Lack of professional dental care to blame
I’d like to add to the excellent letter to the editor by Ron Becker, which ran April 20 in West Hawaii Today.
All containers of toothpaste with fluoride have, on the backside: “Warning: Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.”
Also, the type of fluoride in toothpaste is sodium monofluorophosphate.
As a young child, I had topical treatments of fluoride, and had been brushing with fluoride “tainted” toothpaste, plus drinking fluoridated drinking water on the mainland until moving to Kona in 1977, at age 30.
Today I’m relearning how to talk as I once did, having lost, gradually, a substantial amount of teeth. When I entered my 50s, my sole medical caregiver became the VA. Dental isn’t offered unless the veteran is 100 percent disabled. It wasn’t nonfluoridated drinking water causing my loss. It was the lack of professional care.
Dennis L. Lawson
Kalaoa
George Will reflects conservative right
My graduate school political theory professor always told us “if you want to read what the right wing conservatives are thinking read George Will.” Will’s column on April l17 could not prove the point better. As he points out the conservative right believes the individual, no matter how irresponsible, has legal standing over the community.
“… majority rule is legitimate ‘only within the boundaries of the individual’s natural right.’” Thus a conservative Supreme Court rules the rich individual and the poor individual have the “right” to buy so-called free speech. The insane have the individual right to have guns to murder school children. The community? Suck it up because you are the evil “government” who is always oppressing these freedom loving individuals.
Will cites the the Ninth Amendment of the constitution claiming individual rights without pointing out Article VI clearly stating “this constitution … shall be the supreme law of the land.” His quotes from the Declaration of Independence jump over “all men are created equal,” a phrase not exactly backing up his claim the document raises the individual over the community and its needs and desires.
He is correct about something though … this is the argument central to the political debate in the country today. Will it be unrestrained (corporate) individualism or the will of a tolerant, just community controlling our government?
William F. Johnston
Kailua-Kona