentalist libertarian” to observe that, in the words of a scientific journal editorial some years ago on fluoride in water, “those who perceive themselves as doing God’s work tend to be very intense about it”. A certain intolerance can be seen on the interventionist side when a universally desirable end-point is focused on to the exclusion of broader concerns.
EARL BALDWIN OF BEWDLEYHouse of Lords