[lbo-talk] Null and Void

[John Thornton]

You might want to reserve your judgement about fluoride until you read more 
about it. It's use is controversial for a good reason regardless of how 
many kooks latch onto anti-fluoride brigades for reasons known only to 
them. Almost all the evidence I've seen about fluoride says it must be 
absorbed directly through the surface of the tooth rather than being 
ingested. That's why fluoride toothpaste is a good idea but fluoridated 
water, perhaps not. When you visit the dentist he puts fluoride treatments 
directly on the surface of your tooth so it can be absorbed. He doesn't 
give you fluoride supplements to take home with you.
I know nothing about Null in particular but I've yet to see an exclusively 
alternative health practitioner who impressed me. They seem to be either 
ill informed and well intentioned or con artists. Some others have 
denigrated acupuncture as "unscientific" and unfounded but it has been 
fairly rigorously tested for an alternative therapy. It worked better than 
steroid injections on my tendonitis. It seem to me most alternative 
therapies go untested either because they are not patentable or they are 
such horse shit nobody would pay good money to test them just to prove they 
don't work.

John Thornton


>Ye gods. Science is the collective labor of hundreds of thousands of human
>beings, testing, verifying, testing, criticizing, etc. Anti-fluoridation 
>rants,
>vague mutterings about the low-level dangers of immunization and amalgams 
>which
>have nothing to do with their high-level benefits, and still vaguer 
>mutterings
>about cancer don't cut it. If you've got scientific evidence to the contrary,
>take it up with the relevant research institute.
>
>Quackery is biomedical fundamentalism.
>
>-- DRR