Ste2ping the Rot
SIR,—Mrs Dougal (Letters, February 3) is, con- sciously or not, back with the emotional anti- fluoridationalists, teaching dentists the facts of life —and the aetiology of dental caries. Of course, dear lady, 'dental caries is due to wrong diet,' which is what the dental health educationists have long been attempting to teach an apathetic, sweet-sucking nation. Unhappily, the few thousand pounds avail- able for their propaganda cannot compete with the millions spent upon advertising designed to encour- age (with no difficulty) the eating of tooth-rotting (cariogenic) foods.
Dentists 'avoid treating the cause of caries' for the good reason that it is, as Mrs Dougal has be- latedly discovered, wrong feeding. As dentists cannot cater for their patients' diet they must be content with giving advice, which is mostly ignored: as are the warnings against smoking, which, no doubt, Mrs Dougal's physician husband frequently utters.
And, of course, 'Anyone with the money to buy an electric toothbrush and the wit to use one could [my italics] embark on a diet which will allow them to retain such teeth as they have . . .' As well say anyone with the money to buy, and the wit to drive a car could avoid drinking before driving.
Mrs Dougal is singularly naive concerning atti- tudes to health education. Learning its precept,- offers no guarantee that they will be practised. While five million teenagers purchase, in one year, choco- lates, sweets and ice-cream to the value of £30,000,000, the least one can do is to 'keep babbling about fluoride' which will protect children's teeth against later indulgences.
EDWARD SAMSON
Akii/1810/1, 7 Poole Road, Bournemouth
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