Is There Still a Good Case for Water Fluoridation?

I blame my dentists. Not for poor dental care—Barbara and Gordon do great work. I blame them for sending me into a vortex of dento-epistemological anxiety.

On a tooth-cleaning visit not long ago, Barbara told me that in the late 1970s, when she attended dental school, her professors expected that most middle-class patients would lose a lot of their teeth and need dentures by the time they were in their 60s. Today, she said, most middle-class people keep their teeth until they are 80. The main reason for this, Barbara explained, was fluoridation—the practice of putting fluoride compounds in community drinking water to combat tooth decay......