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In other words, what happens when a population suddenly stops taking fluoride in their drinking water, like Juneau's citizenry did?
Now, thanks to a recent study led by first author and public health researcher Jennifer Meyer from the University of Alaska Anchorage, we've got new insights into the subsequent effects.
In the study, Meyer assessed Medicaid dental claim billing records for two groups of children and adolescents aged 18 or under.
One of these groups represented what the researchers call "optimal" community water fluoridation (CWF) exposure: 853 non-adult patients on behalf of whom Medicaid dental claims were filed in 2003, years before the fluoride cessation began in 2007.
The other group was made up of 1,052 non-adult patients from families who similarly met Medicaid income requirements, and who made the same kind of dental claims almost a decade later, in 2012.
[...] "By taking the fluoride out of the water supply... the trade-off for that is children are going to experience one additional caries procedure per year, at a ballpark (cost) of US$300 more per child," Meyer explained to KTOO News.
Reference: Jennifer Meyer, Vasileios Margaritis & Aaron Mendelsohn, Consequences of community water fluoridation cessation for Medicaid-eligible children and adolescents in Juneau, Alaska, BMC Oral Health, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-018-0684-2
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 16 2019, @02:24PM
If the natural fluoride level is near optimal levels, (a) the treatment is unnecessary, and will display no efficacy to the public; (b) the test will not detect any benefit.
If the natural fluoride level is very low, (a) the treatment is useful, and will display high efficacy to the public; (b) the test will with high probability detect a benefit.
Maybe we have different views on what the public view efficacity is. The above two 'if's tell me that it is directly related to the likelyhood a test detects the benefit, independent of the precise test used. You'd expect that just by looking at the effect size - both the public making their opinions, and the scientist making their measurements will be more likely to see a larger effect size.
I was trying to map things between the public/scientist domains that are in some way equivalent - the public view on whether the effect is real vs. the scientific view on whether the effect is real (i.e. true/false values) - perhaps I should have just stuck with the effect size instead.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves