Fluoride in the water is one of several public health initiatives that people have become so familiar with that they don't appreciate their value. It's right up there with pasteurized milk == another benefit that foolish people like to decry.

I grew up in a village without "mains" water (as our overseas cousins put it), so our water came from a well. Very nice water, too, but it was liquid granite, so hard it would not produce soap suds without being chemically "softened". Unfortunately, the one mineral it apparently lacked was fluoride.

Fluoridated toothpaste came on the market in Ontario in 1962, when I was eight years old and my father was 43. In 1964, we moved to the city, where water was supplied from the Ottawa River and treated with fluoride.

My father, who had lost about half his teeth by his fortieth birthday, never lost another. My teeth were already studded with fillings, and I had several more over the next ten years. But after that, I had no more cavities, and now the only problems I have with my teeth arise from the deterioration of the old amalgam fillings, which eventually caused my back teeth to crack and break.

Young people I met at work, who had lived in fluoridated Ottawa all their lives, told me that they never had cavities, ever, despite the notoriously sugar-laden Canadian diet. They were deeply sympathetic of my repeated trips to the dentist to repair the ravages of old-style dental therapy.

Of course, back in the day, the amalgam filling was better than no tooth at all. Over the years, I have met several people who didn't have a tooth in their head by their 25th birthday -- folks who grew up in the country and never visited the dentist until adulthood. These folks considered me lucky to have a mouthful of healthy natural teeth -- as do I. Without fluoride, I would not have them.

Incidentally, dental caries and its bosom buddy gingivitis are damnably dangerous diseases, especially in people with weak immune systems. They are directly implicated in pericarditis, which is why a preventive course of antibiotics is prescribed for heart patients before they have dental work. Likewise, people waiting for heart surgery are checked for mouth infections -- cavities, abscesses and infected gums.