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Comment by djsavvy | Hacker News Reader

My pet crackpot theory is that within the next 100 years semaglutide is going to be in the drinking water (much like fluoride) because the benefit to society is going to be too hard to pass up on. However, it seems that it's delivered via injection so maybe putting it in the water supply wouldn't even be effective.

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It's funny you say that because just now the US is starting to re-consider water fluoridation: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/04/fluoridation... .

It's also relative uncommon in other developed countries; according to Wikipedia, "Out of a population of about three-quarters of a billion, under 14 million people (approximately 2%) in Europe receive artificially-fluoridated water. Those people are in the UK (5,797,000), Republic of Ireland (4,780,000), Spain (4,250,000), and Serbia (300,000)."

The benefits of fluoridation were amazing. I didn't have a single cavity until I was 25 and had moved away from that area to a non-fluoridated area.

Don't you clean your teeth with a fluoridated toothpaste? That should be plenty good enough, no need to put it in the drinking water.

That’s what I’m telling you. It’s not the same.

Even if that is true, there's no reason to bathe in it, cook with it, water our lawns with it.

And now it's becoming clear that IQ is affected by fluroride https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409983/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5285601/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/epa-must-address-fluoridate...

So how about we keep it out of our drinking water. If you want to put fluoride on your teeth, use fluoridated toothpaste.

Keep in mind that the fluoride concentration on those two papers is way larger than what most of the world practices.

In fact, WTF is India doing there? Don't they have limits on it?

The funny thing is that if you live in Portland, famously one of the few large cities without fluoride in the water, the dentist can immediately tell if you grew up here.

I would guess that in today's world a lot of people get enough fluoride through processed foods being made in places that have fluoridated water.

I don't think anything that can influence our choices would ever get enough public approval for that.

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